It was in this topic that I felt that we
had really collaborated as a group. For previous topics what we were doing would
better be described as group work – we participated by individually
contributing articles, weblinks, or personal anecdotes, but there was not much
collaborative discussion going on. Don’t get me wrong – we were all working
well as a team and faced no difficulty completing the first 2 topics. It just
felt as if there was more to collaboration than individuals working
semi-independently.
Our facilitator set the tone for Topic 3
right at the outset by reminding us that we needed to shift from mere group
work to genuine collaboration. She posed a thought-provoking question – When we
were students, did we ever truly collaborate or was it a form of group work? The
answer was the latter for most of us, including myself. As an undergraduate and
postgraduate, what I had experienced was group work rather than collaborative
learning. The only truly collaborative experience I remember having as a (doctoral)
student was when I had involve some colleagues in a new project that I had just
convinced. After convincing them of the scientific merits of the project, my
collaborators and I worked together towards a common goal. This “positive
interdependence” to achieve a common goal is one of the 5
elements of collaborative learning.
The next step for us as a group was to
articulate what collaborative learning is and why we should engage in it. I
found a comprehensive definition from the Sydney
School of Education & Social Work (University of Sydney): “Collaborative learning is an umbrella
term for a variety of approaches in education that involve joint intellectual effort by students or students and teachers.
Collaborative learning refers to methodologies
and environments in which learners engage in a common task in which each
individual depends on and is accountable
to each other. It involves use of small
groups so that all students can maximise their learning and that of their
peers. It is a process of shared
creation: two of more individuals interacting to create a shared
understanding of a concept, discipline or area of practice that none had
previously possessed or could have come to on their own. Collaborative learning
activities can include collaborative writing, group projects, and other activities.”
(Emphases mine)
What I like about this definition is that,
for example, it explains how collaborative learning leads to one of the
benefits of CL listed on the Cornell
Centre for Teaching Innovation website, i.e. development of higher-level
thinking (by encouraging students to “create a shared understanding of a
concept, discipline, or area of practice”. This ties in with the goals of
the higher levels (evaluation and synthesis) of the revised version of Bloom’s
Taxonomy, which can be found here.
Besides this timely reminder from our
facilitator, another reason why we collaborated better in Topic 3 was our
co-leaders’ suggestion that we choose a collaborative tool early. They suggested
that we use Padlet as a discussion forum of sorts – we would conduct
discussions on Padlet and summarize our findings/list references on the FISh
document. I felt that this arrangement worked very well. And the tool does make
a difference! So, it’s important to choose a tool early and get the group to
use them. The challenge lies not in finding a tool I think – there are many to
choose from – but in getting groups to use the tool once they have chosen it!
I will leave you with some points to ponder:
- How much time does it take to
engage in collaboration? From our own experience, 2 weeks seems to be enough. - What is the readiness of the
group? Do group members need some sort of warm-up activity before they can be
asked to collaborate? - How large can groups be? No
greater than 10 members per group?
References
Five Basic Elements of Collaborative
Learning. https://castleberry.instructure.com/courses/4077/pages/five-basic-elements-of-collaborative-learning
Collaborative Learning. https://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/learning_teaching/ict/theory/collaborative_learning.shtml
Why Use Collaborative Learning? https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning
Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy. http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy/