In fact, I think Collaborative Learning consists on "a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together". It is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, complete a task or create a product.

 

I believe Collaborative Learning is a vital component of 21st century classroom education. The 21st Century Competencies set goals and raise standards in a way that change the educational bar for students, requiring us, teachers, to push for higher skills, adjusting what and how we teach our kids.  

 

Collaborative Learning encourages new ideas and challenges students to explore opinions, to discuss and share their thoughts and beliefs, to thoughtfully articulate - and finally, defend - them to small groups of diverse students. This practice leads students to start constructing their own ideas and framework. Learners converse and exchange diverse beliefs and are actively engaged in the discovery process. The development of crucial critical thinking skills and a departure from group-think, are the desired outcomes. 

 

I usually provide my students with a “checklist” that helps them to seek the positive and negative aspects of what they are doing and solutions to improve what they think isn’t going great.

 

·      Have we shown cooperation, respect, and a mutual effort to understand the other students in the group?

·      Have I clearly, briefly, and precisely identified my stance on the group work?

·      Have we clearly, briefly, and precisely identified our own stance on the class project?

 

Then, I ask them to rate other group members’ participation. These ideas encourage students to participate in group discussion and work, it helps them to monitor their own progress and their contribution to the on-task work, while also allowing to stop any disruptive or off-task behavior.

 

After that, we should compliment students who are dedicated to the task and working diligently. All students like to be recognized and it works as a boost moment for all groups.

            

This activity works great, not only to help students clarify their thoughts and develop their critical thinking skills, but it also provides them with a structured way to talk and think about these issues. 

 

By providing an open platform for dialog, while teaching them how to work with one another and how to respect one another, we will be helping our students to develop a valuable life skill. 

 

I realy agree that Technology can play a unique and vital role in collaborative learning by facilitating group collaboration, providing structure for group tasks, and allowing members of groups to communicate even if they are not working face to face. Now more than ever, technology allows students to collaborate on projects without the constraints of time or geography.

 

Even though I’m limited to a traditional classroom structure, there are many ways and situations in which collaborative learning may be used, and I try to do it and make it meaningful to my students… 

 

We all know that rows of desks facing a teacher’s desk don't usually promote interaction among learners, but desks or tables can be arranged to turn that into a more appropriate environment for students to collaborate. You can do a lot with space and materials… If we simply arrange the tables in a semicircle, that encourages interaction and allows all students to see each other… it’s not easy to rearrange seating each time we enter the classroom, but having three or four students volunteering to do this usually helps.

 

A well-equipped classroom also needs to include technology tools for teaching and learning. We can spend time discussing which tools to use and how should we, teachers, use them to best serve the needs of a diverse group of learners, wondering how we might use these tools to reshape teaching practices, but for students who have grown up in a digital world, there's no debate. They're already active users of technology outside of school. The challenge is leveraging the opportunities technology creates: technologies effectively facilitate collaborative learning, opening new possibilities for connecting learners and preparing them for a globally connected, information-saturated world. 

 

But collaborative learning won't just happen by placing students together in a flexible classroom, filled of technology and online tools, with a piece of provocative text or an engaging task…

 

It is also relevant to point out here that, like teachers, students too have to be "prepared" to take on the challenges and opportunities offered by collaborative learning. It cannot and should not take place until both, teachers and students, are ready for the complete shift to another paradigm.

 

In my opinion, the noise in a smoothly running collaborative classroom indicates that active learning is going on. However, students must be taught the parameters within which they can make their choices. Rules and standards must be stressed from the beginning, even before any collaboration is initiated. Several discipline guidelines better the odds for a positive classroom atmosphere that helps the process along.

 

Students must be taught about the expectations for working in groups and the consequences for not staying focused on the task. The teacher must clearly explain the assignment, roles, behavior, and the importance of sustaining a healthy learning environment.

