Why promote collaboration and learning from your peers in class?

Collaborative learning involves working in a group to solve a problem or understand an idea. The use of peers in a classroom not only ensures students remain busy with content but also encourages thinking seriously and sharing ideas.

Learning with others allows them to complete assignments and learn new concepts while nurturing skills like teamwork and communication. Group learning can happen both in person as well as online. Technology upgrades make it easy to communicate and share information, images, and videos among a group of students working remotely to collaborate further while discussing.

Benefits of learning in collaboration:

Collaborative learning allows peers to learn not only in a fun but also in an effective way. Additionally, it helps students to learn and develop valuable skills like communication and problem-solving.

Here are four key benefits of collaborative learning:

1. Enhance problem-solving skills: When learning together the activities require a group of students to address a given problem. The group is made in order to discuss and examine different ideas and come up with the best solution. Giving an assignment as a group project can allow learning from one another and also you can pick up the good points from the discussion and avoid the bad ones for future group tasks.
2. Promotes diversity: Collective learning often brings together people from various backgrounds, education, different point of view and ages. Coming up with the best solution, participants get to hear a variety of possible justifications from people with different opinions and points of view. Team members might present new ideas and viewpoints that are unique to their culture or upbringing.
3. Enjoyable process: Learning as a group is often more enjoyable and less annoying than reading, or listening to a lecture all alone. During combining learning exercises, groups generally feel more comfortable, and able to laugh when you have stimulated spiritual discussions. When learning experiences become zesty, students are more likely to recall important pointers.
4. Improves confidence: When working as a group, team members help and support each other as they move toward a common goal. Here, the shortfalls of one member are covered up by another delivering a holistic project. Furthermore, collaborative learning can benefit individuals, who are introverted because a supportive group of members can help them build confidence and participate in discussions.

Quick Tips for collaborative learning

1. Define the most crucial objectives you want the group to accomplish before you begin to plan a collaborative teaching experience
2. Design an educational objective to guide your lesson preparations, and conclude that collaboration can assist students in achieving the objective.
3. As learners engage in collaborative tasks and discussions, move around the room to observe each group.
4. Ask guiding questions if a team gets off-task or offer encouragement when teams work together productively to achieve their goals.
5. Provide time to reflect: Considering the collaborative process can boost learning and help team members improve their skills in future sessions.

According to many studies we can complete that collaborative learning promotes the improvement of critical thinking through discussion, explanation of ideas and judgment of others’ ideas. Classical teaching and collaborative learning are in most cases, effective in obtaining useful knowledge.

We Harshad Valia International School, encourage students to collaborate and learn from peers in class.  It can help them develop their communication and teamwork skills, while also allowing for diverse perspectives and ideas to be shared. In this kind of nurturing environment, students can feel more comfortable asking questions and sharing their thoughts and opinions which is an outcome of curiosity generation in children.