collaborative learning

Hi everyone. I am pursuing my MS in educational technology and am designing an action research project around creating a blended collaborative environment (combining in class and online collaborative activities for my students) in an introductory computer course that I facilitate at a community college.

I am still in the research phase and would appreciate any resources anyone could send my way.

Some considerations:

best practices for forming groups, scaffolding groups, creating individual, peer and teacher assessment rubrics for group work, using blogs for 24/7 connection to a classroom learning community, and using wikis for community knowledge creation/reinforcement.

Thanks in advance for your help.

-Judy

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Permalink Reply by Heidi Siwak on February 12, 2011 at 6:29pm

Here is a Ted talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html It explains the best learner to computer ratio for optimum long-term retention of learning to occur is 4/5 children to 1 computer. The rationale is brilliant - the role of conversation in the process of learning.

In my province, all teachers are expected to be developing what we call Success Criteria with our students. Students internalize the assessment process if they are directly involved in the planning of assessment. We are expected to directly involve our students in the planning of learning and of assessment. I recommend looking for the School Effectiveness Framework document from the Ontario Ministry of Education. Our province is committed to implementing research-based best practices and we are quite far along in implementation.

Flexible Grouping is a term you should have a look at. It is highly effective method of forming groups.

Collaborize is my favourite closed social networking site for developing community learning.

Accountable Talk is a term you should become familiar with and its role in peer and self-assessment.

I hope this helps. Heidi http://heidisiwak.blogspot.com/

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Permalink Reply by Judy Cirucci on February 12, 2011 at 6:59pm

Heidi,

It does help. Thank you so much for your excellent advice.

-Judy

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Permalink Reply by Bernadette on February 12, 2011 at 8:53pm

Hi Judy

A way to get students into groups randomly is to use a set of playing cards.If you want say 8 groups of 3, then prepare a set of Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 in say Diamonds, Hearts and Clubs then shuffle. Hand out the cards as the students walk into the room, then ask them to sit with those who have the same number as them.

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Permalink Reply by Judy Cirucci on February 13, 2011 at 7:44am

very nice idea. I, however, am using data collected from an entrance survey to create groups. If I decide to switch them up after a few activities, I will try your method. It adds to the "fun factor" of CL.