Benefits of collaborative learning

Nowadays most modern institutions more or less apply collaborative learning as soon as it helps to achieve greater results. I think that one of the main benefits here is the fact, that working together and discussing different subjects students feel more confident about the theoretical knowledge they get. Sharing ideas is very important: two individuals can understand the same passage differently.

During discussions, students can learn something they did not catch from the text while reading and (or) see what others think about it – this will help to get a better understanding of the material. Sharing your own thoughts and ideas with group mates not only helps you to compartmentalize your knowledge but also improves your communication skills. Another advantage of community-oriented learning is that the process of gaining new knowledge is much more interactive and interesting than simply reading or listening to the teacher. Students feel more involved in the process of learning and it helps to stay motivated.

University of the People integrates community-oriented learning through discussion forums and peer assessment. First of all, each course has a general forum where everyone can add a new discussion topic and write there anything related to the course – questions, thoughts, or anything else students or instructors want to discuss. It helps to get to know each other which lets everyone feel more comfortable. Some units require peer assessment – it is a very good opportunity to not only share your thoughts about the topic chosen by the instructor but also read and assess what other students have to say. It helps to improve important skills such as giving constructive feedback and respectfully expressing yourself, which is vital in modern workplaces.

I already experienced collaborative learning during my studies on Coursera. Each course there includes a discussion forum, which differs from week to week. These forums were mostly used to ask others to review new assignments, but sometimes students asked questions or discussed the course itself.

In my case, each week I had to create a new project. After completing this task, I should write feedback to 1-2 projects to be able to get my own grade. To be honest, that was a very challenging experience because instructors did not check the results of the assessment and it was often very unfair. Let me explain, why: I studied art and 3d modeling, and we all know that each person has different feelings about pieces of art. Once I had a very low grade only because another student felt that one of ten pine trees was not high enough and looked funny (but that was how I wanted it to look to make a scene more interesting). Another problem of peer assessment on Coursera is that very often other students lower your grades and do not explain, why. For example, your project grade is only 82%, when the comments are: “good job, well done”. I believe, that we should always explain what is wrong if we think that the homework could be done better; that is the way to improve. If nobody leaves any feedback, the author of the project will be very confused trying to guess how to correct mistakes.

The difference between the University of the People and Coursera at this point is that there are rules for leaving feedback during the peer assessment at UoP. There is also an instructor, who reads the forum and can change the grades if they are unfair, which is very important for keeping students motivated because they will feel that their efforts are evaluated adequately.

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References:

University of the People. Collaborative and peer to peer learning. Retrieved from https://www.uopeople.edu/student-experience/quality/collaborative-peer-peer-learning/
Cornell University. Collaborative learning. Retrieved from https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning