What Are the Benefits and Challenges of Collaborative Learning - Essay Example

Collaborative Learning Introduction Learning occurs effectively when students get actively involved in the process (Kohn, 1986, p. 3). Students learn and retain more of what is taught when they work in groups. This form of study has been given various names such as collaborative, collective or cooperative learning. Collaborative learning is based on the assumption that students perform best when they are actively involved in the learning process (Davis, 1993), involving participant interaction. This is where learning occurs through talking and discussions, unlike the conventional stand up and tell them method adopted by many professors worldwide (Bruffee, 1999, p. 17) which reduces the effectiveness of learning. Collaborative learning is a term used for a diversity of learning approaches relating joint intellectual effort by learner, or learners and teachers together. More often than not, students are functioning in groups of twos’ or more, jointly searching for solutions, understanding, or meanings, or creating goods (Smith and MacGregor, 1992). Many institutions of higher learning have adopted various forms of collaborative learning. Students learn to depend on one another, rather than exclusively depending on the authority (Bruffee, 1999, p. 17). This equips students with a necessary skill of effectively working in groups, a necessity in the work place. Collaborative learning involves the interaction between peers working as a group with a common objective (Joiner, 2000, p. 2). The group enhances the understanding of a topic which otherwise would not have been effectively understood individually. This involves the emphasis of working collectively like a team for a common good. It can occur in various ways, such as: discussion groups, seminars, video conferences and e-learning among others. The emphasis lies in cooperation and exchange of ideas within the group, where all and sundry works for the betterment of the group with a view of teaching and learning from others. Collaborative learning assumes that students bring divergent experiences and contexts hence enriching the learning process and ensuring students learn from each other, unlike in the past when they depended largely on the teacher (Smith and MacGregor, 1992). The Benefits of Collaborative Learning Bruffee (1999) states that collaborative learning occurs in small groups hence students learn more than they would have otherwise learnt as individuals. The collaboration ensures students and their teachers share ideas based on their different experiences, cultural backgrounds and ways of understanding phenomena, as Thousand (2002) puts it, leading to the empowerment of the students. The emphasis on sharing information ensures each member of the group learns from the others while imparting some knowledge to the group. Collaborative learning is a student-centered mode of learning (Bruffee, 1999, p. 18), therefore the students achieve their objectives. Students are actively involved in the learning process with the teacher providing guidance and intervening where necessary. This ensures students cover a lot of the coursework providing room for clarification when they find obstacles, hence giving room for effective learning. As students learn in a group they tend to cover much more than they would have individually covered in traditional learning methods. Collaborative learning increases the amount of information learnt by the students in a relatively shorter time, hence ensuring students cover wider aspects in their studies. This is a valuable addition as it provides well educated personnel for the workforce argues Hamilton (1997). For effective learning to occur, there is a need for every student to participate in class discussions. This is important in that it gives everyone the opportunity to discover their potentials by reducing on their weaknesses and enhancing their strengths. Hamilton (1997) asserts that collaborative learning broadens the understanding capacity of the students as they get divergent viewpoints of the same phenomena. When working individually, some students resort to plagiarism just to finish assignments on time. This is utterly against the reason of learning in the first place. Resorting to plagiarism can be overcome through the use of collaborative learning, as the group will ensure everyone brings original works to be discussed in the group, this will lead to the emergence of responsible adults beneficial to the society as a whole. Effective learning occurs when the students are aware of the responsibility they have for each other. Collaborative learning ensures each member of the group is responsible for others as grading will be done for the group as a whole. The sense of responsibility is invaluable in life after school, as it leads to the emergence of responsible citizens who enhance the development of the society. Group work results in more creativity, as group members tend to improve on each other’s ideas, resulting to creativity and beneficial learning. A group of three students working as a unit would come up with better work than any of the group members would have done individually, hence showing the beneficial aspect of collaborative learning. The creativity in the group will lead to accelerated learning which also helps the students stimulate and enhance their potentials. Collaborative learning gives room to the teacher to assign more challenging work to the students, which benefits the students who end up learning more than they would have covered individually. This also helps the teacher achieve the teaching objectives that were set at the beginning of the course. There are numerous cases where students do not finish a particular syllabus on the stipulated