Week 32 - Reflect on your learning journey

Problem Identification

One of the main problems I identified in my Mindlab learning journey was students not collaborating well when working on digital projects. This was really important to increasing achievement as students were not taking the opportunities available to them through collaboration, such as shared learning, improved communication and problem solving. Teachers were reluctant to action planned collaborative lessons because of the tension within groups and poor outcomes and therefore teachers were asking for 1-1 devices and the strain on resources increased and inquiries were left incomplete. 

Observation and Analysis

Using a focus group of students I sought to understand the nature of the problem with collaboration from students. Students just did not know what collaboration was, how to collaborate, what it looked like and how valuable it could be for their learning. Through research I also gained knowledge around the benefits of explicitly teaching collaboration to students and a variety of strategies recommended to do so. This was the driving change, that collaborative needs to be taught explicitly and in doing so can make effective change.

Abstract Reconceptualization

Lai, DiCerbo & Foltz (2017) in association with Partnership for 21st Century Learning white paper on What We Know about Teaching and Assessing Collaboration collates useful learning theories and research to break down three main aspects of collaboration that need to be taught: communicating with others, resolving conflicts, and managing tasks, as this is what good collaboration looks like.

The research points to 3 key areas that can inform my innovation.

• Students need to be able to Peer evaluate effectively using a rubric to lead to better collaboration
• Smaller groups chosen by the teacher can be more effective for improved collaboration
• Assigning roles within the groups may encourage collaboration

Nussbaum et al (2008) also put forward a collaborative plan that showed evidence as being effective in enabling students to be responsible for their own learning as well as the learning of their peers. They show evidence of Collaborative learning approaches to building knowledge together and being successful in their task as opposed to cooperative learning approaches or peer tutoring.

Linked to the Hack research project, under the theme Collaborative. This model captures three core concerns; the individual learner, and how they approach learning in collaborative situations, the role of technology as a critical thinking and problem solving tool or a means to be more collaborative and the contemporary world, with future focussed vision and innovative learning environment settings as another perspective. 

Active experimentation 

Working with a group of students we created our own collaboration rubric and did various tasks to understand and pull apart what our rubric looked like in the classroom with 4 key elements Leadership, participation, listening and feedback. Students had opportunties to engage in a variety of problem solving challenges. Having focus goals within the rubric when working together and students self assigning roles within the group made collaboration explicit and implicit within the learning experience. Time for self reflection and feedback to peers that was honest and based in the rubric was helpful and honest and provided valuable feed forward for students. Teachers have provided feedback that students involved in this group were more confident in the classroom, managed groups well and led collaborative practice with others.