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“Collaborative learning” is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches
involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together. Usually,
students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding,
solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. Collaborative learning activities vary
widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not
simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it.

Smith, B.L., and J. MacGregor.(1992) Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education. University Park, PA: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching Learning, and Assessment (NCTLA).9-12

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Cooperation vs Collaboration: When To Use Each Approach

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Easily create beautiful interactive video lessons for your students you can integrate right into your LMS. Track students' progress with hassle-free analytics as you flip your classroom!

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Stump Your Partner

Students take a minute to create a challenging question based on the lecture content up to that point.

Students pose the question to the person sitting next to them.

To take this activity a step further, ask students to write down their questions and hand them in. These questions can be used to create tests or exams. They can also be reviewed to gauge student understanding.

Think-Pair-Share/Write-Pair-Share

The instructor poses a question that demands analysis, evaluation, or synthesis.

Students take a few minutes to think through an appropriate response.

Students turn to a partner (or small groups) and share their responses. Take this a step further by asking students to find someone who arrived at an answer different from their own and convince their partner to change their mind.

Student responses are shared within larger teams or with the entire class during a follow-up discussion.

Catch-Up

Stop at a transition point in your lecture.

Have students turn to a partner or work in small groups to compare notes and ask clarifying questions.

After a few minutes, open the floor to a few questions.

Fishbowl Debate

Ask students to sit in groups of three.

Assign roles. For example, the person on left takes one position on a topic for debate, the person on right takes the opposite position, and the person in the middle takes notes and decides which side is the most convincing and provides an argument for his or her choice.

Debrief by calling on a few groups to summarize their discussions.

Case Study

Create four to five case studies of similar difficulty.

Have students work in groups of four or five to work through and analyze their case study.

Provide 10-15 minutes (or adequate time) to work through the cases.

Walk around and address any questions.

Call on groups randomly and ask that students share their analysis. Continue until each case study has been addressed.

Team-Based Learning

Start a course unit by giving students some tasks to complete, such as reading or lab assignments. Consider assigning these to be completed before class.

Check students' comprehension of the material with a quick multiple-choice quiz. Have students submit their answers.

Assign students to groups and have them review their answers with group members to reach consensus. Have each group submit one answered quiz.

Record both the individual student assessment scores and the final group assessment score (both of which are used toward each student's course grade).

Deliver a lecture that specially targets any misconceptions or gaps in knowledge the assessments reveal.

Give groups a challenging assignment, such as solving a problem or applying a theory to a real-world situation.

Find more information on this strategy at  the Team-Based Learning Collaborative.

Group Problem-Solving

There are many instructional strategies that involve students working together to solve a problem, including inquiry-based learning, authentic learning, and discovery learning. While they each have their own unique characteristics, they fundamentally involve:

Presenting students with a problem.

Providing some structure or guidance toward solving the problem. Note however, that they are all student-centered activities in which the instructor may have a very minimal role.

Reaching a final outcome or solution.

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Examples of Collaborative Learning or Group Work Activities

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Students take a minute to create a challenging question based on the lecture content up to that point. Students pose the question to the person sitting next to them. To take this activity a step further, ask students to write down their questions and hand them in.

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At its best, collaboration in the classroom can help students think more deeply and creatively about a subject and develop more empathy for others' perspectives. At its worst, group tasks can deteriorate into awkward silences, arguments-or frustration for the one child who ends up doing everyone else's work.

Now, as the teaching technique gains new prominence in state standards, researchers and educators are working to understand how to help students gain the skills needed to learn and work in groups.

"Learning through doing is an important component in this, ... but by itself, it's not enough," said Emily Lai, the director of formative assessment and feedback for Pearson, the educational publishing company. "Students go into these experiences with very little understanding of what they should be working toward-and so students walk away from these experiences a little jaded. Collaboration is just like any other skill; it has to be taught."

The ability to collaborate with others has become one of the most sought-after skills in both education and the workplace. A survey by the Association of American Colleges and Universities found that more than 80 percent of midsize or larger employers look for collaboration skills in new hires-but fewer than 40 percent of them considered new graduates prepared to work in teams.

