Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is a pedagogical approach which provides opportunities for students to work collectively towards a shared group goal. Learners move from individual accountability towards group accountability, where they collectively engage in helping each other grow and learn.

1. As defined by Pierre Dillenbourg

Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together.

Characteristics

The adjective “collaborative” concerns four aspects of learning:

1. A situation can be characterised collaborative if peers are:
   • at the same level and can perform the same actions;
   • have a common goal;
   • working together.
2. The interactions that do take place between the group members can more or less be collaborative depending on interactivity, synchronicity and negotiability.
   • The degree of interactivity among peers is not defined by the frequency of interactions, but by the extent to which these interactions influence the peers’ cognitive processes.
   • ‘Synchronous communication’ refers to “doing something together”. The feeling of reasoning synchronously increases the process of mutual modelling.
   • A negotiable interaction is where one partner will not impose his view on the sole basis of his authority, but will argue for his standpoint, justify, negotiate, and attempt to convince.
3. Some learning mechanisms are more intrinsically collaborative.
   • Internalisation process - the transfer of tools from the social plane (interaction with others) to the inner place (reasoning).
   • “Model” of the partner - this will be developed only up to the point where it needs to be developed to succeed in performing the task at hand.

Adapted from Dillenbourg, 1999

2. As defined by Kenneth Bruffee

Students learn by working together on substantive issues. Students learn by joining transition communities in which people construct knowledge as they talk together and reach consensus. The teacher is responsible for setting up conditions in which students can learn together.

Characteristics

• A shift of the locus of classroom authority informally from the teacher to student groups.
• Self-governance - students govern themselves in engagement, conversation and negotiation.
• Interdependence - students learn to depend on one another instead of competing with each other.

Adapted from Bruffee, 1999

3. As defined by Joanne McInnerney & Tim Roberts

“Collaborative learning” is an adjective that implies working in a group of two or more to achieve a common goal, while respecting each individual’s contribution to the whole. Collaborative learning is a learning method that uses social interaction as a means of knowledge building. Collaborative learning should be used for the learning techniques that emphasise student-to-student interaction in the learning process, while the term cooperative should be used where students are required to work in small groups, usually under the guidance of the teacher.

Characteristics

• Shared knowledge between teachers and students.

Shared knowledge is in many ways a characteristic of the traditional classroom, where the teacher is the information giver, but it also incorporates some student input, where the students share experiences or knowledge.

• Shared authority between teachers and students.

The teacher shares the setting of goals within a topic with the students, thereby allowing the students to approach the completion of an assignment in a manner of their choosing.

• Teachers as mediators

The teachers encourage the students to learn how to learn - this being the most important aspects of collaborative learning.

• Heterogeneous groupings of students.

This characteristic teaches all students to respect and appreciate the contributions made by all members of the class, no matter the content.

Adapted from McInnerney & Roberts, 2004

3. As defined by Elizabeth Barkley, Patricia Cross, & Claire Major

To collaborate is to work with another or others. It is learning through group work rather than learning by working alone. All collaborative methods emphasise the importance of promotive interaction and individual accountability. Students must not only learn to work together, but they must also be held responsible for their teammates’ learning as well as their own.

Characteristics

1. Intentional design
   • Teachers structure intentional learning activities for students
2. Co-labouring
   • All participants in the group must engage actively to work together toward the stated objectives.
3. Meaningful learning takes place
   • As students work together on collaborative assignments, they must increase their knowledge or deepen their understanding of the topic. Having the classroom vibrate with lively, energetic small-group work is attractive, but it is educationally meaningless if students are not achieving intended instructional goals.
   • During collaborative learning, all students in the group must be actively engaged (co-labour) in a structured activity designed to complement the lesson’s learning objectives (intentional design). This activity results in an increase in student’s knowledge and understanding of the topic (meaningful learning).

Adapted from Barkley, Cross, & Major, 2005

3. As defined by Ching Sing Chai & Seng Chee Tan

Collaborative learning is a social process whereby students learn through interacting with others. Students express their thoughts and opinions, solve problems and perform inquiry together, observe how others think and learn, and teach each other reciprocally.

Characteristics

• Establishment of common goals
• Division of labour/co-labouring
• Clear and individual accountability
• Positive interdependence
• High interactivity and negotiability
• Mature group processing

Adapted from Chai & Tan, 2010

3. As defined by Alejandro Iborra, Dolores Garcia, Leonor Margalef, & Victor Perez

Collaborative learning is a general approach to teaching instead of a group of possible techniques oriented towards the achievement of learning results. In collaborative learning, the authorship and responsibility of the process is shared between the teacher and the students.

Characteristics

• Positive interdependence
• establish shared group objectives, complementary roles, define a group identity and all member contributions.
• Interactions motivate, support, assist and interchange information and experience with other members of the group.
• Individual responsibility
• prevent the diffusion of responsibility that typically appears in the context of group dynamics.
• Social skills
• fluent communications, resolve conflicts, negotiation and shared leadership.
• Group self-reflection
• reflecting on their own group processes, on the distribution of roles and tasks, on the management of time with the purpose of learning how to adapt to changing situations.

