In this post, I’m going to investigate whether the exercise sessions in one of my courses can be considered as collaborative learning experiences or not.

In the ocean of possible definitions of collaborative learning, I choose the following definition, or better, explanation of collaborative learning: “students work together in small groups toward a common goal. The students are responsible for one another’s learning as well as their own” [1]. Also, collaborative learning is meant to develop the critical thinking, that is “items that involve analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the concepts” [1]. I use these definitions to assess the collaborative learning in the exercise sessions.

The case

At the beginning of the course, I propose to my students the mobile phone as the system to be studied. Studied means discovering and describing the requirements for the mobile phone. The only knowledge that my students and I have of the mobile phone is what we know of the mobile phone, that is the mobile phone itself and how we use it!

In other words, the students describe what the mobile phone is supposed to do to satisfy the different users.

During the exercise sessions

The students work in small groups to perform three different activities: 1) discover what the possible users of the mobile phone want; 2) describe the users’ needs so that they can be implemented by engineers (the requirements); 3) review the requirements that another group has written. These activities are the same requested to develop the project, that is a group assignment used as exam.

The students think, discuss, propose solutions, ask to other group members for advice, ask question to me and, once they are satisfied, the solutions from the different groups are discussed all together. Feedback is provided by me and by the students themselves.

After the exercise sessions

I collect all the solutions, put them together, add some comments and publish them on the web management tool of the course.

At the end of the course, we obtain our own mobile phone, “THE MOBILE PHONE OF THE ACADEMIC YEAR 202x”, described by the students.

It becomes part of the course material along with the acknowledgement to all the students that built it!

Assessment of the exercise sessions

The students work in small group. They do!

They are like small learning communities [3] within a bigger learning community (the course).

The students are responsible for one another’s learning. They are!

Indeed, they share their knowledge and understanding by explaining it to the others, and they seek for support in case of doubts/problems, they improve their work based on the feedback they receive.

The students develop a critical thinking. They do!

Especially when they are requested to discuss the possible solutions and to give feedback on the requirements written by another group.

Also, these exercise sessions prepare the students to work in small groups to develop the project that they should submit as exam since students are requested to work on the same tasks as for the project (“make the group task relevant for the learner” [4]). This means that these sessions “provide scaffolding to build the skills” [4] necessary to develop the project.

The students indeed have an opportunity to apply the theory to a “known subject” (the mobile phone) by being supported by my feedback (“monitor group activities actively and closely” [4]) and learn how to collaborate to accomplish the different tasks. The sessions are very relaxed and there is not a good or a bad solution but the solution the students agree upon. This is done to build a nice environment (“nurture the establishment of learner relationships and sense of community” [4]).

So, it seems that the exercise sessions are a real experience of collaborative learning!

Final question: is the teacher’s thinking moved forward by this experience?

Yes, very much!

I indeed realized that I am also part of the collaborative learning experience not just by providing feedback, the course material, and the methods to deal with the problem but especially by learning from each proposed solution and the human and technical journey done by the students to reach it. The outcome of this learning becomes new insights, updated material, new feedback to the students, new awareness of how students understand and use the knowledge, and so on to contribute to the “everlasting” flow of knowledge [2].

I’m happy to conclude by saying that in a collaborative learning we are all learners!