By: Samah Sabra
Over the last few years collaborative learning became the new “it” in education. There are websites, government documents and conferences dedicated to the topic. Having returned in mid-June from a conference where educational developers, faculty and students shared many of their ideas and research on higher education, I have been thinking about the value of collaboration, especially as a route to deep learning.
At the EDC, I am always collaborating with colleagues, faculty, instructors and librarians to develop new programs, workshops or services. I think this ongoing collaboration creates a positive and welcoming work environment. Colleagues often send me material they come across and I do the same. If I’m working on something and realize that someone else has skills or knowledge that could improve it, I ask if they want to do it together. I also enjoy co-facilitating workshops because I always learn something new along the way – and I prefer workshops to presentations because I am firmly committed to the value of collaborative learning.
So you might be wondering, what is collaborative learning? Well, it’s a method that involves people working together to achieve a shared academic goal. Each person may bring a particular strength (skill, value or body of knowledge) to the shared task and for collaboration to work, those on a team must break away from staunch notions of individual achievement and competitiveness. If they don’t already recognize this, they must learn that co-operation is the key to achieving their joint tasks.
To a certain degree, there are elements of our work at university that have always been collaborative – even when they are not framed as such. For instance, seminar discussions involve a group of students who share their perspectives with one another, ask each other for further elaboration or clarification of ideas, and thereby help to develop a deeper understanding of a subject matter. Some departments regularly use group or team work assignments and in-class activities. Some faculty and instructors ask students to read each other’s papers and provide suggestions for improvement. These are all ways of collaborating or co-operating to produce new knowledge or a deeper level of comprehension.
One of the most satisfactory collaborative learning experiences I have worked on, and one which reinforced the importance of sharing and inviting feedback on all items related to teaching, has been in the Graduate Student Learning Community on Teaching Dossiers. The first time I facilitated this program, it ended up being very small, but it has since grown. From the beginning it was clear to me – and I think the participants would agree – that this was going to be an intensive and deeply meaningful experience. I knew it would be difficult for participants to share their personal teaching dossiers with one another. It was nerve-wracking, but it was an excellent way to build confidence in the document which would eventually be submitted for job, tenure and promotion, or confirmation applications.
As they, at first, nervously shared their materials with one another and provided each other with feedback, participants came to appreciate more greatly what was unique to their own teaching styles. They learned about themselves, but they also were able to develop new teaching methods to try in future courses and they learned a great deal about teaching! Indeed, what was for me an unexpected outcome was the development of a sense that despite their different personal styles and faculties, there were some overarching themes about teaching and learning that were shared by participants. I think the most exciting thing about collaborative learning is its ability to open up a wide range of new areas for learning. In collaborating to learn the key components of a teaching dossier and how to develop these within their own disciplines and realm of experience, the graduate student members of this community learned about themselves, their disciplines, and teaching and learning!