Effective Collaboration Depends Upon…

From the book 'Effective Learning in Classrooms' by Chris Watkins, Eileen Carnell & Caroline Lodge (2007)

What is collaboration?

When people are collaborating their actions support work towards achieving a shared goal.

There is a sense that the shared goal cannot be achieved by the individuals by themselves.

• Chapter 7 p 88

Quote 1:

“Collaboration – What Do We Mean?

The essence of the term ‘collaboration’ is to labour together, not with a sense of hard toil we hope, but with a sense of creating something greater between us than would have been achieved separately. Although the literature is not completely consistent on this, some writers maintain a distinction between cooperation and collaboration (Galton and Williamson, 1992; Tiessen and Ward, 1997). The distinction suggests that people are cooperating when they adjust their actions so that each person achieves their individual goals, whereas people are collaborating when their actions are adjusted in order to achieve a shared goal. “

Quote 2:

“We can highlight two main characteristics of collaboration:

•   During collaboration something new is created that could not have been created otherwise. 


•   Collaboration takes place when all the participants can contribute to a new, shared product. 


Thus communication is a key element for cooperation and collaboration to happen.
”

I am re-reading the book by Chris Watkins, Eileen Carnell & Caroline Lodge (2007), called 'Effective Learning in Classrooms, in order to contribute my thinking to this collaborative learning forum and complete tasks 1 and 2.

• Chapter 7 p 90

Summary of ideas:

“Collaborative learning in classrooms will not happen unless teachers plan for it” (Watkins et al, 20017, p 97)

‘It’ being the task, the type of interactions and the structure to the working together

Effective collaboration depends upon…

The design of the task:

• Has a social (communicating and agreeing) and intellectual (higher-order thinking) dimension
• Non-decomposable – individuals can’t achieve the objective or the components of it themselves
• Interdependent (not one-way dependent or independent) – has to involve dependence reciprocity
• Thought provoking – has to be higher-order cognitive so that the group has to be thoughtful in their approach and negotiate meaning making
• Not ‘right answer’ oriented – has to be about creating new knowledge from the pool of current knowledge
• Resources scattered amongst the team – no one person has all the resources

The type of interactions that are promoted:

• The language used
• The prompts the teacher uses
• The design of the classroom environment
• The design of the group – social aspects explored therefore roles given and/or intellectual aspects developed so different levels of metacognition are catered for
• The layers of learning intended and the goals to be adopted EG help a peer learn as well as create a solution for…

The structure of the collaboration:

• Basic building block is pair work ,as it bridges individual work and group work by promoting talk and the interaction needed for collaboration (private-à pair/peer-à public)
• Strategies include

• Think/pair/share
• Formulate/share/listen/create
• Question/summarise/clarify/predict = Reciprocal teaching
• Snowball (also known as Round Robin or Reporting back)
• Jigsaw (excellent collaborative structure)

Research shows… 

“groups which deal with ill-structured, non-routine, discovery-oriented tasks become more pro-active and interactions increase because mutual interchange is a necessary condition for solving the problem” (Cohen, 19192 : 5)

Benefits of collaborative learning:

• Improved learning and achievement
• Improved skills
• Improved engagement
• Improved relationships
• Interactions resemble real life and employment situations

Key question… how can we translate/transfer this to our facilitation of intra-CoL collaboration?