Promoting Collaborative Learning

An ITeach 2008 session on collaborative learning was led by Keith Sawyer, associate professor, and Stacy DeZutter, Ph.D. candidate, both from the Department of Education. Drawing on his book, Group Genius, Sawyer began the session by pointing out that collaborative work can help students learn more deeply than they do when working alone. In order to realize these improvements in student learning, Sawyer explained, faculty should design collaborative assignments that prompt students to “ask conceptual, probing questions,” to “think aloud,” and to “provide detailed, elaborate explanations.” Further, the problems that students tackle during collaborative assignments must be carefully crafted to be “intrinsically motivating” and to require solutions that necessarily involve joint work. Sawyer noted that faculty should help students learn how to collaborate effectively and that any rewards for collaboration should discourage competition.

Stacy shared with the audience several technological tools that can be used to create opportunities for collaborative learning, including wikis, blogs, threaded discussions on Telesis, and Google documents (for more information on these tools, see “Emerging Technologies,” Spring 2007 ITeach newsletter). Drawing on her teaching experience and her work as a Liberman Fellow in Teaching with Technology, Stacy explained each of these tools and the benefits, as well as the challenges, each tool poses as a means of fostering collaboration within and beyond the classroom.