> What do students gain and what do students lose with collaborative
learning?
> .... I thought it might be useful to discuss some of these ideas in the
mailing
> list, as it seems to me an opportunity to critically examine what seems a
> "taken for granted" assumption in networked learning. Has anyone else
found
> this?
I teach a final year undergraduate module called "Ideas in CAL" in which
students review critically a whole load of ideas and examples, including
actual software and papers from the literature. From our discussions it
seems to me there are at least two accepted wisdoms in Learning Technology,
one being that collaboration is good for you, the other that activity-based
learning is good for you. There is a lot of evidence in support of this, but
students are quick to point out that they can often resent being forced to
collaborate with others, or to participate in some prescribed activity, when
at the end of the day they believe they could have achieved the learning
outcomes more efficiently in other ways (e.g. "by reading half a page of
text"). In other words, collaborative and active learning are sometimes
employed inappropriately, at odds with learners' needs, backgrounds and
prior achievements.
Robert Ward
University of Huddersfield
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