This is How Collaborative Learning Skills Benefit Today's Learners
Collaboration skills are a massive asset for life after school. Today's digital students love working in groups, and it's in their nature. Fortunately for the modern educator, collaborative learning activities are more interesting for students and may be more helpful in facilitating brain development than traditional teaching methods.
Nowadays, kids work, game, and connect online constantly. In school, it's no different, where they look to their peers to collaborate and share ideas. Actually, they're just as likely to work with students worldwide as they are in their classroom (Crockett, et al, 2011). Since the working world is deeply affected by new communication technology, one's ability to function in real and virtual teams is essential (Liebech-Lien & Sjølie, 2021).
Understandably, teachers may need to help students with collaborative experiences in the classroom through scaffolding and modelling appropriate behaviour for listening to and discussing different viewpoints. However, these efforts are worthwhile, as collaborative learning remarkably impacts students and their development in many areas (Brindley, Walti, & Blaschke, 2007).
Let's seek to understand more about the influence of collaborative learning activities and how they can benefit our learners' brains.
What Is Collaborative Learning?
One definition of collaborative learning comes from of J. M. Gerlach:
"... [this type of learning] is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves. It is through the talk that learning occurs."
Collaborative learning includes various teaching and learning strategies used in small groups of two to five students to maximize the learning potential of the whole group (Johnson & Johnson, 1999). In the classroom, collaborative learning activities involve students working together in groups to complete a project, problem-solve or create a product. This approach to learning requires students to:
Associate new knowledge with prior knowledge
Communicate with peers to process and synthesize new information
Be exposed to various perspectives
Develop socially and emotionally as they listen to different viewpoints and express and defend their ideas
A young child's world experience centers around relationships, the nurturing of which will ultimately influence all areas of development, including intellectual, social, emotional, physical, behavioural, and moral (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2004). The developing child needs to execute knowledge acquisition and manage their behaviour. The brain's executive functions generally do not fully mature until early adulthood (Johnson, Blum, & Giedd, 2009). This means that parents and educators have a relatively large window to influence a child and their development positively.
“Today’s digital students love working in groups, and it’s in their nature.”
The Australian Early Years Learning Framework emphasizes collaborative learning as one of its five Learning Outcomes, explicitly stating that "children are effective communicators". Under this outcome are five distinct elements:
Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes.
Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts.
Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media.
Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work.
Children use information and communication technologies to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking.
What the first element of this outcome recognizes about collaborative learning is that children "are social beings who are intrinsically motivated to exchange ideas, thoughts, questions and feelings." This framework element further stresses that young learners "feel a sense of belonging when their language, interaction styles and ways of communicating are valued."
From this, we can surmise that collaborative learning activities can allow learners to express themselves and connect with others in ways that provide great value to their learning.
A Future-Focused Collaborative Learning Snapshot
Perhaps one of the most significant examples of collaboration benefits we can provide connects directly to the Future-Focused Learning masterclass on Learning Intentions. Specifically, a keystone topic of this masterclass concerns how to "unpack" a learning intention, with learners taking the majority of the agency for this process.
Our recommendation when working with teachers is that unpacking learning intentions be a collaborative exercise for the learners. So in a classroom setting, that might look like having learners take apart a learning intention in small groups, identifying the objects and verbs in the intention, and creating lists of exploratory questions for each. Meanwhile, the teacher moves around the room as a facilitator of the process, offering guidance only where needed.
“Collaborative learning activities can allow learners to express themselves and connect with others in ways that provide great value to their learning.”
So what are the results? We can say from our experience that having learners collaboratively unpack learning intentions like this has significantly greater learner agency and engagement outcomes. In fact, we have witnessed learners display significant improvements in literacy just from effectively unpacking a learning intention in groups.
For example, Lalor Primary School in Melbourne demonstrated higher levels of growth than expected in ACER tests for reading and mathematics, all because of the simple learner-centred exercise of collaboratively unpacking learning intentions. The fact is that learners in most of the schools we work with that explore learning intentions in this way end up functioning at a few levels beyond where they're usually expected to be for literacy.
Other Benefits of Collaborative Learning
Our modern learners are hardwired to work with others, and teachers can create an environment that encourages learners to work together on a specific project or discuss their different viewpoints. When students engage in collaboration, they actively engage with their classmates in articulating and questioning ideas as they strive to create solutions to problems, resulting in a student-centred model of education that promotes learner agency (Driver, Larsen-Freeman, Gao, & Mercer, 2021).
