Collaborative-ness

What makes for a highly effective team or group?

As my father always says, “Communication is the Key!” A highly effective team or group practices effective communication. Each member of the group is just as much of a listener as they are a contributor. Work done by each group member is transparent, and each member of the group does his or her fair share of the work. Remember the old clique, “There is no I in team.”

How is collaboration different than group work or cooperative learning?

Collaboration is different than group work or cooperative learning. I do not know if that statement is particularly true. However, this is my understanding of the differences in a school setting. Collaboration is what the teachers do. They combine expertise in order to form not only a more extensive and well-rounded curriculum, but to expand the amount of subject matter that each teacher is an expert of. In a group work or cooperative learning scenario, each group member is typically a student and is not characteristically an expert in anyone subject area of knowledge. Often students at different ability levels are grouped together. The work of the group is typically to expand comprehensible knowledge one subject area. This is opposed to teacher collaboration where each group member has at least a different area of emphasis in their expertise or even a whole new subject area all together. Despite all this, in the real world, I think collaboration and group work/cooperative learning are closely related in the sense that they compose of a group of individuals that want to (or at least should want to) develop a better understanding of something or to make something better.

I will take a quick opportunity to say that I feel teacher collaboration is a must, at least within departments. However, it should be noted that interdepartmental collaboration also carries benefits to student learning. Either way, collaboration is a necessary factor in providing students with a stronger, better-rounded education. To use another trite and overused expression in the same blog: when it comes to collaboration, “two heads are better than one.”