Communication and Collaboration

Communication and collaboration are the 21st century skills that are needed in the society and the workspaces, these skills help you to deliver verbal and written information to your colleagues and receive information from them effectively. (Nadar and Kamatchi,2019)

As the 21st century is driven by technology and the rate of ICT integration in classrooms is increasing rapidly, it is important that the learners and stakeholders are able to use the ICT tools that are integrated in their classroom, in order for them to obtain certain skills that will be needed for the 21st century, skills such as collaboration and communication.

Skills such as collaboration and communication are the ones that lead the 21st century economy as they are needed in order to drive the economy and workspaces to be managed effectively. Learners and educational stakeholders need to learn these skills in order to have effective and productive lessons. Learners need to learn these skills more than stakeholders as they are the future and these skills will be needed more from them as they will be working in spaces that will be more integrated with ICT. As technology is improving on a daily basis, this means that in the nearer future having technological, communication and collaboration skills will be a necessity, so teaching learners these skills will be an advantage for them.

These skills can be taught to learners by giving learners group assignments, whereby they will need to collaborate and communicate, in other words in these groups they will have to share ideas with one another and work together as a group, in order for the given tasks to be a success. By doing this, learners will be given the foundation or basis of collaborating and communicating at an early stage. Normalizing this in classrooms will make learners develop more knowledge about these skills and it will be a norm for them to collaborate and communicate, they will also develop respect for one another.

Teachers can practice these skills by working with one another and sharing ideas about lesson planning and the work that they conduct together, and helping one another with work related things.

Communication is the center of all networks and production, without communication, no process was going to take place. Therefore, teaching students communication at schools it will mean that they are being taught how to run the economy.