Collaborative Learning Online: Principles and Guidelines

Quintessentially, in order for a collaborative task to succeed it is necessary to provide for the following:

1. The students in a group must perceive that they “sink or swim” together, that each member is responsible to and dependent on all the others, and that one cannot succeed unless everyone in the group succeeds. (I wonder how that can be reinforced in a real classroom setting, for there are always those who loaf and those who let others loaf)

2. Assessment criteria must be transparent and easy to understand (at the moment I am not aware of any of the assessment criteria as far as our homework assignments are concerned, all I know is the maximum number of points, which is not exactly criteria)

3.  Give structured tasks. (This is not happening either, we’ve been given nothing measurable, only assignment titles. To compare, whenever students are assigned open-ended essay questions in overseas universities, they are also notified of the expected minimum and maximum word limit or number of pages.)

4.  Set competitions among groups. (That would imply everyone doing the same task and mutual access to each other’s solutions. I guess it is best realized through the visible groups and separate wikis option in Moodle)

5.  Be conscious of group size. In general, groups of four or five members work best. Larger groups decrease each member’s opportunity to participate actively. The less skillful the group members, the smaller the groups should be. The shorter amount of time available is, the smaller the groups should be. (Sources: Cooper, 1990; Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, 1991; Smith, 1986 (A really useful insight, that explains a few nuisances I have had to deal with recently. )

6.  Provide mechanisms for groups to deal with uncooperative members aka shirkers. Eg

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Posted on October 31, 2008 at 11:20 am by Stacey · Permalink
In: Collaborative Learning

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