time period, and the reason is mostly a result of too much workload in that syllabus. Learning in groups ensures the workload is shared among students hence finish the syllabus in time. This gives the students room to read widely and learn beyond the requirements in the syllabus (Hamilton, 1997). Collaborative learning tends to enhance students awareness, this occurs where each student shares with the rest on what they have experienced or encountered that the rest might have had no interest. These revelations may lead the rest in to learning about new things they were not aware of previously and keep abreast of current happenings. The major strength of collaborative learning is in the lack of competition among students (Kohn, 1986). The group work are graded as a unit, hence everyone performs better when the group excels. This removes the element of individuality and selfishness among students and enhances the spirit of sharing and collaboration. The innovativeness found in collaborative learning makes it benefit from the rapidly evolving technology especially in the information communication technology sector (Edmundson, 2007). This ensures the students benefit from the wide circulation of learning materials and through constructive interaction with students from other regions, all in the comfort of their homes. This leads to broadening of the students mindsets while at the same time learning what could not be previously accomplished using the traditional teaching methods. The Limitations of Collaborative Learning Studying in groups in most cases has a number of the group members being passive and relying on others to perform for them (Joiner, 2000). This is due to the knowledge that they would be graded at the same level as the rest. The passive members would therefore not be learning anything and yet be graded the same as the active group members. This may also demoralize the active group members hence affecting the quality of their work. Studying in groups may lead to the dominance of one student who forces his ideas on the others (Bower and Richards, 2006). This can be the case when there is a very vocal and self centered member in the group, who denies others the chance to air their views. This is totally against the essence of group work, hence may lead to undermining the learning process. For collaborative learning to be effective, the group members should have similar schedules such that they have enough time to engage in group work. As stated in Hamilton (1997) this is not usually the case with students, who have varying schedules and engage in different social activities that they rarely find common time convenient for all members. Collaborative learning is a comparatively new method of learning that may not bode well with many teachers who were not well prepared for it. The teachers may find it hard to adapt to this method hence affecting the quality of education impacted to the students. Collaborative learning can be used well with the technological innovations such as video-conferencing and e-learning. Varis (2002) argues that, this may not be applicable where the services are not available especially in many learning institutions found in the developing countries, thus leading to a bias to areas with the facilities. Conclusion Collaborative learning is considerably the best mode of learning since it is centered on the students, by giving them the opportunity to learn from each other and involve the teacher as a facilitator. This is unlike in the past where the teacher gave notes and learning was largely from the teacher, with students largely being passive in the process. Therefore if well adopted, collaborative learning will be the most effective teaching method. References Bower, M, & Richards, D, 2006, Collaborative learning: some possibilities and limitations for students and teachers, viewed 4/4/2010 http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p150.pdf Bruffee, K, A, 1999, Collaborative learning: higher education, interdependence, and the authority of knowledge, 2nd edn, Johns Hopkins University Press, Michigan. Davis, G, 1993, Tools for teaching, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco. Dillenbourg, P, 1999, Collaborative learning: cognitive and computational approaches, Elsevier, Oxford. Edmundson, A, 2007, Globalized e-learning: cultural challenges, Information science Publishing, London. Hamilton, S, J, 1997, Collaborative learning: teaching and learning in the arts, sciences, and professional schools, IUPUI Center for Teaching and Learning, Michigan. Joiner, R, 2000, Rethinking collaborative learning, Free Association Books, Michigan. Kohn, A, 1986, No contest: The case against competition. : Houghton Mifflin, Boston. Mo’donnell, A, Hmelo-silver, C, E, & Gijsberterkens, L, (Eds.) 2006, Collaborative learning, reasoning and technology, Erlbaum Associates Inc, New Jersey. Shing, M, L, Shing, C, C, Chen, K, L, & Lee, H, (nd), Obstacles of team teaching and collaborative learning in information security, viewed 4/4/2010 http://www.iiisci.org/journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/P599296.pdf Silberman, M, L, 1996, Active learning: 101 strategies to teach any subject, Allyn and Bacon, University of Michigan. Smith, B, L, & Macgregor, J,T, 1992, What is collaborative learning? In Collaborative learning: A sourcebook for higher education, eds. Goodsell, A, Maher, M, Tinto, V, Smith, B, L, & Macgredor, J,T, 1992, , Pennsylvania University Press, Pennsylvania. Thousand, J, S, 2002, Creativity and collaborative learning: the practical guide to empowering students, teachers and families, Baltimore publishers, Brookes. Varis, T, 2002, Opportunities and limitations of e-learning, viewed 4/4/2010 http://mohamedelzayat.net/opportunities_and_limitations_of_elearning.pdf Read More