Conversations: Online Collaborative Learning SIG
Empowering Collaborative Learning
I am always thinking about and researching approaches to collaborative learning, especially when online and virtual. How do we ensure the student group assessment is successful – emotionally and academically? Does it rely on assessment design? (yes!). What else is needed? What are the pitfalls? What are the enablers?
Online collaboration is about expectation and communication…..before participants can even consider how to actually collaborate. It is also about a set of shared norms that bridge culture, distance, age, gender and academic ability. I call these the Norms of Online Collaboration (see video below).
Pitfalls include not providing enough structure or choice for students – can they choose team members? What happens if things ‘go wrong’? Have expectations and communications protocols been established and agreed upon?
Collaboration and group should be enabled through observing the norms of behaviour and students empowered through other personnel or technology-influenced systems that support and encourage. Fear of collaboration is common amongst teachers and students – and for good reasons. We all have our stories – and believe me I have experienced some shockers as a student that should have turned me off any willingness to design or implement group activities and/or assessments. However as a higher education teacher I have had great success with online collaborative learning resulting in students (perhaps unwilling at the start) telling me it was the ‘best experience of their academic journey’. Vindication indeed!
These points are pertinent:
- we are becoming an increasingly collaborative society
- we know that learning does not happen in isolation
- for study and future employability we must have strategies to work alongside and in collaboration with others
At the recent Online Collaborative Learning SIG meeting we explored the affordance of the FeedbackFruits tool ‘Group Member Evaluation‘ (see video below). This tool provides visibility to the teacher and support for students – anonymous feedback on group member performance and then feedback on the feedback. It empowers students to critically think about the performance of others and of themselves. It also fosters skills in feedback and reflection. UniSQ is piloting FeedbackFruits July-November 2023 – come and join in and find out if this tool supports formative and/or summative group collaboration in your course.
I need to also mention another edtech tool that empowers student independence and fosters collaboration – Engageli. This is a learning environment we are continuing to trial at UniSQ, with great success. I mention is here as it has a feature called ‘Playback’ whereby students can open a unique Engageli room, watch past tutorials or other recordings and/or interact with pre-prepared materials, individually or as a group and take notes, scribble on a white board, discuss etc. This type of tool not only enables but empowers student collaborative learning, independent of the ‘teacher’.
Learning does not take place in isolation
If Collaboration is a needed & required 21st Century skill, educators need to not only teach it, but employ & model it as well
Empower student collaborative learning through effective use of edtech tools
Explore these opportunities
FeedbackFruits – pilot 2023 – Join in!
Engageli learning environment – Join in!
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What's New
The next SIG meeting is on Thursday October 26, 2-3pm 2023 in Engageli.
The theme:
Steps for writing and assessing a digitally infused collaborative task
Fantastic blog, Julie. Group work has always been such an essential part of my face-to-face practice – yet I struggle to know how best to support it asynchronously. Looking forward to using your norms of online collaboration and Feedback Fruits.