Collaborative/Cooperative Learning and Social Skills Development

 (These items are from a listserv about teaching.)

From my own experience with collaborative learning, I have found that students often do not have the social skills to do collaborative learning well and it does take some time "away from content" to deal with this. Some proponents of collaborative learning have argued that students need time to process the effectiveness of their group. I find that this is one aspect of collaborative learning that many teachers tend to skip or gloss over, but which makes a big difference. At the same time, and here is where we get back to common sense being guided by principles and theories, we have to stop and ask why are we doing this and how does it fit with other aspects of our teaching. I have been persuaded by the many educators who have described "constructivist" epistemology and I believe that my teaching today is more "constructivist" than it was 10 years ago. So I see that "how" I facilitate collaborative learning needs to be consistent with how I facilitate other kinds of learning in my classrooms.

Let me be specific. During the first two weeks of the semester, I have my students work in small groups with a variety of different students. During this time, they get to know the names of most of the students in the class and a little bit about others. Then I establish "base groups," that is, groups that will work together for the next three weeks on a larger exploration about numeration. The first activity in base groups is to respond to this question: in the past three weeks, you have worked in a number of groups, and some have likely worked "better" than others. Describe the characteristics of a well-functioning group. Each group takes 5 minutes to construct a list and then we take 20 minutes to construct a whole class list which includes some elaboration (e.g., what does "respecting each others' ideas" look like?). I collect each group's list and then compile that into a set of guidelines which I give back the to the class as a handout which we occasionally refer to. When I compare the list my students generate to the lists that various proponents of collaborative learning have proposed, invariably my students will capture most of the characteristics that the proponents argue for. I denote in italics the characteristics that I feel are important that did not emerge from the class discussion, so that the students can see that this set of guidelines is essentially "their" set. Over the course of the semester, we will occasionally spend time discussion specific items on the list if necessary. Thus, I do have to spend the major portion of one class on launching collaborative learning; after that the amount of time "away from content" is generally minor. However, what this adds to the quality of both the small-group and whole-class discussions is enormous.

However, when I first began trying to implement collaborative learning into my teaching, it was not terribly smooth, and felt more like a technique rather than something connected to my larger principles and goals.

The difference between cooperation and collaboration to me is a subtle one. Collaboration carries more personal responsibility to the group. There aren't as many attempting to freeload. It is more of an attitude.

I have team taught a large (for our college) 65+ introduction to education course for that last 6 years. Last year it became evident that the lecture format was of limited success... not only academically but (if you can believe this) classroom management wise! Thus, we decided to try a cooperative learning structure this year... it is a natural for me... not so for my teammate... so that has been an interesting evolution and took time and energy to work out the kinks both with students (we give them 5x8 cards for feedback now and again and they are free to give us cards at any time they feel the need... both for positive and negative comments... the formal feedback cards ask for what they like? dislike? would like changed?) and with ourselves... which has included discussions of our roles, how well our students are learning, the fear of "watering down" content, etc...

We have divided our group into 11 groups of 6 and one group of 4... each group has a color coded folder with group tasks listed on one side, attendance and current events on the other, and group journal (multiple blue books!), assignments, etc in the folder. Each student developed a name tag on color coded heavier stock paper and those are used each class period... I feel knowing each student's name is critical and this has facilitated my learning along with providing us with an opportunity to emphasize the importance of teaching/learning through multiple modalities (seeing, hearing, etc) The name tags are wonderful and personal and give us opportunities to learn about our students and their interests.

We put a thought question on the board before class begins each day so that groups focus on the topic for the day... sometimes it is an opinion question sometimes a review of the last class... sometimes a sort of assessment question that gives us an idea of what their prior knowledge is...

During the class we do a combination of lecture, discussion in small groups, reporting out from groups on questions, activities, etc... I want to share some notable incidents that feel like success to us... for example we used to lecture about developmental theory... and this time we had each student find out when they first sat up, crawled, made a first step... and then by developing graphs in their group journals and synthesizing that on the blackboard with a whole class graph... the groups came up with the three principles of development we used to take at least 2 classes to present in lecture, in about 20 minutes! I believe that our students will "know" those principles on the midterm like they never "knew" before! We did the same type activity for the pros and cons of special education labeling and the groups actually came up with some interesting ideas not usually dealt with in the literature and gave us some touch points to expand upon in discussion and mini lecture... I could go on and on... because we are so excited about the way we are being able to avoid lecture and yet "teach" all the concepts we delineated before we began this semester... the depth of coverage continues to amaze and satisfy us... we feel that we are able to cover a similar amount of material with much less lecture and at a deeper level for the learner... at any rate it is not without drawbacks... we have to be constantly more creative and thoughtful (I shouldn't have used the word drawback I see now, but I can't correct with this email program... sorry)...it is much more time consuming as far as planning goes... we cannot just say... are you covering_____? we have to formulate questions that get where we want to go. There is nothing like a poorly worded question or shallow question to get the whole class in an uproar of what do you want, what do you mean, etc and set us back precious minutes! The creativity is sometimes difficult... I am a storyteller ...metaphor maker... so I have to think in different ways which is expanding when it is not a bit daunting... But the structure has really made this course wonderful and I really look forward to it... and I think our students are getting much more than they did previously... I will give the list an update after the next exam... since we expect the same learning!

Linda Metzke Lyndon State College, Lyndonville, VT 803/626-6249

 

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