Adapted from Iborra, Garcia, Margalef, & Perez, 2010

3. As defined by Dragan Markovic, Irina Branovic, & Ranko Popovic

Collaborative Learning requires students to work together towards a common goal. Students teach one another, students teach the teacher, as well as the teacher who teaches the students. More importantly, it means that students are responsible for each other’s learning as well as their own and that to reach the goal implies that students have helped each other to understand and learn.

Characteristics

• Interaction which functions as follows:
• facilitate mutual assistance and confidence;
• be a source of encouragement;
• encourage the sharing of skills;
• aim at an efficient and effective processing;
• tend to criticise the proposals and opinions;
• a view to achieveing greater quality of work.
• Students to take almost full responsibility as they work together, build knowledge together, changeing, evolve and improve together. Knowledge is constructed, and transformed by students.

Adapted from Markovic, Branovic, & Popovic, 2014

The theory that underpins collaborative learning is social constructivism. It occurs when learners and teachers work together to create knowledge. It is a pedagogy that has at its centre the assumption that people make meaning together and that the process enriches and enlarges them” (Mathews, 1996, p.101).

According to Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Schmitz & Winskel, 2008), learning takes place when interacting and co-operating with another more knowledgeable participant who provides support to facilitate and extend learning (Vygotsky, 1979). This interaction moves the child just beyond their existing abilities and provides scaffolding for their learning (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976).

Click here to find out more about Social Constructivism.

Pre-implementation

1. Designing the the learning tasks, goals and objectives.
   • The tasks must be interdependent.

Actual Implementation

1. Teacher orientates the students to Collaborative Learning
   • Teacher establishes ground rules
   • Teacher provides the following:
     • detailed explanation on shared group goals and individual accountability
     • clear expectations for how students should collaborate
     • clear instructions on how students are to work together
     • explicit roles for individuals and for group work.
     • provides conflict management strategies on resolving diverse or conflicting views.
   • Students should be observed to be doing the following:
     • read the tasks assigned together
     • assign individual portions to each members of the group
     • plan on how to regroup and share learning with each other
     • plan on how to complete the group’s tasks together
2. Teacher presents the instructional goals and the tasks’ desired outcomes by:
   • explaining the activity
   • clarifiying the objectives
   • outlining the procedures
   • presenting examples (if needed)
   • setting time limits
   • providing the prompt
   • checking students’ understanding
3. Students are assigned to groups according to learning tasks, goals and objectives.
   • Considerations for group formation is available here.
   • Instructional strategies for creating and managing groups effectively may be adopted here.
   • Considerations to resolve common problems in group work is available here.
4. Students start to work collaboratively on learning tasks as assigned.
   • Teacher facilitates student discourse and collaboration processes:
   • Teacher should be doing the following:
     • Be available to clarify instruction, review procedures, and answer questions about the task
     • Paraphrase or ask a question to clarify what a student has said
     • Praise the student on an interesting or insightful comment
     • Elaborate on a student’s statement or suggest a new perspective
     • Energise by using humour or by asking for additional contributions
     • Mediate between students
     • Pull together ideas by pointing out relationships
     • Summarise the group’s major views
   • Students should be observed to be doing the following:
     • work without supervision
     • take initiative
     • invest in their own learning
     • actively participating
     • contribute own ideas and consider other points of view objectively
     • take on different roles in working towards completing individual’s assigned tasks as well as help group members achieve group goals
     • students teach and learn from one another
     • groups share their learning
     • students combine, integrate, and synthesise their small-group responses and understandings into a coherent whole
     • Facilitate discourse strategies may be adopted here. Jigsaw is most relevant for this.
5. Teacher provides guidelines for students to report their collaborative work outputs.
6. Students to present and share their learning to the whole class:
   • Students articulate their experiences and outcomes and through them, begin to own knowledge in new and different ways
   • Teacher helps students reinforce ideas as they hear from others who have come to similar findings or conclusion
   • Organising ideas instructional strategies may be adopted here. Collaborative writing may be used here.
7. Teacher facilitates students’ reflections on the group’s processes

i) Students to reflect on their experiences as a part of a collaborative group via:

• discussing their thoughts and feelings about effectiveness of communication
• discussing the fairness of the workload
• sharing new insights gained from others

1. Grading and evaluating collaborative learning

a) Assessment as, for and of learning

i) Assessment FOR learning (formative)

• Student participation and contribution in group (Process)
• Use of a task or an activity for the purpose of determining student/group progress during a unit or block of instruction

ii) Assessment AS learning

• Self evaluation
• Peer evaluation
• Group Evaluation
• Teacher evaluation

iii) Assessment OF learning (summative)

• Student/group achievement of course content (Product) with the use of a rubric

(Adapted from Barkley et al, 2014; Cerbin, 2010; Clifford, 2014)