Collaborative Standards

Partly in response to industry and higher education recommendations, both the Common Core State Standards for reading and mathematics and the Next Generation Science Standards call for students to develop skills for collaboration and group problem-solving.

Even assessments are changing to focus on the skills needed for group work. In 2015, the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, added interactive tasks that gauge how well students can develop shared understanding of a problem, take action together to solve it, and maintain a team organization. The first results of that test are expected this fall.

The nonprofit Partnership for 21st Century Learning, along with Pearson, this month released a report breaking down three main aspects of collaboration that need to be taught: communicating with others, resolving conflicts, and managing tasks.

Without a task that requires multiple perspectives, Lai said, students often simply divvy up different aspects of a task "and then sort of smoosh it together at the end. That's not really collaborating."

That's what Emma Mercier, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction, and graduate researcher Susan Kelly, both of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are also finding in a large, ongoing series of studies of middle school students working in groups.

For one forthcoming study, the researchers assigned groups of students using electronic "smart" tables to answer questions on the nutrition and energy costs of different foods, using different data sources. In the 45 discussions studied, all the students could identify and repeat data facts, but the groups that engaged in more discussion of the data were able to begin to synthesize different sources of information and how they were connected.

Yet none of the groups was able to synthesize data from several sources without help from the teacher.

Mercier found in a separate study that regardless of whether middle schoolers collaborated using paper and pencil or smart tables to solve complex math-based "mystery" problems, the groups in which a student generated the first idea and then students responded to each other produced more ideas for solving problems than those in which the first idea came from a teacher.

"The elephant in the room when you have students work in groups is, if you don't explicitly teach them how to collaborate, they are not going to do it. If you just put them in groups and give them a task, that's not enough," Kelly said.

Equitable Benefits

Kelly was among several researchers at last month's meeting of the American Educational Research Association who are exploring how collaboration can improve student learning.

The quality of group discussions can be more important than the individual student's previous knowledge about a subject, according to a separate series of studies previewed at the meeting by Joshua Adams, a science of learning researcher at Arizona State University. Adams tracked the growth in understanding of small groups in secondary school and college, some of which paired students of roughly similar background knowledge and some

that had large gaps in knowledge between students on the team. While that sort of mixed-ability grouping sometimes prompts concerns that more-gifted students will be held back, Adams found students' learning was better predicted by whether they engaged in substantive conversations than by their previous knowledge. In fact, among high schoolers, the longer that students of different abilities participated in engaged groups, the more the knowledge of the subject improved for all students.

And just as students' background knowledge differs from subject to subject, Mercier found in a separate study that students' leadership roles in the groups can vary as well, even though students who are naturally more outspoken do tend to be more likely to be primary leaders. When the researcher kept the same students in groups for math and history projects, she found different students led the group in the two subjects, regardless of who had higher social status.

"A partner can bring in information that's not in the learning materials ... [such as] procedures they've used to solve other problems," Adamssaid. "Students can generate new knowledge and work at a higher learning level. Instead of trying to choose whether the high-performing students will benefit the most or low-performing students will benefit the most, if teachers focus on prioritizing interaction quality, ... both benefit."

Teachers can set the stage for better student discussions by only using group work for tasks that "are too cognitively large for any one student to do on their own," Mercier said, and by discussing and modeling appropriate talking and listening in a group.

Building Strong Discussions

One Ohio State University researcher is piloting a program to build up students' social skills so they can better function in group work. In the program, Collaborative Social Reasoning, developed by Tzu-Jung Lin, students are separated into small groups over the course of a year and receive direct instruction on providing clear arguments with evidence, disagreeing with a teammate respectfully, providing substantive feedback, and understanding each person's responsibilities for group learning.

Teachers receive training on how to devise the kinds of tasks that will spur constructive group work. For example, the pilot study asked students to analyze the history of Japanese-American internment camps during World War II and compare them with modern debates over immigrant and minority groups.

"Through these historical backgrounds, students were able to relate the reading to their personal experiences," Lin said.

