Collaborative Learning Hurdles

This week's topic involves issues that all instructors encounter when they mandate collaboration in or outside of the classroom:
1) How should participation in a collaborative learning community be assessed? How do the varying levels of skill and knowledge students bring to a course affect the instructor's "fair and equitable assessment" of learning?

Collaboration in an online setting, like Google Docs, Titan, and other collaborative capturing tools collect the information and work contributed by the team members and allows for transparency. Other classroom projects, in and outside of class, are not so transparent and there's always room for finger pointing when the project comes to a conclusion. It's a standard in the schools that I've encountered to offer a 50-50 grade, to give equal compensation to the individual for their contribution and to the group, but how is one to know unless the work was divvied and tracked? I typically give one group grade unless I hear a complaint that reveals that someone contributed nothing. I see collaboration as an opportunity for the stronger skill set students to step up and model successful achievement, quiet but thoughtful students to share their brilliance in a more public way, and for students to get through the project together.

2) If a student does not want to network or collaborate in a learning community for an online course, what should the other members of the learning community do? What role should the instructor play? What impact would this have on his or her assessment plan?


Students that do not want to network or collaborate are not new in online learning. In f2f classrooms, there were always students that tried to hide behind their wall of disengagement. This isn't so easy to do with participation requirements in online learning. The best thing for active students is to reach out, without insult, with an open mind, with an intention of including the absent student. The instructor can help reach out if the peer group is unable to get in touch with the absent student, but I find it in the best interest to stay out of such situations. In the business world, students will find themselves needing to motivate such people and these projects are a great practice field.