 

It is essential for teachers to maintain control of both the classroom and the activity in order for students to find value in a collaborative learning environment. Educators must enforce established discipline and procedures to create a successful classroom atmosphere conducive to this sometimes challenging -- but always rewarding -- practice.

 

I don’t think that assessing collaborative learning is particularly difficult;  we just have to undertake that while teachers have assumed the primary responsibility for assessing students' performance in the past, collaborative classrooms view assessment much more broadly. That is, the major goal is to guide students to evaluate their own learning. Thus, a new responsibility is self-assessment, a capability that is fostered as students assess group work, and this self-assessment is intimately related to ongoing monitoring of one's progress toward achievement of learning goals. 

 

In a collaborative classroom, assessment means more than just assigning a grade. It means evaluating whether one has learned what one intended to learn, the effectiveness of learning strategies, the quality of products and decisions about which products reflect one's best work, the usefulness of the materials used in a task, and whether future learning is needed and how that learning might be done.

 

Collaborative classrooms are natural places in which to learn self-assessment. And because decisions about materials and group performance are shared, students feel more free to express doubts, feelings of success, remaining questions, and uncertainties than when they are evaluated only by a teacher. 

 

Furthermore, the sense of cooperation (as opposed to competition) that is fostered in collaborative work makes assessment less threatening than in a more traditional assessment situation. Ideally, students learn to evaluate their own learning from their experiences with group evaluation.

 

In what concerns the online tools mentioned, I’ve used some, like Google Docs (and also Google Drive) or Prezi, and they’re really a useful suport to share and presenting team-work. 

 

The relationships you build with colleagues are the foundation of collaboration that can result in increased student achievement. Just like building relationships with students lays the groundwork for academic success, building relationships with colleagues lays the groundwork for effective collaboration.

 

The best teacher teams complement each other - they share the responsibility of planning by dividing tasks based on their strengths and interests. Teachers are also able to learn more from each other as they come back together to review and assemble their separate assignments into a cohesive lesson plan.

 

In my school, we feel a collaborative environment between teachers and it is supported and encouraged by the school leadership.

 

The major difficulty we found relates to the lack of time that school provides, within the school day, to collaborate with colleagues.

 

Working collaboratively doesn’t start magically. I believe the success experienced depends on how much teachers and students are engaged. 

 

When we all feel engaged, we all take an active part in the learning process and we all - teachers and students - become self-sustaining, motivated "learners" who take ownership and responsibility of the entire process in an interactive, collaborative and "talking-to-each-other" manner… 

 

 

Organized in groups of four, the students caracterized two countries with different Development levels;

 

I provided some texts, graphics and tables, showing several characteristics like the Human Development Index (HDI), Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, industrialization, birth and death rates, life expectancy, use of the world's resources, such as oil, etc. for several countries.

 

The students analyzed the provided data and categorized their relevance to qualify a country as being Developed or not; the ones who found the need, searched for other indicators to use and, finally, selected two countries with  different Development levels and prepared an oral presentation about them, which clearly showed and justified their differents stages of Development.

 

The students worked collaboratively to explore their own approaches to assessing Development, Developed and Developing Countries. 

 

I consider this to be an activity with a LOW level of collaboration because the groups worked separately and the final work of each did not involve or imply the final product of the remaining groups; the collaborative work was, therefore, restricted to the collaboration between the different elements of each group.

 

 

 

Activity with a HIGH LEVEL of collaboration:

 

 

At the invitation of local authorities - City Hall - I participated, with my students, in a project in which we would have to prepare a theme - I Help, We Build: Associativism and Youth Volunteering in the Municipality - to propose measures to maximize the participation of young people in associations of the county - especially those linked to volunteering - to the Mayor and to its councilors.

 

The ideas / suggestions / proposals would be presented in a session / simulation of a Municipal Assembly before the local authorities, in which eight students would play the role of municipal deputies.

 

Other schools in the municipality, also participating in the project, would play the same role, defending different ideas and proposals.

 

The project implied a deep knowledge of the local associativism and of the contribution that the students, being young, could give by volunteering.

