In some ways, especially technology-wise, this is a golden age for collaborative learning. Top tier universities such as MIT and Stanford offer course materials for free, internet access is prevalent worldwide (although stability and speed still vary a great deal between countries), and free collaborative tools online such as Padlet, Wakelet, Google Docs and others allow learners to work with each other despite distance or time differences.
However, tools by themselves are not sufficient for successful collaborative learning. Collaboration means that each team member must fulfil a meaningful role, and there is always a risk of unequal effort and work done by certain members of a team, which may lead to friction and more importantly, those who contribute less will likely also learn less as they are not accomplishing the tasks required to experience or acquire knowledge and skills.
One Master’s program I regularly conduct workshops for in Engineering has a quite interesting way of motivating engagement within the teams. Each team is a startup, paired with a researcher or company with a new innovation, and tasked to market that innovation. The team members take personality tests to gauge what their strengths and weakness are, as well as other personality traits. Some of the personality tests are 16 Personalities, Big Five, DISC, and Keirsey.
Each member takes on a role for 2 weeks, such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operations Officer and Chief Information Officer, and then the roles are rotated. Each week, the teams present their work so far for the startup, but also must re-introduce their team to the rest of the class, explaining their personalities, strengths and roles.
Personally, I think the use of personality testing and rotating roles are beneficial for collaborative learning, as every semester I see different teams, but they all seem close-knit, engaged and communicative with each other. So I hypothesized that the first step in collaborative learning is not to learn about your team mates, but to learn about yourself. Introspection and self-analysis must take place at the beginning of the course and regularly throughout to make sure that each learner are aware of their capabilities, temperament and how to better integrate into the team.
Of course this is only a very small part of collaborative learning as a whole, but I think it is a part that each learner can adopt to optimise their learning experience. Sunzi had a saying 知己知彼 百战不殆 (know yourself and know the other; you will never fail in any battle). I think this does not just apply to adversarial circumstances, but also in teamwork. Knowing yourself and knowing your team mates will reduce misunderstanding, raise rapport, and increase efficiency (since everyone will know who is best suited for which tasks and who to ask for help).
