Student-centered collaborative learning is an amazing strategy that helps learners to learn more effectively. Collaborative learning has many benefits for the learners that can be divided into three categories: psychological benefits, social benefits, and academic benefits (Laal & Ghodsi, 2012).
Establish Clear Goals:
Before the beginning a task, the students should have clear and defined goals and objectives for their groups. This will keep the group on task and help to establish an unambiguous purpose for the group.
Use real-world problems:
Real world problems can be used as tasks for collaborative learning experiences. These projects make for very engaging and authentic projects.
Consider Demographics and Diversity:
When putting students into groups for collaborative learning, it is very important to consider diversity of talents, skills, ideas, backgrounds and experiences.
(It's also very important to consider gender when assigning groups).
Use Scaffolding:
Give more directions in the beginning of a project than in the end. Allow groups to gain more responsibility as they progress in class.
Be wary of "groupthink:"
Groups may be susceptible to groupthink and not challenge their ideas while working on their tasks and activities. Changing groups occasionally can help combat groupthink.
Assign group roles for larger tasks, especially with Project-Based Learning (which in and of itself is great for collaboration):
Giving students set roles in their group can help break a large task into more manageable pieces. Group roles could include a resource manager, facilitator, task manager, fact-checker, a reporter, a recorder and a team/group leader.
Typically, a teacher could expect to hear a facilitator asking:
“Who wants to read?” “What does the first question mean?” “Do we all agree?” “I’m not sure I get it yet – can someone explain?”
Typically, a teacher could expect to hear a recorder/reporter asking:
“Does everyone understand what to write?” “How should we show our answer on this poster?” “Can we show this in a different way?” “What does each person want to explain in the presentation?”
Typically, a teacher could expect to hear a task manager saying:
“Ok, let’s get back to work!” “Let’s keep working.” “What does the next question say?” “Explain how you know that.” “Can you prove that?” “Tell me why!”
Think, Pair, Share:
In this three-staged strategy, students are given time to think of answers. Then, they work with a partner to create their final answers. Finally, they present their work or answers to a group or to the class. This strategy is helpful for giving students opportunities to work individually and brainstorm (TeachThought, 2018).
Jigsaw:
In a Jigsaw activity, students "master" and become "experts" on specific learning topics. They then share that with their classmates in smaller groups or even for the whole class. This teaches students interdependence, status, equalization, empathy, students will feel like experts and get to share information about what they know! They become teachers!
Steps :
Fishbowl
This activity is great for classroom discussions, for presenting different ideas in an interesting way and for observing collaboration. Students should sit in two concentric circles with a small group in the middle. The inner circle of students hold a discussion on a topic while the outer circle observes.
The “fishbowl” is a teaching strategy that helps students practice being contributors and listeners in a discussion. Students ask questions, present opinions, and share information when they sit in the “fishbowl” circle, while students on the outside of the circle listen carefully to the ideas presented and pay attention to process. Then the roles reverse. This strategy is especially useful when you want to make sure all students participate in the discussion, when you want to help students reflect on what a “good discussion” looks like, and when you need a structure for discussing controversial or difficult topics. Fishbowls make excellent pre-writing activities, often unearthing questions or ideas that students can explore more deeply in an independent assignment.
Steps :
Almost any topic is suitable for a fishbowl discussion. The most effective prompts (question or text) do not have one right answer, but rather allow for multiple perspectives and opinions. The fishbowl is an excellent strategy to use when discussing dilemmas, for example.
2. Setting up the room
A fishbowl requires a circle of chairs (“the fishbowl”) and enough room around the circle for the remaining students to observe what is happening in the “fishbowl.” Sometimes teachers place enough chairs for half of the students in the class to sit in the fishbowl, while other times teachers limit the chairs in the fishbowl. Typically six to twelve chairs allows for a range of perspectives while still allowing each student an opportunity to speak. The observing students often stand around the fishbowl.
3. Preparation
Like many structured conversations, fishbowl discussions are most effective when students have had a few minutes to prepare ideas and questions in advance.
4. Discussing norms and rules of the discussion
There are many ways to structure a fishbowl discussion. Sometimes teachers have half the class sit in the fishbowl for 10-15 minutes and then say “switch,” at which point the listeners enter the fishbowl and the speakers become the audience. Another common fishbowl format is the “tap” system, where students on the outside of the fishbowl gently tap a student on the inside, indicating that they should switch roles. See the variations section for more ideas about how to structure this activity.
5. Debriefing the fishbowl discussion
After the discussion, you can ask students to reflect on how they think the discussion went and what they learned from it. Students can also evaluate their participation as listeners and as participants. They could also provide suggestions for how to improve the quality of discussion in the future. These reflections can be in writing, or can be structured as a small or large group conversation (Cohort 3, 2016)
Project Based Learning
Project-Based Learning can be used in multiple ways - one of the main ways being collaboration in learning. Students are generally given a task or problem that needs to be solved in a creative and innovative way using the resources provided, following a previously learned design process, and within a specific time frame. Students must work in a group, generally, to complete the task and they are responsible for how the work gets completed just as long as the objectives are met. At the end, students are usually checked for their understanding in several "thinking skills" - like reasoning, context perspective and synthesis - as well as several "collaborative skills" - communication and teamwork.
Steps :
Sources