The most surprising thing that I read in the article about collaborative work was that students need direct instruction in order to learn how to collaborate. I wan to focus on this, because it is the most important part, in my opinion. I do not like direct instruction - especially for young students. They do not want to sit and listen while we tell them what to do and what not to do. They want to make discoveries on their own. Personally, I would use the entire process of collaborative work to teach them the rules of working together. While collaborating, students will notice things like someone not helping, someone not sharing their ideas, someone being rude, someone refusing to change their idea and so on. From this, I can have a discussion about the rules of working together as they come up. When students tell me "bob is not helping" I will say "what rule can we make so that bob has to help?". From that, we get "everyone has to put in the same amount of work. Although this process will take longer than telling students a list of rules, I think that it will give them a better understanding of how to work together.
Another point that I believe to be important is focusing on all three aspects of collaboration: interpersonal communication, conflict resolution and task management. The first one seems to be forgotten often. Students need to know how to evaluate themselves and reflect on what they have done or are doing in the collaborative work. They also need to be able to let go of some ideas that they may have in order to reach common ground with the rest of the group.
Hi Kaylie,
ReplyDeleteI think the most important thing too is sharing and having direct instruction on how to collaborate. It can be confusing most defiantly. Being able to work with people you are not comfortable with can drag at times because who likes big group projects where your grade depends on another person? Students should be able to assess themselves with the work they are contributing and it should always be split up even.