What is Collaborative Classroom Learning

Collaborative Learning is a teaching technique that is gaining more popularity. It has been used for years in university education, but is just coming into its own use in the K through 12 educational setting. The techniques, which are varied, involve letting students work as groups or in pairs in learning, reading, or research activities. The benefits of Collaborative Learning far outweigh the deficits.

Benefits include sharing ideas, learning to communicate as a group, adding various perspectives on the topic from a wide range of learners, tapping into different learning styles among the group members, and promoting long term memory by being actively involved in the learning process. Detractors claim that one of the deficits in this type of learning, is that students are too often grouped according to ability and true learning is lost due to a narrow range of learning abilities. The teacher can easily correct this by closely monitoring how students are grouped together.

Collaborative Learning techniques include the following:

1. Roundtable Discussions. This entails the teacher writing a different question for each group related to the learning activity or reading passage. Each member of the group reads the question, states an answer then passes it on to the next student. This works well with opinion or open ended type questions that do not require a definitive answer. This encourages students to think for themselves rather than repeating a group members answer. The teacher should be actively monitoring the groups to ensure varied student responses.

2. Collaborative Questions. While students are reading an assignment, they will be instructed to form questions based on what they have read. It helps to give students some guidelines about the types of questions, advising them to categorize them according to evaluation, information, or application questions. The teacher will need to give examples beforehand of each type of question. Graphic organizer Collaborative Question forms can be downloaded from on line sites, to assist in an organized worksheet for students to complete. Each student will fill out their different organizers with varying categories of questions, then share their questions and answers. This activity works best in pairs. (http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/bjh/reading_strategies/collaborativeq.pdf)

3. Jigsaw Puzzle Learning. For extensive reading assignments, students can be divided into groups to read separate sections of the article, or piece. I usually divide by pages, as this is easier than paragraphs. For example, group one will read page one, and so forth. They are responsible for writing notes on their reading portion, and presenting it to the group when finished.

4. Paired Annotations. Students are paired and given journals or papers to write their notes, idea, observations and opinions about a reading assignment. The students can read together or read separately. After reading, the students compare notes, and add any points the other student added that they did not notate. It works best if students trade off on reading, and discuss notes during the activity . After completing the assignment, each group will present their notes to the class.

5. Value Line. This can be used to form common groups or as a way to discuss a topic. For example, if the topic is abortion, have students rate on a scale of 1 to 10 if they agree with the right to have an abortion. Students can be grouped together according to where they fall on the line to discuss the issue. For cohesive groups, the closer on the line they are, the better. For more open discussions with varying groups, a teacher can take students from different ends of the value spectrum. Students then write a group essay on how they feel about the topic, allowing for all members to express their opinions.

By using Collaborative Learning activities, students will be more involved with their own learning. Students also enjoy working in groups, and will remember what they have learned since they are actively involved in the learning process. These are just a few examples of Collaborative Learning techniques. Creativity is the limit when coming up with Collaborative Learning ideas.

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/coopcollab/exploration.html

http://www.uwlax.edu/catl/studentlearning/Presentations/CollaborativeLearningTechniquesHandout.pdf

http://www.gdrc.org/kmgmt/c-learn/methods.html