Collaborative learning (CL) is an educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of learners working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product. The term CL refers to an instruction method in which learners at various performance levels work together in small groups toward a common goal.
The traditional concept of CL as a group meeting regularly to work together highlights only one type of collaboration between students regarding their learning. Collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle where individuals are responsible for their actions, including learning and respect the abilities and contributions of their peers.
There is a sharing of authority and acceptance of responsibility among group members for the groups’ actions. The underlying premise of collaborative learning is based upon consensus building through cooperation by group members, in contrast to competition in which individuals best other group members. (Panitz, T., 1996).CL is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together.
Usually students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. CL activities vary widely, but most centre on student’s exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it (Smith, B.L. & MacGregor, J.T., 1992). Five fundamental elements involved in CL, are: Positive interdependence, Individual and group accountability, Interpersonal and small group skills, Face-toface promotive interaction, and Group processing.
CL represents a significant shift away from the typical teacher-centered or lecture-centered milieu in college classrooms.
Teachers who use CL approaches tend to think of themselves less as expert transmitters of knowledge to students, and more as expert designers of intellectual experiences for students-as coaches or midwives of a more emergent learning process (Smith, B. L. & MacGregor, J. T., 1992). In my collaborative classrooms, the lecturing/ listening/note-taking process will not disappear entirely, but it will lives alongside other processes that are based in students’ discussion and active work with the course material. I would like to use ‘JIGSAW’ and ‘fishbowl’ methods for the collaborative group work of the students.
Scaffolding and the ways how I want to achieve the objectives
The term ‘scaffolding’ is increasingly used to describe certain kinds of support which learners receive in their interaction with parents, teachers, and other ‘mentors’ as they move towards new skills, concepts, or levels of understanding. It is a term which helps to portray the temporary, but essential nature of the mentor’s assistance as the learner advances in knowledge and understanding.
(This edited article is from Maybin, Mercer, and Stierer, ‘”Scaffolding” Learning in the Classroom’ in K. Norman (ed.), Thinking Voices (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1992).
I believe that scaffolding is what enables learners ···gains in learning P-28
I also believe that text should be useful as well as interesting. For learners who need to learn so much in the short time allocated to then in AMEP classes, text that are useful, relevant and accessible have their own intrinsic interest. At the beginner level I believe it is a good idea for the theacher to create most of the text for the learners, in order to control the level of complexity and to ensure their relevance for the students.
I used the concept of designed-in-scaffolding in planning the units to work. Scaffolding was deliberately planned into the lesson to give the learners the input and guidance they needed to move from not being able to complete to being able to complete it successfully. I tried to foresee what would support and strengthen learning for my learners and build this into the plan.
During the lessons at point where I considered extra activities or explanations would extend learners understanding. I used contingent scaffolding to address special needs as they arose. Lerners can constantly surprise teachers with what they do not know and contingent scaffolding deals with these surprises as they come up. My strategy included quick reviews of recently learned topic, clarification of words or ideas and brief oral practice of supporting details being used.
Reciprocal teaching and the ways how I want to achieve the objectives
Reciprocal teaching is an interactive teaching strategy for supporting readers to develop comprehension strategies. Reciprocal teaching involves four roles, which need to be modeled for the students over a number of teaching sessions before the students can be expected to adopt the roles.The four roles are Questioner, Clarifier, Predictor and Summarizer. As the students enact these roles, they are practicing the comprehension strategies of questioning, clarifying, predicting and summarizing as they engage in a structured dialogue about the selected text.
The Reciprocal teaching programme is defined as ”an example of socially mediated instruction in which the teacher and students engage in dialogue for the purpose of constructing meaning from text” (p.44). In the initial stages the teacher is the class teacher, but later this role is taken by all the student in turn. RT is based on the writings of Vygotsky, with social interaction seen as playing a vital part in developing cognition (Vygotsky, 1978). Using the zone of proximal development, I’ve guided children to understand concepts they are unable to understand on their own, but which are not beyond their understanding when they are helped by a ‘more capable other’. I had an important role at the beginning in modelling strategy use and scaffolding the children’s learning by providing the structure of each session and encouraging responses and giving corrective feedback. As the student become more confident with RT this support is increasingly withdrawn, until the leadership of the group has been taken over completely by the student.
Critical discussion of the theoretical Ideas
Critical discussion/Implementation of collaborative learning
Collaborative learning is an approach to teaching and learning that requires learners to work together to deliberate, discuss, and create meaning. Collaboration can be between teachers, between students, and between teacher and student.
Collaborative learning has been practiced and studied since the early 1900s. The principles are based on the theories of John Dewey (2009), Lev Vygotsky (1980), and Benjamin Bloom (1956). Their collective work focusing on how students learn has led educators to develop more student-focused learning environments that put students at the center of instruction. The research of Vygotsky (1980) and Jerome Bruner (1985) indicates that collaborative learning environments are one of the necessities for learning. Slavin’s (1989) research also suggests that students and teachers learn more, are more engaged, and feel like they get more out of their classes when working in a collaborative environment. Totten, Sills, Digby, and Russ (1991) found that those involved in collaborative learning understand content at deeper levels and have higher rates of achievement and retention than learners who work alone. They suggest that collaborative learning gives students opportunities to internalize their learning.
