Collaborative Learning Overview

Collaborative learning is a social interaction in which students plan and accomplish a specific learning task together. It is a discovery process in which students combine their individual strengths to reach a common outcome. During the process students learn from each other, based on each one’s contributions to the learning task.

According to Hoffman (2003), true collaboration is when “the success of the group is paramount and all individuals must contribute to that success.”

Although cooperative learning and collaborative learning require social interaction – and technology can support both- they are not the same type of learning activity. Cooperation implies that students have separate roles and pool their resources to accomplish a specific learning task. Collaboration implies that students work together in different ways to contribute to all aspects of a project, from planning to completing, the end goal, each working together to define a task and its goals by contributing their unique talents and interests from planning to completing the task.

In the tutorial section of this module, we will look at ways to incorporate collaborative learning with technology in your classroom to benefit student learning.