Collaborative Learning
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WHY COLLABORATIVE LEARNING?
Introduction to Collaborative Learning and Learning Communities, by Jean MacGregor
The term collaborative learning encompasses a growing collection of approaches that engage students, or students and teachers together, in joint intellectual effort. Small group learning, book seminars, team learning, peer instruction, writing groups, case discussions, simulations, and problem-based learning are just some of the strands in an expanding web of collaborative learning approaches. Teachers committed to collaborative learning believe that learning improves when students construct knowledge for themselves, in conversation with and in concert with others. When students work with students to clarify understandings, generate meaning, solve problems, or create something new, they can strengthen their understanding of course material. But this is not all. Through learning collaboratively, students can also learn the art and skill of building relationships with others. They can recognize the value as well as the challenges of mutual inquiry and problem-solving. Moreover, they can come to new understandings of themselves as responsible creators of their own knowledge and meanings-an essential skill for life-long learning.
Collaborative learning can occur not only at the classroom level, but at the curriculum level as well, through Learning Communities. Learning communities are curriculum restructuring initiatives that link or cluster courses around a common theme and enroll a common group of students. Although learning community structures are quite variable, they have two common intentions. First, they aim to bring coherence to students' otherwise fragmented, unrelated course-taking patterns. They build interdisciplinary connections between subject matter. Or, they situate skills such as writing, speaking, or quantitative reasoning in the context of content. Second, learning communities aim to build both academic and social community for students by enrolling cohorts of students in a larger block of course work. Learning community approaches have sprung up rapidly in the past decade in Washington state: about 30 colleges in Washington have initiated some type of learning community program, and over 100 colleges elsewhere in the nation have launched similar efforts.
MacGregor, Jean, Going Public: How Collaborative Learning and Learning Communities Invite New Assessment Approaches, Washington Center Assessment Handbook[[1]]
Jean MacGregor is co-director of the National Learning Communities Project at the Washington Center for Improving the Quality of Undergraduate Education, and member of the adjunct faculty in the master of environmental Studies program at The Evergreen State College. A national leader in efforts to establish learning communities in colleges and universities, and to infuse active and collaborative learning in college classrooms, she has longstanding interests in the links between assessment and collaborative learning.
WHY NOT? Colloborative learning is counter to traditional educational practices:
“Interdependence is the rule in most colleges and universities too, of course, for faculty and administrators as well as students. Everybody is on some council, committee or task force. Everybody collaborates everywhere, in fact, except where it counts educationally. Most students do not collaborate in their classes. If they do, they may pay a stiff price.... traditional college and university teaching has little use for collaboration, does not teach it, distrust it, and often penalizes it.”
--Kenneth A. Bruffee, Collaborative Learning
What is Cooperative Learning? Cooperative Learning Center, University of Minnesota
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Cooperative Learning is a relationship in a group of students that requires positive interdependence (a sense of sink or swim together), individual accountability (each of us has to contribute and learn), interpersonal skills (communication, trust, leadership, decision making, and conflict resolution), face-to-face promotive interaction, and processing (reflecting on how well the team is functioning and how to function even better).
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Other Resources:
Collaborative Learning: Group Work and Study Teams [[3]]