CL-1 – 2,3In this process the learners are responsible for one another’s learning as well as their own. Thus, the success of one learner helps other students to be successful (Gokhale, A.A., 1995). Development of higher-level reasoning skills, enable students to grasp the meaning of information and analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and apply it, which are in contrast to the traditional education that stresses the learning of facts (Klemm, W.R., 1994). CL promotes these critical thinking skills much better than competitive or individualistic learning environments (Gabbert, B., Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R., 1986; Johnson, D.W. & Johnson, R.T., 1981; Johnson, D.W., Skon, L. & Johnson, R.T., 1980).
But today, Quality teaching has become an issue of importance as the landscape of higher education has been undergoing continuous changes. The student body in Bangladesh has considerably expanded and diversified, both socially and nationally. Students call for new teaching methods. Modern technologies have entered the classroom, thus modifying the nature of the interactions between students and teachers. Stakeholders such as the government, the students and their families, and the employers increasingly demand value for their money and desire more efficiency through teaching. A2 (In the area of improvement) Although the NUB affiliates deliver higher education for two-year degrees;
three- or four- year Honours; one year Masters preliminary and one-year Masters final programmes, there are substantial differences between courses taught in the teaching universities and the affiliates. The syllabus followed by the affiliates is prepared by the NUB and as such is same for all, whilst the teaching universities each have their own syllabuses and are very different from each other. Lately, all teaching universities have started four-year Honours courses and one-year Masters courses. In addition, they also enrol students to M.phil and PhD programmes. These are not offered by NUB affiliates.
It is interesting to note that the affiliates deliver the bulk of higher education in the country. Every year, around 90 percent of students admitted for higher education (Table 1) enrol in one of more than 1300 NUB affiliates, and more than 100,000 students10 pass out (Table 2). It is also worth noting that the number of faculty members in the NUB affiliates is insufficient (see Table 3), and that non-optimal teacher-student ratio exists. Whilst the teacher: student ratio at a public teaching university appeared to be 1:14 on average, the corresponding ratio within the affiliates stood at 1:28 in 2003 (Table 3).
The quality of students in the teaching universities and the NUB affiliates differs greatly. “A major problem created in the affiliates is with regard to teaching staff and support staff development.
“Apart form the lack of sufficient teaching staff, the affiliates are devoid of well-qualified teachers. Teachers at the affiliates are invariably unable to travel abroad for further studies due to lack of opportunity. The short-term Orientation Programme, organised by the NUB since 1997, provides scope for only a small number of teachers (Table 6) teaching the Honours and Masters Courses in affiliated colleges. “In the NUB affiliates, the evaluation of students on the basis of tutorial and assignment work is a sheer compliance of formalities rather than a meticulous assessment of their understanding and depth of knowledge.
The NUB affiliates lack proper evaluation and monitoring systems for assuring the quality of higher education. As referred to earlier, tutorials are unlikely to be held regularly due to the shortage of teaching staff in virtually all affiliates offering Honours and Masters courses. The terminal examinations, held after three years for Honours and one year for Masters programmes, fail to cater for the continuous evaluation of students by their very nature. A system that relies entirely on terminal examination for results represents one-shot evaluation, But today, Quality teaching has become an issue of importance as the landscape of higher education has been undergoing continuous changes. The student body in Bangladesh has considerably expanded and diversified, both socially and nationally.
Students call for new teaching methods. Modern technologies have entered the classroom, thus modifying the nature of the interactions between students and teachers. Stakeholders such as the government, the students and their families, and the employers increasingly demand value for their money and desire more efficiency through teaching. A2 (In the area of improvement)
Although the NUB affiliates deliver higher education for two-year degrees
three- or four- year Honours; one year Masters preliminary and one-year Masters final programmes, there are substantial differences between courses taught in the teaching universities and the affiliates. The syllabus followed by the affiliates is prepared by the NUB and as such is same for all, whilst the teaching universities each have their own syllabuses and are very different from each other. Lately, all teaching universities have started four-year Honours courses and one-year Masters courses. In addition, they also enrol students to M.phil and PhD programmes. These are not offered by NUB affiliates. It is interesting to note that the affiliates deliver the bulk of higher education in the country. Every year, around 90 percent of students admitted for higher education (Table 1) enrol in one of more than 1300 NUB affiliates, and more than 100,000 students10 pass out (Table 2).
It is also worth noting that the number of faculty members in the NUB affiliates is insufficient (see Table 3), and that non-optimal teacher-student ratio exists. Whilst the teacher: student ratio at a public teaching university appeared to be 1:14 on average, the corresponding ratio within the affiliates stood at 1:28 in 2003 (Table 3). The quality of students in the teaching universities and the NUB affiliates differs greatly. “A major problem created in the affiliates is with regard to teaching staff and support staff development.
“Apart form the lack of sufficient teaching staff, the affiliates are devoid of well-qualified teachers. Teachers at the affiliates are invariably unable to travel abroad for further studies due to lack of opportunity. The short-term Orientation Programme, organised by the NUB since 1997, provides scope for only a small number of teachers (Table 6) teaching the Honours and Masters Courses in affiliated colleges.
“In the NUB affiliates, the evaluation of students on the basis of tutorial and assignment work is a sheer compliance of formalities rather than a meticulous assessment of their understanding and depth of knowledge. The NUB affiliates lack proper evaluation and monitoring systems for assuring the quality of higher education. As referred to earlier, tutorials are unlikely to be held regularly due to the shortage of teaching staff in virtually all affiliates offering Honours and Masters courses. The terminal examinations, held after three years for Honours and one year for Masters programmes, fail to cater for the continuous evaluation of students by their very nature. A system that relies entirely on terminal examination for results represents one-shot evaluation,
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