Collaborative Learning - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 40

probing the views of others in a dialectical man-
ner was an early form of collaborative learning
used to explore ideas, positions and rational
thinking. Dewey, a prominent educational phi-
losopher writing in Experience and Education
(1938) was critical of didactic, structured and
traditional methods of education because they
took little account of the human experience. He
argued that learning should be part of everyday
actions and everyday relationships. Within our
community, many rural children who attended
one teacher schools used collaborative processes
for learning. Whilst the sole teacher worked with
one small group of students other groups were
given group activities as part of the classroom
learning. The resurgence of collaborative learning
emerged during the 1980s in the USA although
Bruffee (1992, p.23) believed the idea was first
developed in London together with movements
towards democratization of education.
In this chapter, we have chosen the term col-
laborative learning as we prefer this to cooperative
learning. Whilst there is debate in the literature
about the differences between these two types
of learning (Barkley, Cross & Major, 2005) both
terms are often used interchangeably. Writers
from both traditions draw on research from the
other area. It appears that, in general, cooperative
learning is regarded as learning that takes place
in the classrooms of younger children whilst col-
laborative learning is more apparent in colleges
and universities (Barkley, Cross & Major, 2005,
p.7). In our mind, with our focus on higher edu-
cation and the human services this distinction is
artificial and, we prefer the term collaborative to
cooperative learning. Despite the preference for a
particular term, we will draw on the cooperative
learning literature given the similarities, parallels
and overlaps between the two terminologies.
Collaborative learning takes place in a struc-
tured social situation where a group of students
work as a team to assist each other with learning
tasks. The learning process is facilitated by a
teacher using a range of instructional strategies

derived from various theoretical perspectives.
These instructional strategies encourage student to
student interaction and allow the teacher to act as a
guide for learning rather than as a sage who knows
all answers. In these structured groups, learning
becomes a process in which all participants col-
laborate to maximize their own learning and that
of other students. When students work together,
they create new knowledge by sharing ideas and
experiences, evaluating ideas and concepts, and
building or creating new ideas and ways of work-
ing from a professional area or discipline. Groups
are able to achieve outcomes which an individual
cannot achieve alone.
Collaborative learning does not always oc-
cur in traditional academic classrooms which
may be both competitive and individualistic. In
a traditional university classroom, the mode of
teaching is through transmission of information
from teacher to students. The teacher conducts
the lecture and requires that students complete
assignments independently. This is what Paulo
Friere (1993) called the banking approach. In this
model, students are passive and have little social
interaction with the teacher. Not every classroom
uses this approach but it is widely used for large
lectures. Johnson, Johnson and Smith (1991b,
p.3) compared the traditional teaching model
with that of collaborative groups. Traditional
teaching groups are characterized by a lack of
interdependence and individual accountability,
with homogeneous membership and one leader
who is the teacher and direct specific classroom
tasks. Traditional teaching groups ignore social
skills and relationships, groups of students or group
processing. In the collaborative classroom, there
is positive interdependence between students but
also individual accountability for group effort, de-
liberately encouraged heterogeneous membership
and shared leadership between group members.
The value of this to students is that individual
strengths are valued and utilized and students
can learn in a place where they feel safe. This is
important for students who feel vulnerable in a