Module 1 - Collaborative Learning
The aim of this module is to equipe VET teachers with the basic and fundamentals of Collaborative Learning and strengthen their capacity to:
- support their students in the development of critical transversal skills
- preparing learners for success in academic, professional and real-world settings.
Learning Outcomes
After completing this SDL module, you will have gained the following knowledge, skills and attitudes:
- Increased pedagogical capacity to adapt teaching and education styles to flexible contexts and settings.
- Improved understanding of different assessment strategies for monitoring and evaluating the results, progress, and performance of students.
- Enhanced coaching and mentoring skills to promote and foster learner engagement.
By effective communication we refer to the deployment, adaptation and adoption of easy but essential communication techniques that VET trainers should deploy to facilitate and nurture collaborative learning environments, including (but not limited to): active listening, proposing constructive feedback and promoting mutual respect and understanding.
By team building and problem solving we refer to the capacity of the VET training to establish within the classroom ecosystem and teaching and education setting positive group dynamics and collaborative climate. This is instrumental to help learners understanding how to manage conflict and come-up with creative resolutions, encourage peer-support, build cohesive work teams.
By assessment and evaluation, we refer to activities and actions that VET professionals should and must undertake to ease and support their students in improving their performance, tackle gaps and challenges, provide for tailor-made coaching and mentoring solutions. The guiding criteria reflect and match collaborative learning paradigms and enhances learners’ capacities to move forward autonomously in their learning pathways.
By inclusive practices for collaborative learning we refer to efforts that VET professionals and trainers should implement to settle a learning environment that is inclusive, free from prejudices and stereotypes and sensitive to cultural diversity.
Cognitive restructuring
Effective communication skills are necessary to help you operating at all levels and to establish solid, sound and reliable learning environments.
Your capacity to be an “effective communicator” is key ingredient for collaborative learning as it is instrumental to trigger:
- Active participation and mutual support among learners
- Share and flow of knowledge and know how
- Engagement and teamwork
Team building and the management of groups dynamics is an essential capacity that you should refine to build a cohesive learning team, nurture a mutually supportive community and establish a pleasant learning setting.
Your understanding of group dynamics is prerequisite to better intercept and tackle which kind of “soft” relational dynamics could (pre)exist within the group:
- Informal/formal roles detained by participants, and pre-existing group norms, if any (formal and non-formal as well)
- Impact and influence that certain power and relational dynamics might have over the success of the experience
Team & Group dynamics
Group Problem solving
Collaborative and group-based problem solving gives you the opportunity to foster within the education and training setting new cooperative dynamics.
These mechanisms are aimed at stimulating individuals’ skills and competences to work in groups towards a common ambition, resolve and overcome challenges that might arise, and experience themselves the typical difficulties that come in these work scenarios:
- Miscommunications and misunderstandings
- Decision making and conflicts
Assessment and evaluation in the frame of collaborative learning-settings gives you adequate means and guiding references to:
- Measure of the performance and progresses made by learners
- Keep track of the ongoing impact achieved
- Monitor the benefits generated for people involved
- Timely react with any finetuning measure that might be needed
- Perceive their own effectiveness
Assessment & evaluation
Inclusive practices
Inclusive practices in collaborative learning are aimed at sustaining and supporting the establishment of a learning setting that is perceived safe, warm, welcoming and:
- Free from prejudices
- Accessible and inclusive
- Cultural and gender-sensitive
- Neurodiverse-friendly
Collaborative Learning
You are tasked with the important and prestigious responsibility to guide a group of young VET students through the co-creation of suitable ideas and solutions that your organisation can adopt to “green” their practices and be more sustainable.
The ideas proposed by your work group will be summarised, synthetised and proposed to your board to evaluate their feasibility and concrete potentials of adoption and implementation.
By applying concretely challenge-based scenarios, the ambition of this training programme is to help and support learners in developing green skills and environmental awareness.
Your role is to mediate the discussions and exchange of idea among participants and stimulate the flow of knowledge and creativity.
