Outcome 5d: Develop strategies to promote social and collaborative learning in an online environment.

Social and Collaborative Learning

Collaborative activities in an online course leads to positive student performance outcomes. Group interactions facilitate active learning, shared knowledge, and promote social interaction and a supportive eLearning community. Collaboration also models how to work with others in real-world situations.

Cornell University's Center for Teaching and Learning (2018) outlines how collaborative learning can benefit both students and instructors:

Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative learning include:

Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership skills.

Promotion of student-faculty interaction.

Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.

Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.

Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

"Collaborative Learning" is often equated with "group work", but it actually encompasses many more activities including pair and small group discussions and peer review activities. In these activities students are developing their own work for submission but are learning through giving each other feedback, sharing ideas, and helping each other revise their individual work.

Strategies to try: There are a lot of strategies for collaborative learning that you can use in your online classroom. These are just some to give you a starting place.

Group Discussions
- Include introductory activities that requires students to interact with others to know them. E.g.: introductions on discussion board.
- Divide students into groups of 2-3 to discuss or debate a topic. These intimate groupings can encourage learners to become active participants in the collaborative learning process.
- Provide learners with opportunities to reflect, share viewpoints, offer peer feedback to support the sharing of new information.
- Develop discussions that are specifically focused on 1 or 2 specific learning goals.
Use the platform (LMS) to its fullest
- Ensure everyone can see the content and interact comfortably. Provide with instructions on how to navigate through the content on the learning management system.
Team-based learning
- Scavenger hunts - Find a particular point of interest or resources related to the topic and plan team- based activity around it. You can start a course unit by giving students some tasks to complete, such as reading, lab assignment or deliver a lecture that targets gaps in the knowledge of concepts.
- Involve students to work together to analyze case studies, solve a problem or apply a theory to real-world situation, including discovery learning, inquire-based learning and research.
- Additional strategies for implementation of group projects can be found in Alternative Assessment Types.
Build a personal connection
- Use Community of Inquiry and instructor presence strategies to facilitate the learning experiences.
- Facilitate peer teaching. Students can coach their peers in ways of study groups, supplemental instructions and writing fellows (Goodsell, A., Maher, M., Tinto, V., Smith, B. L., & MacGregor, J. 1992)
Engage all learning styles (Subban, P., 2006)
- Present content in various formats and plan learning activities that cater to diverse learners.
- Provide opportunities to foster group and independent learning.
- Encourage competition through simulation. Simulations are complex, structured role-playing situations that simulate real experiences. The key aspect of simulations is that of perspective-taking, both during the simulation exercise and afterwards.

Learning through collaborative activities is the most direct way for instructors to facilitate engaged learning online.

References

Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation. (2018). Collaborative Learning. Retrieved October 24, 2018, from https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning
Goodsell, A., Maher, M., Tinto, V., Smith, B. L., & MacGregor, J. (1992). What is collaborative learning. Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education.
Subban, P. (2006). Differentiated instruction: A research basis. International Education Journal, 7 (7), 935-947