I’m continuing the course “Flexible, distance and online learning” (FDOL) and the past weeks we have been discussion collaborative learning and how it can be extended using digital technologies. In this blog post I will discuss some of the aspects I have learned and how these are applicable in my own teaching practice.

Definition of collaborative learning

Dillenbourg gives a broad (and admittedly unsatisfactory) definition of ‘collaborative learning’ stating that “it is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together” [1]. He continues to identify different aspects of the definition that gives room for interpretation; (1) the number of students, which can range from a pair, to a small group (3-5 subjects), a class (20-30 subjects) all the way to a community (a few hundreds or thousands of people) or a society (several thousands or millions of people), (2) the learning situation could be to follow a course, study course material, perform learning activities such as problem solving, or learning from lifelong work practice, and finally (3) the means of interaction which can be face-to-face or online/computer-mediated, synchronous or not, frequent or not, etc. So, collaborative learning can vary greatly in scope and scale – the common denominator being that unlike in individual learning people capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring each other’s work etc.). Siemens suggest another scale to discuss collaborative learning, describing how learner-learner interactions in an e-learning course can be viewed as a four stage continuum [2]:

1. Communication (people talking, discussing)
2. Collaboration (sharing ideas and working together, occasionally sharing resources, in a loose environment)
3. Cooperation (doing things together, but each with his or her own purpose)
4. Community (striving for a common purpose)

Siemens argues that most collaborative learning in a course takes place between the 1^st and 3^rd levels, whereas the 4^th level is difficult to achieve within one course [2]. I am inclined to agree – even getting past the communication level can be difficult depending on the factors identified by Dillenbourg above. In the Health Informatics Masters program, one way we strive to use online tools to create a sense of community within the student group is to give them opportunity to build up an online platform, including blog, calender etc, which is entirely run by the master students and in which they create content together. In addition, of course the learners’ motivations and external factors affect the collaborative activities, e.g. in the online Problem Based Learning (PBL) group I’m currently involved in myself where all learners are taking the course while working more or less full time in parallel.

 Benefits and challenges of collaborative learning

There are many benefits of collaborative learning. In a review by Laal & Ghodsi [3] the benefits are divided into four major areas;

1. Social benefits – creates a social support system for learners, build diversity understanding among students and staff, establish a positive atmosphere for modeling and practicing cooperation, and develops learning communities
2. Psychological benefits – student centered instruction increases students’ self-esteem, cooperation reduces anxiety, and develops positive attitudes towards teachers
3. Academic benefits – promotes critical thinking skills, involves students actively in the learning process,
4. Assessment benefits – collaborative teaching techniques utilize a variety of assessments where peer assessment can be a key ingredient.

In the courses I teach, I definitely use collaborative learning activities to increase both social and academic benefits. I have not yet utilized the assessment benefits, this has remained more traditionally teacher assessment, but I plan to include collaborative peer assessment both between groups (one collaborative group giving feedback on another groups work), and between individuals to increase collaborative learning in a course that is very much based on individual work. However, despite the many benefits, it is not uncommon that learners experience frustration with collaborative learning [4]. The main problem described by learners in this study was commitment imbalance, i.e. some learners take on the role of “free rider”, contributing very little or not at all to the work, whereas others may take on too much responsibility doing the majority of work (which does not support the goals of collaborative learning). The study focuses on online learners’ frustration, but my experience of participating in both online and offline group work myself, and using face-2-face group work for my students, is that this problem is not exclusive to the online world.

Using digital technologies

So, how can we use digital technologies to extend collaborative learning? One of the strategies deemed important by Brindley et al is to “monitor group activities actively and closely” [5]. I believe that this can be a benefit of online learning – especially when it comes to the problem of commitment imbalance described above. By using online tools such as discussion forums, collaborative writing tools (e.g. shared documents or wikis) it can actually be possible to monitor (and perhaps assess?) the collaborative processes, not just the output of them. For example, in traditional collaborative learning it may be difficult for an instructor to actually be available and monitor group discussions and see who is present and participate (unless such discussions are scheduled on campus with the facilitator present which is rarely possible or desirable). If assigned tools are used for such online discussions instead, the input and contribution of individual students becomes more visible – both to the group and to a more or less intervening facilitator. A tricky part in my teaching is that it is blended, so students meet face-to-face but have access to online tools. So, how can I insist they use the online tools for their group work? One incentive may be that a facilitator can then help them and give continuous feedback – but this of course requires a lot of time. Another may be that they themselves give each other feedback – for example between groups. Yet another would be that the end-results should be presented online, and that part of the outcome is to describe the process of reaching the end-results, e.g. in a blog where each student is responsible for writing a reflective post about the collaborative work done during the week. Regardless of the approach we finally take in the course, I have a lot of new ideas for how I can use digital technologies to extend collaborative learning.

[1] Dillenbourg P. (1999) What do you mean by collaborative learning?. In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. (pp.1-19). Oxford: Elsevier

[2] Siemens, G. (2002).  Interaction. E-Learning Course. October 8, 2002. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/Interaction.htm

[3] M Laal, SM Ghodsi (2012) Benefits of collaborative learning, Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2012 – Elsevier

[4] Neus Capdeferro and Margarida Romero, Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences?

[5] Jane E. Brindley et al. Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online envrionment