Collaborative learning is an educational approach involving groups of learners working together to solve problems, finish a task, or complete a project. The idea that learning is social and that learners can benefit from peer interaction is the foundation of student collaboration in the classroom.
Student collaboration creates more opportunities to exchange knowledge and ideas within groups rather than the traditional teacher-centered approach of delivering information for students to receive.
What is Student Collaboration in the Classroom?
It’s easy to assume that student collaboration solely means group work. The truth is that successful collaborative learning invites so much more impact into the classroom via:
- The development of social skills, critical-thinking, problem-solving, and communication
- Reflection opportunities
- A more empowered role for learners
- A more effective role for teachers
- Specific assessment goals
- Active learning opportunities
Student collaboration strongly emphasizes the process of learning together, not just the outcome. And while group projects can absolutely be a method of nurturing collaborative learning, the approach holds a wider impact: It encourages students to engage deeply with the material, question assumptions, and explore different viewpoints, fostering a deeper understanding and greater content retention.
Why Student Collaboration Matters
Today’s education ranges from in-person, virtual, and hybrid classrooms. The same goes for today’s workforce. Simply, no matter the environment, communication and collaboration are required skills.
Practicing collaboration in the classroom while studying and learning new concepts is a strategic way to help students grow in their development of collaboration as a critical life skill.
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these benefits of student collaboration.
Nurtures Real-World Social and Communication Skill Development
Student collaboration intentionally focuses on developing social skills. It teaches learners how to communicate effectively, listen actively, resolve conflicts, and provide and receive feedback constructively. Some methods that can amplify this skill development in any learning environment include:
- Telling stories
- Creating podcasts
- Narrating the morning announcements
- Completing community PSA projects
- Round table discussions
- Group text readings
- Learner-made videos
Presents Opportunities for Reflection
Student collaboration encourages students to reflect on their learning process, understand their own cognitive strategies, and appreciate diverse perspectives within their group. Learning that not everyone shares the same perspectives and opinions is also a valuable life skill.
Some reflection-forward assignments may include:
- Showing off a passion and presenting it to class
- Sharing biographical information in a creative way
- Making a screencast
- Discussion forums
- Digital book reports
Teachers Facilitate, Learners Lead
With student collaboration, the teacher’s role shifts from being the central source of knowledge to being a facilitator of learning, similar to a teacher’s role in flipped learning.
The teacher designs the learning environment, monitors group dynamics, and provides support and guidance to ensure collaboration in the classroom is productive and addresses learning objectives.
This creates opportunities for students to be more self-expressive, reliant on one another, and creative in their choices, supporting engagement outcomes for diverse learning styles. Examples of assignments that help learners lead are:
- Deep dive interviewing
- Gamification
- Interactive curricula
- Branched pathways and self-paced learning
Promotes Assessment Goals
Student collaboration often involves multi-tiered assessment opportunities. This means that the process and individual contributions are assessed in addition to the final product.
Assessment does not necessarily need to take place by just the teacher. There is power in peer review as part of the assessment process, too. Both instructor feedback and peer feedback allows educators to cultivate a more inclusive, engaging, and reflective learning environment with evaluation in mind.
Lastly, there are also formative and summative assessments options to help monitor and measure effective instruction, locate blind spots, and remediation opportunities to scale. Some assessment strategies may include:
- Revision workshops
- Jigsaw learning
- Peer tutoring
- Instructional peer observations
Regardless of the learning activities assigned, a few guiding principles can promote successful student collaboration.
4 Best Practices to Foster Student Collaboration
Group work can range from two students completing a simple think-pair-share activity to a large group project. Beyond the proven benefits, student collaboration is also an effective way to offload instructor burnout, support diverse learning activities, and activate deeper learning.
Here are four best practices to optimize student collaboration in the classroom.
1. Strategize Group Formations
When forming groups, it’s essential to create and follow guidelines that are clear to the class. Without optimal classroom management and structure, it’s easy for peers to resort to familiar pairings or friend-based groups that detract from the learning goals.
