Collaborative Learning

These days we see a lot of collaborative learning in a lot of schools, universities and even

in some workplaces. If a lot of people have done it before and are still doing it, there must be

some benefits in the process. But before getting into the benefits, let’s talk about what

collaborative learning is.

You can learn from both University of the People and Google that collaborative learning

means “An educational approach to teaching and learning that involves groups of learners

working together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product.” Since you have to

work together in order to succeed in these projects, your teamwork skills will be improved.

Moreover, you will also improve your leadership and communication skills and you will learn

the importance of responsibility. Because there are other people in the project, you will learn the

different cultures and how their thoughts are different from yours. So you can get to know them

better and you can learn from them. And in general, learning with others can be more enjoyable

rather than learning alone. These are just a few benefits and there are more.

For these reasons University of the People applys community-oriented learning into the

classroom. But the university does not have a campus and students aren’t online at the same

time; so how? Because of the developing technology, the university already has students all over

the world. All that is left to do is to make the students interact. For that, the university integrates

tasks such as “Discussion forums” and “Writing assignments” in each course which involves

peer to peer assessment. Moreover, the tasks are graded to make sure the students participate. In

addition, they have Yammer for students to communicate outside of the classroom.
Personally, I don’t have much experience with collaborative learning. I might have done

something similar in middle school but the education in my country is not that advanced. So

these are just some knowledge I have about collaborative learning and how University of the

People does it.