 

Then, it involved writing the proposals to the City Council, and they had to master the subject and to develop arguments that supported them, to be able to face occasional critics from colleagues from other participating schools.

 

Then, only eight of the students involved were to play the role of deputies in the "Youth Town Hall".

 

Everything about the project was challenging but, fortunately, my students embraced the challenge with great enthusiasm as soon as I presented the project.

 

We planned the work in a large group - class group - to delineate, through a brainstorming, the phases / stages / tasks of the project.

 

On that stage, we defined the following steps:

 

Step one:Form groups

I suggested, and the students agreed, that we would form groups of three elements (we formed eight groups);

 

Step two: Information and knowledge 

This component of the task had to be developed by all groups (so that everyone would get to know the theme), and it consisted on researching information on associativism and volunteering, as well as local volunteering associations (on the websites of the municipality and its associations);

During this phase, all groups were sharing their "discoveries" with the other groups - taking care only to put valid information and not to repeat existing information.

 

Step three:Distributing the tasks 

Two groups: To produce a short survey to question the local population - one for the adult population and other for the young - and gather opinions on existing volunteering associations, their work, as well as on the needs felt in other areas, for something that doesn’t exist yet.

Two groups: To contact the local volunteering associations - by e-mail and/or phone - trying to know if they had young people among their members, what were their ages, the tasks assigned to them, etc.

Two groups: To research on how a true Municipal Assembly works - how it is organized and processed and what are the functions/what is the role of municipal deputies;

Two groups: To search for standard documents submitted to the municipal executive's consideration - motions, petitions, etc. - to understand the most appropriate way of presenting ours.

(Each pair of equal task groups worked together at this stage)

 

Step four: Present Results

The different groups - pairs of groups, in this case - present the results of their tasks / surveys, so that everyone gets to know the work of all the others;

 

Step Five:Plan ideas/suggestions/proposals/measures

Each group develops a measure that seems to be the most accurate and essential to improve/encourage/maximize the participation of young people in the existing volunteering associations or suggests the creation of a new organization to carry out voluntary initiatives that seem necessary and to which existing associations do not respond;

 

Step Six:Present ideas/suggestions/proposals/measures

Each group presents its proposal/measure and argues in its defense against the doubts and/or critics of their colleagues from the other groups;

 

Step Seven:Selecting/choosing ideas/suggestions/proposals/measures

Deliberation and discussion - in class-group - of the relevance on the eight proposals, in order to select the four most relevant ones, that will be chosen and take part in the final document presented by our school;

(At the end of the debate, the eight proposals are put to the vote - "arm in the air" system - and the four most voted ones are selected);

 

Spep eight:Production of the final document

Students write together the final document with the four proposals/measures to be presented, after selection of the standard document that it should be based on (among those presented in the third step).

 

Step nine:All for eight, eight for all!

Considering and reflecting on all the work done together, all the interaction, all the arguments and debates, the class will vote - in a system of "secret vote " - in the eight colleagues which they think are more prepared, qualified and skilled to present and defend our work in the Young Municipal Assembly .

 

Step ten:The Assembly

We were all there... and we were so well: eight for all, all for eight!

 

This Team Project involved research, debates, discussions, arguments and deliberations, brainstorming sessions, group field-work, selection, voting,  construction of a tangible formal document and, in the end, a simulation and role-plays. 

 

I believe Collaborative Learning took place in all the stages of the project, in each task, within each group and among all the different groups.

 

The students were motivated, engaged and committed from the beginning  to final stage, reaching to achieve the final debate with innovative and assertive ideas. 

 

I felt like all of them were always wanting to know more and to contribute more, not only in their specific tasks, but also in those of their colleagues. Everyone felt responsible for all phases and tasks of the project.

 

It was the most stimulating and enriching activity that I have ever developed and also collaborated with my students. 

 

In the end, they came up with innovative and creative ideas and solutions that neither they thought they could have… nor I thought they would.