Shufeng Ma, another educational psychologist at the University of Illinois, found that students who participated in group discussions created longer chains of reasoning to answer complex essay questions. Even students who spoke less than others in a group learned more when their group engaged in complex conversations.

Ma analyzed the group discussions of 160 students in eight schools across Illinois who took part in a six-week reading unit on ecology, economic, and policy issues related to wild wolves near a community. Of more than 3,300 conversational turns, students engaged in 122 discussions in which one student explained and expanded on another student's thought.

Once those conversations started, students were more likely to generate multiple chains of logic together, she found. "Reasoning is forged in talk. ... Children adopt the way other people think and talk, so conceptual relationships and the words to represent those become more accessible to children in a group discussion," she said.

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Children Must Be Taught to Collaborate, Studies Say

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At its best, collaboration in the classroom can help students think more deeply and creatively about a subject and develop more empathy for others' perspectives. At its worst, group tasks can deteriorate into awkward silences, arguments-or frustration for the one child who ends up doing everyone else's work.

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1. Establish Values

2. Establish Flexible Norms

3. Limit Group Size: Students should feel seen and heard.

4. Establish Trust and Open communication: Assignments should encourage team members to explain concepts thoroughly to each other.  Studies found that students who provide and receive intricate explanations gain most from collaborative learning

5.Keep in mind the diversity of groups.

5.Using Scaffolding: or diminished responsibility as students begin to understand concepts. At the beginning of a project, you may want to give more direction than the end.  Serve as a facilitator, such as by gauging group interactions or at first, providing a list of questions to consider.

Clifford, M. (2017, March 24). Facilitating Collaborative Learning: 20 Things You Need to Know From the Pros. Retrieved June 25, 2020

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Why use Collaborative Learning in Your Classroom

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Why use Collaborative Learning in Your Classroom

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"Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning."

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Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts or find solutions to problems. Similar to the idea that two or three heads are better than one, educational researchers have found that through peer instruction, students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions.

Why use collaborative learning?

Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative learning include:

Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills.

Promotion of student-faculty interaction.

Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.

Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.

Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

Considerations for using collaborative learning

Introduce group or peer work early in the semester to set clear student expectations.

Establish ground rules  for participation and contributions.

Plan for each stage of group work.

Carefully explain to your students how groups or peer discussion will operate and how students will be graded.

Help students develop the skills they need to succeed, such as using team-building exercises or introducing self-reflection techniques.

Consider using written contracts.

Incorporate  self -assessment and  peer  assessment for group members to evaluate their own and others' contributions.

Getting started with collaborative learning

Shorter in-class collaborative learning activities generally involve a three-step process. This process can be as short as five minutes, but can be longer, depending on the task at hand.

Introduce the task. This can be as simple as instructing students to turn to their neighbor to discuss or debate a topic.

Provide students with enough time to engage with the task. Walk around and address any questions as needed.

Debrief. Call on a few students to share a summary of their conclusions. Address any misconceptions or clarify any confusing points. Open the floor for questions.

For larger group work projects, here are some strategies to help ensure productive group dynamics:

Provide opportunities for students to develop rapport and group cohesion through  icebreakers, team-building, and reflection exercises.

Give students time to create a group work plan allowing them to plan for deadlines and divide up their responsibilities.

Have students  establish ground rules. Students can create a contract for each member to sign. This contract can include agreed-upon penalties for those who fail to fulfill obligations.

Assign roles to members of each group and change the roles periodically. For example, one student can be the coordinator, another the note-taker, another the summarizer, and another the planner of next steps.

Allow students to rate each other's quality and quantity of contributions. Use these evaluations when giving individual grades, but do not let it weigh heavily on a student's final grade. Communicate clearly how peer assessment will influence grades.

Check in with groups intermittently but encourage students to handle their own issues before coming to you for assistance.

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Collaborative Learning | Center for Teaching Innovation

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Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small groups to discuss concepts or find solutions to problems. Similar to the idea that two or three heads are better…

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What are some other Practices you could do in your classroom to help students get the most out of Collaboration?

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What are some other Practices you could do in your classroom to help students get the most out of Collaboration?