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.
Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together.
The adjective “collaborative” concerns four aspects of learning:
Adapted from Dillenbourg, 1999
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.
Adapted from Bruffee, 1999
“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.
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.
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.
The teachers encourage the students to learn how to learn - this being the most important aspects of collaborative learning.
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
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.
Adapted from Barkley, Cross, & Major, 2005
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.
Adapted from Chai & Tan, 2010
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.
Adapted from Iborra, Garcia, Margalef, & Perez, 2010
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.
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.
i) Students to reflect on their experiences as a part of a collaborative group via:
a) Assessment as, for and of learning
i) Assessment FOR learning (formative)
ii) Assessment AS learning
iii) Assessment OF learning (summative)
(Adapted from Barkley et al, 2014; Cerbin, 2010; Clifford, 2014)