Please stop by to have a cup of coffee and share a poem or saying that has shaped your outlook on life.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

Collaborative vs. Cooperative Groups

Recently, I heard it said that when you collaborate, the group result is smarter than the smartest member. And to me that’s a pretty good reason to collaborate! When each member of the group brings with him/her a different set of experiences and is willing to contribute ideas and respectfully consider others’ thoughts, the stage is set. Then, when there ensues discussion of the ideas, debate, questions, clarifications, and building upon the initial ideas, it becomes a collaboration. The group agrees upon a course of action and then writes, edits and revises the final report. The result of a successful group collaboration is more robust, more complex, and more complete than what one member would have been able to produce.

Cooperative group work, on the other hand, lacks the same degree of social interaction, the evolution of ideas, the construction of knowledge. The cooperative group cuts the task into pieces, farms out the work to members, and each member goes off and does their task, and somehow at the end they cobble the pieces back together.

Our group strove to follow the collaborative approach. We met in Palace three times and used the discussion forum and wiki. We emailed a lot - sharing ideas and revising versions of the text. I felt that during this exercise I learned about the learning process and learned new approaches to teaching and preparing lessons from my team members.

Our group idea was that Janice would do an interdisciplinary, technology-infused unit on the presidential election using constructivist principles. Within this unit students would do various individual and group activities including Internet research on the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, participate in an on-line kids election and online computer election simulations, write blogs, create a class wiki, devise campaign slogans and signs and create a brief campaign video. For the culminating project, Janice would facilitate a debate with students taking the roles of the candidates.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

DaphneG1 Collaborative vs Cooperative Groups

From reading the blog on collaborative vs cooperative groups, I discern that collaborative groups are the way to go. Karen Amster states that collaborative groups are more "robust, more complex and more complete than what one member would have been able to complete". I would agree with this since collaborative is defined as all processes which involve the work of several people as a whole, and produces a feeling of enrichment, respect, and solidarity. It's everyone's responsibility.
Whereas, cooperative refers to learning, but more in the form of a group presentation. While this is similar to collaboration, it is as Devonee Gram and Karen Amster state "states that the cooperative group "farms out the work to members, and each member goes off and does their task, and somehow at the end they cobble the pieces back together".