Collaborative learning: Finding the right recipe “together”

There are all these stories from  Helen Keller’s “Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much” to “…too many cooks spoil the soup…”. Debates about collaboration, work in teams and its impact goes way back in the history. The concepts of work in groups for enhanced learning roots in the concepts of Lev Vygotsky’s Zone proximity development theory and the learning psychology of Jean Piaget (Reference).  Practical examples of teamwork fly even further into Socratic methods of knowledge building in question answering fashion.   Albeit, collaboration, cooperation, group work, sharing ideas, co-creation has already played a major role in the vocabulary of learning in the digital age.  In a collaborative environment, a group with different capacities and capabilities get together towards achieving a common goal. Some have the veggies for the soup, others the spices, the rest may be having good taste buds, and the goal is to make the soup with the right taste (of the teacher?).

As a teacher, we oftentimes allocate a bigger weight for how to evaluate the efforts students put into learning. Anything from What am I measuring in this activity?  to should learning activities always be a partial fulfillment of the examination? would be on the spectrum of concerns. I may, in addition, also have the fear that if the activity is not connected to the assessment criteria (of the course) students may not take the activity serious.  “And I can’t assess individuals contributions in group works!!!” However, evaluation mechanisms such as given in here may be useful.  In my role as a learner, my biggest concerns perhaps would be  “is my effort enough; or worth” or “am I fulfilling expectations of my group members” or “would they recognize that I have contributed enough” and so on. Perhaps my group members don’t care who did what as far as the task is fulfilled, but how do I know that?

Irrespective of whether group collaboration is towards learning or something else, understanding the group dynamics is the key. Effective communication leads to provide the “know how” inside the group. Would it be collaboration or cooperation, the responsibility of each member of the group must be well understood.  Perhaps in cooperation setting, group members may be given their tasks already at the beginning of the work, but a collaboration setting is a bit complicated, for the reason that;

“Collaboration is a coordinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem.

While;

Cooperation is accomplished by the division of labor among participants as an activity where each person is responsible for solving a portion of the problem“.

Communication in both synchronized and asynchronized forms helps to clear out the gaps in mutual understanding. Respect and trust among the team members allow increasing the confidence of participation in discussion and expression of the views openly. Group members could argue, debate, deliberate at any level, but at the end of the day, everybody should be able to compromise and obtain a collective decision.

So, there is, in fact, no recipe to begin with; but is the first task; to find the right recipe TOGETHER