Neufeld, John Jeff (neufeldj@TP.EDU.SG)
Tue, 2 Mar 1999 15:22:16 +0800
From: "Neufeld, John Jeff" <neufeldj@TP.EDU.SG> Subject: One more question for the Forum Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 15:22:16 +0800
List address to send message to everyone: ifets-discuss@LISTSERV.READADP.COM
Details of current discussion: http://zeus.gmd.de/ifets/discuss.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi all,
Roger Hartley closed his (excellent) position paper on EFFECTIVE PEDAGOGIES
FOR MANAGING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN ON-LINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS with
this set of questions.
8. IN SUMMARY, WHAT ARE THE ISSUES TO ADDRESS?
This is open to the Forum, but several come to mind, eg:
(i) What are the essential characteristics of collaborative learning?
(ii) What are the advantages of collaborative learning, and the conditions
for its effective exploitation; have the difficulties been underplayed?
(iii) Is a shift in teacher attitudes and skills required?
(iv) Any instances, experiences or difficulties to report?
(v) What computer tools seem to give good support for collaborative
learning, and what additional facilities do we need?
(vi) How can face-to-face meetings be harmonised with on-line collaboration?
(vii) What research needs to be undertaken?
In my own experience, there is (at least) one other area that needs to be
explored or perhaps I could just change iii) slightly to;
(iii) Is a shift in teacher *and learner* attitudes and skills required?
And to put my foot right in, I would answer yes to both cases.
Education in Singapore (where I'm writing from) is traditionally teacher
centred and individualistic (though this is changing to some extent). So, to
suddenly change the 'rules' to a collaborative approach (and often
constructivist as well) leave many staff and students with little idea as to
what exactly they are supposed to be doing. A lot of support is required
(and a lot of patience).
One (introduction to collaboration) technique I've found useful is to have
the students (in my case 16-18 years old) write a collaborative story
(on-line). Perhaps you're familiar with this? One student writes a sentence
and another student writes a second sentence and so on. If you have a
couple of stories going at the same time this does seem to replicate many
features of collaborative learning as seen in discussion groups. The
'depth' of thinking/learning that goes on is somewhat questionable but it
does get the idea across that different people can have different
ideas/interpretations of a given piece of information (in this case, the
story to date and what they think should happen next). It's also a good
opportunity to teach certain discourse/social skills, like 'how to disagree'
or offer criticism 'gracefully'.
---------------------------------------------------------
Forum website: http://zeus.gmd.de/ifets/
Forum's contact person: kinshuk@ieee.org
Info on Join/Leave List: http://zeus.gmd.de/ifets/maillist.html
---------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Tue 02 Mar 1999 - 09:17:47 MET