Thing 9: Collaboration

Collaboration is commonly confused with cooperation. Wesley Freyer outlines the difference between these two terms, some of the key differences are as follows:

Collaborative learning is viewed as a social act, where the students are learning through their interactions and talking to each other. Whereas cooperative learning sees students working in teams, given a certain part of the task to work on – sharing their knowledge with the group. Collaboration has less teacher imposed constraints in terms of the task – the teacher does not necessarily have a planned outcome for the students research as they would typically have in cooperative learning.

In Dylan William’s video on collaborative learning, he discusses the importance of group goals and personal accountability. If both of these things are present, then learning is significantly increased (by approximately double, according to Williams). Collaborative learning also blurs the lines between teachers and learners. Students are encouraged to tap into a teacher role and share their knowledge.

Digital technologies can provide effective means of collaboration. I have researched how Twitter can be used as a tool for teachers to develop collaborative classrooms. “Twitter offers a number of affordances that can potentially support collaborative learning” (Carpenter, 2014, p. 1).

Twitter can be used by both teachers and students as a means of sharing resources, communicating thoughts/opinions, and collaborating outside of the classroom. That last point I find to be particularly valuable – Twitter (as well as other digital resources) can be an absolute game-changer in education. By allowing the students to collaborate outside of class, the opportunities available for learning increase significantly. Using these digital tools, collaboration is no longer limited to the timetabled sessions at school, so they are definitely something I would like to incorporate into my teaching one day.

References

Carpenter, J. (2014). Twitter’s capacity to support collaborative learning. International Journal Of Social Media And Interactive Learning Environments, 2(2), 103. doi: 10.1504/ijsmile.2014.063384