Collaborative Learning and its Advantages

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Education has started to take up a whole new meaning for itself with newer methods being augmented into it. And collaborative learning is one of them. Let us first explore what collaborative learning is all about before going into its advantages. When two or more people sit down to learn something together, share one another’s resources and benefit in learning, then that is known as collaborative learning. It is based on the idea that learning is basically a social act. Collaborative learning is quite a constructive approach for students that fit into the model of reaping maximum benefits in less time.

The Advantages

Collaborative learning creates numerous opportunities for students. The advantages that come with it are numerous. Let’s look at a few of them.

• Learning becomes effective in groups:

The teacher is not necessarily the facilitator in the collaborative learning process. Learning the lessons individually becomes dull and eventually loses its effectiveness. Now this manifests as a diminished understanding and a consequential representation of the same in the exam. Collaborative learning engages interest by inducing a healthy learning atmosphere. This results in collaborative understanding of the topics, figuring out difficult problems in groups which might have seemed impossible to solve individually. Apart from that, students say that they get to learn the material even better if they can explain it to someone. It also helps in assimilating multiple views to deepen knowledge and promote critical thinking.

• Students can relate to a fellow student better than a teacher

Students have, more or less, the same level of understanding and thought process. So students find it easier to ask their peers about their doubts instead of the teacher. Other than that, teachers might be busy and students, in that case, might have to await their turn for their doubts to be clarified. This becomes one of the many factors for students to shy away from putting forward their queries. Peers help students to get back on track if they somehow fall back on their syllabus. Thus students find it more comfortable to learn the subjects with a fellow student. A weaker student could get benefited with one-on-one tutoring. Proper communication builds up in collaborative learning and this aids in better comprehension.

• It makes learning fun

Monotonous lessons become boring after some time when studying alone. But studying in a group changes the whole mood. Students sometimes are required to work into the day for more hours than they would like, especially before the exam. This builds up an unwanted boredom which hinders concentration. Collaborative learning cracks this weariness up into an engaging study duration where students feel free to ask questions, solve problems, and understand difficult topics with their peers. Also assignments could amount to a hefty workload when attempted at accomplishing the same, alone. But it quickly turns into a fun project work with collaborative learning. Students say that it creates a productive comfort zone for them where they can learn while enjoying their work and mitigating their learner isolation.

• Fosters a higher level of performance for the students

Collaborative learning helps in improving critical thinking skills for students along with knowledge retention abilities. This, in turn, results in better performance and as a result, higher self-esteem and a higher interest in the subject. This cycle in collaborative learning ensures getting the best performance out of the students. This is very crucial and effective, if implemented accurately, in a student’s achievement. The more they achieve, the better they would feel about themselves and therefore, would be encouraged to learn more. It also fosters individual accountability in the group and this would make each of them want to reach the target.

• Turns out to be useful in the future

Collaborative learning improves social skills and provides students with a taste of real-life work scenario. An office environment, at a later stage of the students’ lives, will not become a nightmare if they are familiar with the way they need to deal with any difficult situation. Collaborative learning teaches students how to manage a group of co-workers, how to express their ideas in a group and accept others’, how to cooperate and tune the group to proper synchronization and so on. Teamwork, cooperation and communication are the three important takeaways of collaborative learning along with a lucid understanding of the subject.

There are numerous other benefits of collaborative other than the ones we have discussed about. With newer ideas being implemented in education, this one stands out as a cross between recent and old tradition, leaning more towards the older part. Thus identifying and embracing the productive strategies in education is not anymore, much of a task in collaborative learning since the benefits unraveled are unending and most importantly, effective.