Collaborative Learning : A Variety Of Instructional Practices

“Alright,” the teacher says to the students, “I’m going to number all of you off into groups. Each group will read a section from the textbook and become experts on that section. Then, each group will teach the rest of the class what they learned from their reading.” This is an instruction common to the classrooms in the United States. More and more is the pedagogy of public education leaning in favor of team-based activities, projects, and learning. Group work is generally seen as an ultimately beneficial way to teach students, but this may be somewhat of a fallacy. The emphasis on group-based learning in public schools causes a multitude of problems.

Collaboration: In a community of learners, students work together in teams, partners, or groups. This allows students to gain social skills and increases students’ motivation for the project. Students share ideas and gain a new understanding of the content.

The teacher prepares the students to operate in a small group together. This practice can enhance the student’s cooperative learning skills.

Collaboration within groups allows individuals to use their own specific ideas and own talents to succeed when they needed it the most. When succeeding in a collaborative environment an individual gains the ability of communication that is growing in the world today. The school system used to be completely individual based with little to no feel of a collaborative environment. However, schools are now beginning to understand the benefits of losing the standard approach to school and is now leading the world to a collaborative environment. While working in a collaborative environment the members of these groups usually gain insight on what they are effective at and what they are no effective at.

Small groups require active teaching with much teacher guidance or involvement. Small groups can teach the context better than a larger group, allowing for no child to be struggling and left behind. Reading, math and science can benefit from small group interaction. Each student has a chance to be heard, voice his opinion or conclusion, get a response from the teacher and the other group participants, and close the gap for error. The key for successful learning is when the teacher involves himself and gets excited about what the children are to be taught. This is also true in group study as

In Case Study 5.1, Mrs. James not only effectively started her class with sharing her own experiences and building relationship with her students but also emphasized the importance of group work, which is in helping and learning from each other. She illustrated the following strategies and routines that supported cooperative learning: room arrangement, talk and movement procedures and individual accountability by building students’ social, explanation and sharing skills.

A reflective essay on the skills acquired from collaborative learning and how they may be applied in practice.

As a pre-service teacher it is important to shift the mindset of students from thinking of getting the right answer and instead encourage critical thinking. The purpose of group learning activities is to help struggling students.To properly implement heterogeneous groups in my teaching I will make sure to articulate my goals during group work, and include academic objectives. I want to make sure that students achieve social skills that they may want to develop. It is critical to helping groups get started therefore I will explain the group’s task. I will explain how the task involves individual accountability, and how they will be assessed throughout the process. During group work monitoring and regularly observing group interactions and progress, by circulating during group work is something I would do as a teacher. Circulating during group work will make it easy to observe problems, allowing me to intervene and help students move forward on the task. I think getting different perspective is important and I plan on discussing with future colleagues what works best and what curriculum we are finding more

With the heterogeneous groups the level of discussion and cooperative work is increased, providing benefits for every student partaking. According to Paul Burden and David Byrd (2012), “Having students work in groups generally has a positive effect on their achievement when compared to their work as individuals.” Small-group work and discussions allows for students to improve their communication skill, cooperation skills, and gain new insight and understanding from their peers in a way that could not be achieved working alone.

Collaboration: Learners will work together in groups to reach a goal by putting their talents, expertise and skills to work. It has the ability to share responsibilities, exhibit flexibility and be respectful

Our collaborative group project was frightening when I first realized this was part of the course. I had not completed a group academic project in years as I have been an online degree-seeking student. I wavered between being confident my fellow team members would be fantastic as we are all in the same degree program and worried we would have some conflict. Marks and O’Connor researched undergraduate business students regarding collaborative learning that states precisely the concerns rolling through my mind.

2. Cooperative learning directed towards focusing on students’ team work while doing their project assignments.

“Group work is a form of voluntary association of members benefiting from cooperative learning that enhances the total output of the activity than when done individually”.

I am Zeeshan Ali; I am working as a Computer teacher for Classes VI-X-M in Canal Side Boys Campus. I have done Masters in Computer Science (MCS) from Punjab University College of Information and Technology (PUCIT) Lahore. The students are the main focus of every teacher and our entire teaching efforts circle round our students to achieve the set targets. Effective Teaching includes many useful teaching strategies that a teacher chooses according to the requirement of his/her respective subject and topic as well. In result of my years of experience and as a Computer teacher I find Group Work as the most effective and fruitful technique at every level.

Collaborative learning is founded on the idea that the learning process is a naturally social act which requires the participants to talk among themselves. Collaborative learning involves small groups of students who act on a structured learning activity to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. In simpler terms, the students work in groups to learn or understand a new concept they are studying. In this learning approach, it is important to understand that the students are accountable for individual work as well as the group work they do as a group in collaborative learning