A classroom environment that facilitates collaborative learning activities promotes the mental development of young learners, helping them become adults with the cognitive, emotional and social capacity to work with others. In the case of social-emotional learning, collaborative scenarios teach learners several valuable relationship skills, including "communicating clearly, listening actively, cooperating, resisting inappropriate social pressure, negotiating conflict constructively, and seeking help when it is needed" (Weissberg, 2016). Additionally, collaborative learning improves soft skills that are important to the social-emotional development of a learner, such as problem-solving, managing emotions and the verbal exchange and discussion of ideas (Nizah, Rahim, & Sulaiman, 2011).
Collaborative learning in small groups can increase the efficacy of individual learning, promote self-esteem, and allow children to learn and demonstrate empathy and prosocial behaviour (Bossert, 1988; Slavin, 1990). Through honing their teamwork skills, learners can learn new ideas, skills, and knowledge by solving problems with others, resolving disagreements due to different points of view, giving help to other students, and receiving support (Webb, 1995; Webb & Palincsar, 1996).
Collaborating also grants learners agency through freedom—the freedom to learn anytime and anywhere. In the book Understanding the Digital Generation (2010), the authors describe it this way:
"Collaboration can begin between students in the same class. They can be asked to meet online and use digital tools to simultaneously work on a joint project ... because the tools are online, students can continue their work outside class time." (Crockett, et.al. 2010)
This level of flexibility is like gold to our learners because it lets them work together at their own pace and in environments more comfortable and familiar than the classroom. Additionally, it helps them establish continuing agency over learning since they each act as facilitators, mediators, accountability partners, and communicative workmates to varying degrees.
Discover Collaboration Fluency
Perhaps the most essential concept to grasp about collaboration is that it is not something that is relegated to the classroom alone. The reason to foster our learners' collaborative skills right now and in the future is because it is how we work in the real world.
It's more than just a strategy for effective learning; it is a responsibility—our responsibility as teachers—in preparing young people for success in the world. The sooner we foster collaborative opportunities and the agency they promote for the learners in our classrooms, the better off those kids will be now and on graduation day.
The essence of collaboration is in building teams that are cohesive. A team that gels in every way is unbeatable. In fact, Henry Ford said it best:
"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."
References
Bossert, S. T. (1988). Cooperative activities in the classroom. Review of Research in Education, 15, 225-252.
Brindley, J., Walti, C., & Blaschke, L. (2007). Creating Effective Collaborative Learning Groups in an Online Environment. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Volume 10, Number 3.
Crockett, L., Jukes, I., McCain, T. (2010) Understanding the digital generation: Teaching and learning in the new digital landscape. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Crockett, L., Jukes, I., & Churches, A. (2011). Literacy is not enough: 21st-century fluencies for the digital age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Driver, Paul & Larsen-Freeman, Diane & Gao, Xuesong & Mercer, Sarah. (2021). Learner Agency: Maximising Learner Potential.
Fall, R., Webb, N., & Chudowsky, N. (1997). Group discussion and largescale language arts assessment: Effects on students' comprehension (CSE Report 445). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST).
Future-Focused Learning. (n.d). Learning intentions masterclass 2.0. Accessed at https://app.futurefocusedlearning.net/courses/6845996/content on Oct 27, 2022.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1999). Making cooperative learning work. Theory Into Practice,38, 67–73.
Johnson, S. B., Blum, R. W., & Giedd, J. N. (2009). Adolescent maturity and the brain: the promise and pitfalls of neuroscience research in adolescent health policy. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, 45(3), 216–221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.05.016
Liebech-Lien, B., & Sjølie, E. (2021). Teachers' conceptions and uses of student collaboration in the classroom. Educational Research, 63(2), 212-228.
Mohd Nizah, Mohd Azmir & Mat Rahim, Ainurliza & Sulaiman, Adibah. (2011). Cooperative Learning Approach to Improve Soft Skills Among University Students. Elixir International Journal. 34. 2530-2534.
National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. (2004). Young children develop in an environment of relationships. Working Paper No. 1. Retrieved from http://www.developingchild.net
Slavin, R. E. (1990). Cooperative learning: Theory, research, and practice. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Weissberg, R. (2016). Why Social and Emotional Learning Is Essential for Students. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/why-sel-essential-for-students-weissberg-durlak-domitrovich-gullotta
