Thoughts On Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is considered to be one of the best tools a teacher has in his/her arsenal. It is common knowledge that students, or just people in general, tend to do better when they are explaining or teacher a subject instead of just reading about it in a book. Collaborative learning allows students to work together in a way that every member of the group will be doing both teaching and learning. This re-enforces the concepts and usually sheds new light on the subject matter. Collaborative learning can help reach the peak of a "slow hunch", but instead of an award winning idea at the end of that hunch the result is mastery of a certain content area.

In a science classroom teachers tend to utilize informal and formal learning groups, and since science tends not be the easiest subject students utilize outside study groups. To facilitate an informal learning group I could ask my chemistry students to get together in a group of five and make a list of all the terms and concepts they can think of that apply to the scientific method. Then I would have them define and connect the ideas together.

This article describes how a Harvard physics professor is changing his intro physics course from a lecture based class to a class based on collaborative learning.