SISLT CSCL

On the contrary, collaboration in learning environments has become an essential skill in the 21st century. The benefits of students’ learning together, truly collaborating, discussing and sharing is great. Research supports the premise that students, in well-designed learning environments experience meaningful learning, develop higher order thinking, and learn to evaluate and acknowledge multiple viewpoints.

In conclusion, the importance of cooperation and collaborative learning cannot be overemphasized, it has impacted and will continue to impact the field of education positively both nationally and internationally.

On the contrary, the chances of collaboration destroying individual motivation and engagement are very minimal. Instead, collaborative can boost the morale and interaction of team members in a group. Intact, cooperative and collaborative learning are instructional contexts in which peers work together on a learning task, with the goal of all participants benefiting from the interaction. So there would be no reason why other team member will be disengaged. Collaboration promotes patience, intellectual maturity, emotional intelligence, and working together regardless of the individual differences.

While technology is not enough to improve memory and allow the learning to retain information, it can contribute immensely to collaborative learning. The use of technology play an integral part in supporting collaborative and cooperative learning. For example, email, video-conferencing and real-time audio exchange can help support group development, particularly when groups are working in distributed settings. Technology can also provide an electronic record of team activity or support other group processes such as brainstorming and consensus-building, wiring and editing, document versioning etc. Ultimately, participating in this online debate in this course would have not been possible without the use of technology.

On the contrary, collaborative learning would rather promote understanding among the group. In collaborative learning, where one student is weak could be the strength of another student. Tackling a task together collaboratively will forester understanding among the group thereby giving better meaning of instructions. The issue of using peer’s words may definitely not exist where all members of the group have better understanding of the concepts or tasks.

Regardless of whether it’s new or prior knowledge, one could be limited to one’s own knowledge and ideas when learning individually, but in cooperative and collaborative learning, students talking together provide for input and listening, have to assess the thoughts/ideas of peers, determine whether they “fit” their own, whether they disagree, or partially agree. Students have an opportunity to speak their ideas/thoughts for better formulation, thereby promoting better understanding and increased knowledge for the task.