Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn together and is a great new technique to help students learn and understand the material. The article by Kenneth A. Brufee states that students did not want to receive help with work when it was offered. I think that the best way for students to get the help they need in order to succeed in school is to make it mandatory. The article says, "These programs failed because undergraduates refused to use them. Many solutions to this problem were suggested and tried, from mandated programs that forced students to accept help they evidently did not want. . ." I think that if students are required to get help for school, it will force them into the right direction and will make them think more because they will be working with someone else.
I think collaborative learning will be a great style of learning that will help students learn the most that they can. Working with other people is a great way to learn because peers bring new ideas to the table that maybe someone else in a group would have never thought of. Collaborative learning helps diversify ideas because everyone involved in the group is exchanging his or her own opinions. Sometimes students prefer to work with peers rather than working with teachers or professors because they have that comfort level of someone who is in the same situation as they are. Also, peer tutoring helps students because they bounce ideas back and forth off of one another. The article says, "To provide that alternative some colleges turned to peer tutoring."
Having conversations with others and discussing the thoughts that students have enables us to broaden our horizon and understand things that we otherwise would not know. Conversation allows students to debate and share ideas, which in the end helps students learn. Trying to think when one is alone does not enable that person to experience and generate ideas as much as he or she would if they were involved in conversation. The article says, To the extent that thought is internalized conversation,then, any effort to understand and how we think requires us to understand the nature of conversation;and any effort to understand conversation requires us to understand the nature of community life that generates and maintains conversation."
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Indeed, thought is simply internalized conversation. When one reads a powerful piece of work, profound emotions are evoked. it leads one to question certain aspects of the world, and contemplate deeply. One asks themselves questions, and answers them by conversing with others. Therefore, collaboration is necessary to make that internalized conversation into something substantial, and allow one's knowledge to increase.
ReplyDeleteJust like our collaborations in class, conversation is important to help create meaning. Working together helps us to fill in the blanks where we might be missing important pieces of the puzzle were creating of information. Questions get answered, and new questions... more important questions get formed. The conversation we should all be having should be important, and what is more important to us then preserving our planet. After all, we do all live here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the point you made that "Having conversations with others and discussing the thoughts that students have enables us to broaden our horizon and understand things that we otherwise would not know." I too believe that it is essential to get other peoples points of view in order to understand certain things from anothers perspective.
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