 

This year, I will participate in the same project, with a new group of students… the theme will be The 17 sustainable development goals: what can I do?

Can’t wait to start…

 

Embedding collaborative learning into our lesson designs can be the way to help our students to accomplish that level of skills, wich can be stimulated and developed by learning activities oriented towards them…

 

For this to happen, it is fundamental that it is clear what collaborative learning consists; thus, a shared language and clear concepts are fundamental.

 

I realy agree that Technology can play a unique and vital role in collaborative learning by facilitating group collaboration.

SIX Example Learning Scenarios:

1.    Understand the principles of assessing collaborative learning

2.    Appreciate the various challenges teachers face in assessing collaborative learning and the tips, tools and solutions available

3.    Understand the value of using rubrics and checklists for assessing collaborative learning, and how to construct them

4.    Appreciate the importance of involving students in the definition of assessment tools used for collaborative learning

5.    Start creating one or more lesson plans integrating collaborative learning and assessment using the Learning Designer

 

In a collaborative classroom, assessment means more than just assigning a grade. It means evaluating whether one has learned what one intended to learn, the effectiveness of learning strategies, the quality of products and decisions about which products reflect one's best work, the usefulness of the materials used in a task, and whether future learning is needed and how that learning might be done.

 

Furthermore, the sense of cooperation (as opposed to competition) that is fostered in collaborative work makes assessment less threatening than in a more traditional assessment situation. Ideally, students learn to evaluate their own learning from their experiences with group evaluation.

At my school, we are taking the first steps towards integrating more collaborative teaching and learning into our practices, such as multidisciplinary and project-based learning activities.

With this change, we are also reviewing the general evaluation criteria, precisely to integrate the learning outcomes related to collaborative work (such as project work/results) in the assessment of each student.

As Competências do Século 21 definem metas e elevam os padrões de uma forma que muda o padrão educacional dos alunos, exigindo que nós, professores, procuremos habilidades superiores, ajustando o que e como ensinamos nossos filhos. A aprendizagem colaborativa - por meio do PBL - incentiva novas ideias e desafia os alunos a explorar opiniões, discutir e compartilhar seus pensamentos e crenças, portanto, é um componente vital da educação em sala de aula do século XXI. 

O resultado desejado é levar os alunos a começar a construir suas próprias ideias e estrutura, ativamente envolvidos no processo de descoberta. 

As dificuldades que enfrento estão principalmente relacionadas com o Planejamento de Projetos - suas etapas, tempos, tarefas e recursos (tecnológicos e outros) - em face das restrições de espaço / tempo (salas de aula tradicionais e aulas de duração limitada). 

Com relação à estrutura de colaboração, acho que o maior desafio é "preparar" os alunos para aproveitar as oportunidades oferecidas pela aprendizagem colaborativa; os alunos devem aprender os parâmetros dentro dos quais podem fazer suas escolhas, sobre as expectativas de trabalhar em grupo e as consequências de não se manterem focados na tarefa. 

 Regras e padrões devem ser enfatizados desde o início, mesmo antes de qualquer colaboração ser iniciada. Diversas diretrizes disciplinares aumentam as chances de uma atmosfera positiva na sala de aula que ajude o processo.  

Avaliar a aprendizagem colaborativa envolve outro paradigma e algumas outras complexidades: devemos ver a avaliação de forma muito mais ampla; o principal objetivo é orientar os alunos a avaliarem seu próprio aprendizado. Assim, uma nova responsabilidade é a autoavaliação, e essa autoavaliação está intimamente relacionada ao monitoramento contínuo do progresso de alguém em direção ao cumprimento das metas de aprendizagem.  

Por último, a prática PBL também implica avaliar se os alunos aprenderam o que pretendiam aprender, a eficácia das estratégias de aprendizagem, a utilidade dos materiais usados ​​nas tarefas, que aprendizagem futura é necessária e como essa aprendizagem pode ser alcançada ... e às vezes isso é o mais difícil de ter sucesso.