Skip to main content

Collaborative Learning


I can't think of a better way to illustrate the power of collaborative efforts than by sharing this video with you. Eric Whitacre composed and produced this piece with the help of 185 singers from 12 countries. The result is remarkable. Watch, and then scroll down for more about collaboration.





For the past few years, Dr. Ben Seaberry at Diablo Valley College has been surveying the students at DVC about their attitudes toward their success and satisfaction regarding online learning. In 2009's study, Dr. Seaberry noticed the highest levels of both satisfaction and success in students who had high levels of interaction in their class, with both their instructors and their fellow students. The study is here  and worth looking over, but suffice it to say your students are happier when they learn together.

Collaboration, student-led learning projects, focus on the learning process, discovered meanings, and group interactions are all components of the Constructivist approach to learning. This is the opposite of the teacher-as-lecturer and student-as-memorizer method of content delivery. In a constructivist pedagogy, students are given parameters for learning (resources, rubrics, guidelines, limits, goals, etc) but are set free to find the pieces of the puzzle and put them together into a meaningful conclusion. The instructor facilitates the learning, but allows the students to become scientists, researchers, testers, and inventors.

If you're not familiar with constructivist theory, and you are worried all this group stuff is going to end up with someone singing Kumbaya, you may want to check out this site for a more in-depth look at the approach. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to welcome students to a class

If you're a Cal Poly professor, I have a gift for you. In the dashboard, you'll find the online workshop called "Launching a Course Online with Canvas" that has a template for welcoming students to an online course. The letter was written for "normal" times, and should be sent out approximately a week prior to the start of class, with a reminder sent out again the day before class starts. For the most part, it works well in our unusual circumstances. I want to share with you what I'm telling my students, and I'll include it below. This is a work in progress, but it will go out to them a full week prior to the start of class (by Tuesday, March 31.) I want them to have the gift of TIME: to look around the online class (I will open it up on Sunday, April 4th) to ask me questions via email if they have any to put important items on their calendar, like purchasing the code for our simulation software to absorb what they will be completing in the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Teaching in the age of Covid-19

I'm overwhelmed. I've been teaching online for 20 years, but the past three weeks of my life have been incredibly complex. Working from home is not a big deal for me - at my last job, I often worked from home and established work "zones" and a daily routine that helped me focus on what needed to be done, but this is different. This time, I've spent the past three weeks setting up and delivering workshops for faculty, answering numerous questions, calming a lot of jittery friends who are not sure how this is going to work, and - I kid you not - I was berated for posting a helpful comment on behalf of my own lengthy experience to a group of faculty. In times like these, you find out who people truly are. But here I am, staring at my computer screen with content that is mine, that I am familiar with, and there is nobody but myself urging me on. I am tired. I feel demoralized from events that took place in the days prior to sheltering at home. And I need a break...
Post a Comment
Read more

Putting the toothpaste back into the tube

We've been asked to teach a 10 week course in 9 weeks. For me, this should be a piece of cake - each summer, I condense a 9 week short course from Cuesta College into a 6 week short course for summer session. I have done this for nearly 10 summers, so one would think a week's worth of snipping would be simple. I spent a frustrating day alternating between my course content and various shiny distractions. It could well be that I need a break - certainly I'm feeling that lack of  focus that comes from stress - but it's also that I'm making incremental changes from one week to the next. This is not hard work like chopping firewood, but hard work like lining up dominoes and finding a gap halfway through that needs to be addressed by nudging every piece by exactly 1/4". It is tedious. Creating an online course is usually completed over three terms; one to create the online shell while teaching the course in person, one to launch the course online, and one to fix...
Post a Comment
Read more