Collaboration as a Learning Theory Blog Post 3

Humans do have a basic instinct to collaborate in order to evolve and discover new forms of wealth. Rheingold mentions the evolution of nomadic hunters banding together in order to hunt bigger game. The evolution of civilization starts with housing structures made from mud. As people began collaborating, the structure of civilizations became empires. The evolution of communicative literacy enables, “new forms of collective action to emerge” (Rheingold, 2008). People began to affiliate with different forms of knowledge, religion and politics. Collaborative learning can also occur as students work together in problem-solving and developing their skills to think critically.

Technology software in the form of groupware is available to support learners with constructivist principles. The collaborative technologies support problem scaffolding. Groupware is available “in the form of virtual access to knowledge experts and online support to make thinking visible” (p. 404). Students are able to communicate within and outside of their learning community, track their progress as a group and conduct investigations.

Hwee Ling Lim (2010) conducts a survey study given to two groups of students after completing an online synchronous course. The course structure basis its principles on constructivists’ views. Learners, “evaluate the extent to which an instructional activity in a virtual environment fosters collaborative learning” (Lim, 2010, p. 306). The first group of students consists of thirteen both native and English as Foreign/Second Language (ESL/EFL) speakers. The second group consists of eight native English Language (EL) speakers. Chat room media experience varies among the two groups. Seventy-seven percent of the EL speakers group uses the chat room media prior to taking the course. Twenty-three percent of ESL/EFL speakers uses the chat room media prior to taking the course. Results show that peer scaffolding was available for both groups at varying levels. A greater degree of collaborative learning was among the smaller group. Lim claims this may be due to group size and participant characteristics. The learners’ difficulties and differences in experiences offer the possibility of modifying the activity for future research.

References:

Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: 
           Pearson Education. 

Lim, H. L. (2010). Scaffolding and knowledge Appropriation in online collaborative group

discussions. Contemporary Educational Technology 1 (4), 306 – 321.          
             http://cedtech.net/articles/142.pdf.

Rheingold, H. (2008, February). Howard Rheingold on collaboration [Video file]. Retrieved

from  http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html.