After spending the past few weeks familiarizing myself with group-based collaborative learning techniques, I feel emboldened by the possibilities it brings to the classroom especially when combined with Web 2.0 tools. Entering into this research as a middle school teacher, I had an overall negative opinion of "group work." While I have had past successes, more often than not it seems the reasons often used to criticize group efforts appear in my class too. Those include: "free riding," cooperation between group members, the I hate group work crowd and the ever popular, "I can't cover as much material doing group assignments."
Web 2.0 tools help to alleviate these problems. Problems that routinely appear in group efforts such as, "Little Jimmy has all our stuff," are a thing of the past when using tools like Wikis or Google Docs. Further, problems like "Cassandra did all the work," are solved by looking at the revision history on documents. Best of all, when a student does miss a day, catching them up should be a breeze because they could always log in from home and never miss a beat. Even the worry of plagiarism should decrease if you instruct students how to properly link to their sources. All in all, I think using the Web will revolutionize collaboration based assignments.
The real question is: Will this revolution be of true benefit to the students? In schools across the country, 21st Century Skills are being promoted. These skills stress collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, life/career skills, using information, media, and technology through the lens of learning core subject content. Many studies show group based collaborative pays huge dividends in developing these areas. Also of note, is how dropout prevention, differentiated instruction, and higher productivity/more time on task are addressed by both collaborative learning and implementing technology in the classroom.
The benefits are many but there are problems. The biggest problem is lack of one to one computing programs. Bottom line is: Students need a computer available to use in class. One common theme in group based instruction is the need for data to drive decisions. Students need to be able to conduct research and the most productive way to do this would be to use the web otherwise you have students being handed research by the teacher which decreased the acquisition of research skills.
The other hurdle I see is the time required to provide students with a solid foundation concerning the basic skills needed to be an effective group member. Students will need to learn to apply social skills to their work that many do not have. A great example of this is how rude students can sometimes be. Many students don't understand how blurting out, interrupting others, or calling someone's ideas stupid aren't the most effective way to gain support for your position. They don't understand how to offer constructive criticism and often resort to cruelty or insults to win people in a bandwagon fashion. I think getting the chance to practice these skills on a daily basis would make them much more empathetic.
Acquiring or at least refreshing computer skills would be paramount because despite the belief that digital natives speak the language, it's not always so. Further, students would have to work on developing as writers, however with a computer at their fingertips many of the pre-writing steps they find tedious would probably be less so.
Would I personally include more collaborative learning into my class? Short answer is, yes. I teach science and social studies so both of these subjects would provide great springboards for collaborative learning. For example in social studies, I'm already thinking about how to use guided design principles in creating a classroom geography wiki. Plus, upcoming science units dealing with human body might be great chances to include some problem based learning. I better get started training tomorrow's middle management because I'm going to need all the help I can get!
