Collaboration: Collaboration is the most integrated form of group work, and is therefore potentially the most difficult and the most rewarding. Usually, students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. Collaborative learning activities vary widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it.
Collaborative learning covers a broad territory of approaches with wide variability in the amount of in-class or out-of-class time built around group work. Collaborative activities can range from classroom discussions interspersed with short lectures, through entire class periods, to study on research teams that last a whole term or year. The goals and processes of collaborative activities also vary widely. Some faculty members design small group work around specific sequential steps, or tightly structured tasks. Others prefer a more spontaneous agenda developing out of student interests or questions. In some collaborative learning settings, the students’ task is to create a clearly delineated product; in others, the task is not to produce a product, but rather to participate in a process, an exercise of responding to each other’s work or engaging in analysis and meaning-making.
The World Wide Web has greatly increased our ability to collaborate online. We are able to work in groups with people all around the world. With no time or geographical constraints collaboration is much easier and requires no FTF interaction. Collaborative tools allow students to communicate and work to achieve a common goal without meeting.
Collaboration can be effectively used to improve the quality and quantity of education in online learning environments. There are numerous tools and methods that can be used to facilitate and stimulate collaboration in online education. Some current collaboration tools include e-mail, computer networks, whiteboards, bulletin board systems, chat lines and online presentation tools, a decade or two from now they could include extensive mentoring networks, collaboration effectiveness indices, collaborative learning portals,interplanetary chat networks and free-lance instructor exchange programs. Collaboration entails working together toward a common goal.
Blogs
Elements of Distance Education Diffusion
http://agoswick.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/elements-of-distance-education-diffusion-blog-2/
In this blog the writer feels that as distance education becomes more involved in school and more apparent in our society, one of many things are going to happen. What we’ll soon see are the traditional classrooms moving towards or adapting to a virtual learning style (Goswick, 2010).
Global Diversity
http://www.altilab2005.com/2009/12/
This blog focuses on Global Diversity and states that, true global diversity in education must encompass other nations, races, ethnic groups, and even languages. Face to face instruction is best to develop a relationship where body language, facial expression, and eye contact are vital to developing communication bonds among students with diverse backgrounds, and language.
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Your post is very informative and supports the great advancements that have been made in the area of collaboration when it comes to Distance Education. I like that you pointed out that our students are taking advantage of collaboration to network and discover and share knowledge with each other. Your reference to the blog by Goswit (2010) where he pointed out that he expects traditional classrooms will be moving towards a virtual classroom soon is encouraging, and many of us are awaiting this event. C. Penny Penagraph
ReplyDeleteI agree that collaboration enhances our learning experiences. I can't say enough how important it is to take into account others' opinions to help form our on. In a traditional classroom setting we spend most of our time listening to an instructor and little time listening to our peers. In those types of settings we are only able to formulate opinions based on the information given on a topic. In an online setting where little is said by the instructor and we are asked to contribute our ideas on topics we get to see more of what our peers think. I think collaboration helps a lot in forming true opinions. Great post.
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