Facilitators should always have a strategy when dictating group formations. In the event learners are allowed to choose, have a guiding framework around it, like selecting peers they haven’t worked with before, or having an equal number of boys and girls, etc., to support new ways of thinking.
Keeping the group size in mind is also essential. Whether online or in-person, groups that are too large risks individuals not participating.
Lastly, consider how to best incorporate various learning styles into groups together. Whether cognitive, emotional, behavioral, or some combination of the three, every student has gifts and tendencies in their preferred ways of learning. Working with diverse types of learning can benefit everyone.
2. Target Learning Goals
All learning activities should connect to learning goals or objectives, as clearly outlined by teachers previous to the activity or lesson. Clear objectives ensure that students understand the task and the expected outcomes. In addition to providing learning goals, include specific instructions and criteria for success to guide students in their group work.
3. Designate Specific Roles
Assign specific roles for each group member and make the expectations clear for the role responsibilities. For example, if a language arts teacher includes collaboration through literature circles, roles may include an illustrator, a discussion leader, a vocabulary specialist, and a summarizer.
Each of these roles should have specific instructions and guidelines to follow for success in their contribution to the group. That way, assessment can also include how each person executed their role as well as how they contributed to the entire group dynamic and outcome.
4. Nurture Collaboration Skills
Collaboration is the action, but nurturing skill development is the goal behind it. In other words, anyone can submit a collaborative research project, but cultivating communication skills, problem-solving, and critical-thinking can quantify whether or not the project was successful.
Not all students are experienced in teamwork, so discussing and modeling the expectations of collaboration in the classroom is essential for success. Make sure to emphasize active listening, conflict resolution, and constructive feedback through examples and modeling.
4 Ways Video Supports Student Collaboration
When implemented effectively, technology helps students collaborate, share resources, and work on projects together.
1. Collaborative Research Projects
A collaborative research project is appropriate for students of all ages. Look at the example below of a collaborative research project from students at Edgerton Public Schools in Alberta, Canada.
This team of teens sought to solve the problem of access to healthy food options after their local greenhouse closed. Using a real-world example, and one based in their community, this was a great way to connect them to their learning goals in a meaningful way.
Multimedia creation is a powerful way to deliver project-based learning and build students' collaboration skills. Check out these video project ideas for more inspiration.
2. Debate an Issue
In groups of four, have students pair off and research a debate topic relevant to the class subject. Assign one pair to represent the for side and the other to represent the against side.
Provide opportunities for them to collaboratively draft a script and with specific roles as recorder and reader, record their stances. They can then combine their opposing arguments in one video and have fellow students determine the winner.
3. Incorporate Feedback With Video
Students should have opportunities to reflect on their learning and progress. An easy way to do this is by incorporating instructor and peer feedback as part of the reflection process.
For digital projects, feedback can happen instantly with multi-user creation from any device, or from educators using real time collaboration tools while students work. Video creation and editing empowers learners to be involved in lessons every step of the way.
Look at the collaboration between College Professor Dr. Jaime Hannans of California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) and her students performing a venipuncture. That’s just one example of the power of using peer reviews for collaborative learning groups.
4. Learner-Made Content
Student collaboration naturally turns learners into leaders by asking them to teach a specific topic or learning objective. This can work well with small groups or as individual students. Simply assign students a given topic and ask them to create their own content (learner-made interactive videos are a great place to start).
Strengthen Student Collaboration With WeVideo
Ultimately, student collaboration and active learning go hand in hand. Nurturing learning outcomes requires curricula that engages, helps learners retain knowledge, and perform in the way that works best for them.
Modern classrooms are incorporating video more than ever to maximize tools learners have come to expect in instruction. That’s why WeVideo’s dynamic video learning platform easily syncs with learning management systems and video hosting platforms to streamline workflows for educators with tools that make student collaboration easy to prioritize.