Case Study:
To fulfil your role, you will need to pay attention to the following guiding pillars of effective communication for collaborative learning:
- Reflect on whether your communication style is “bottom-up” or “top-down” and consider the impact this has on student engagement and participation
- Ensure ample space for students to share their perspectives and viewpoints
- Assess the balance between transferring knowledge and allowing students to develop their own solutions and creative ideas during lessons
- Evaluate the effectiveness and clarity of your communication in conveying key messages
- Be proactive and effective in addressing students’ concerns and doubts
- Develop strategies to engage silent and distant attendees, understanding the underlying reasons for their behaviour and involving them in classroom activities.
- Create a proactive approach to manage misunderstandings and conflicts
- Implement a finely-tuned assessment and feedback system that addresses both classroom-wide and individual needs, and monitors progress systematically
- Ensure there is an organisational-level evaluation model that tracks student satisfaction and adjust based on feedback to improve the learning experience
- Promote and uphold a structured DEI strategy, ensuring that content, resources, and facilities are accessible to all, and provide mechanisms for anonymous feedback to address issues of discrimination and inclusion
The 10 points that you just saw are fundamental ingredients to foster and effective communication style and facilitate a collaborative learning environment. Based on good practices demonstrated by this case study, please take some time to reflect on the following:
- Is my communication style more “bottom-up” or “top-down,” and how does this impact student engagement?
- How proactive and effective am I in addressing students’ concerns and doubts?
- Am I providing enough space for students to share their perspectives and viewpoints?
- Am I clear and effective in conveying key messages and making complex points understandable?
- What strategies do I use to engage silent and distant students, and do I understand the reasons behind their behaviour?
- How do I handle misunderstandings and conflicts in the classroom, and who is responsible for mediation and resolution?
- Do I have a well-structured assessment and feedback system that addresses both classroom-wide and individual needs?
- Do I use an evaluation model that tracks student satisfaction and make adjustments based on feedback to improve the learning experience?
This very simple activity should help you in improving your effective communication skills, articulate your thoughts more precisely, clearly and confidently.
Activity Mirror Speaking
- Select a simple topic or idea to talk about. It could be something you’re interested in or a basic concept you understand well.
- Stand in front of a mirror and imagine you are explaining the chosen topic to someone who knows nothing about it. Speak as if you’re having a conversation with an attentive listener.
- Pay attention to your tone, volume, and pace. Aim to speak clearly and distinctly, emphasising key points naturally.
- After you’ve spoken for a few minutes, assess yourself: Did you convey the information clearly? Were there any points where you stumbled or felt unclear? Take note of areas you can improve.
Activity 2
This second exercise encourages you to approach problems from a different angle, stimulating innovative thinking and helping you uncover new perspectives and solutions that may not have been obvious initially.
Activity Reverse Brainstorming
Reflection Questions
- Choose a specific problem or challenge you’re facing or one that interests you. It could be a personal challenge, a work-related issue, or a hypothetical scenario.
- Instead of brainstorming solutions directly, brainstorm the causes of the problem and write down all the negative aspects related to the problem.
- Take each negative aspect and reverse it so that you can easily identify the countermeasure
- Now brainstorm potential solutions or strategies based on the reversed perspectives. Focus on how you can achieve the positive outcomes identified from the reverse brainstorming.
Tips for VET Educators
In delivering your key messages, make sure to be very concise and straight to the point. Avoid any space for misinterpretation, touch base frequently with your learners, and recommend others to be equally as precise as possible in making their points and structuring their discussions. This not only will help you to same precious time but will also contribute to create common understanding and alignment.
This not only refers to general etiquette, but also to a structured approach to help people collaborating and exercise their creative and critical thinking. Without a precise methodology and guidelines of reference, the risk is that learners lose track of what they’re doing, feel disengaged and confused.
The key value of collaborative learning is in the very same element of “collaboration”. Peer-learning and peer-support gives you the advantage of empowering more skilled people to train their coaching and mentoring capacities, establishing a trust-based learning environment that is both positive, warm and welcoming, and creating and uplifting and safe learning environment for struggling students.
In collaborative learning, it is fundamental that all people have equal opportunity to follow the discussion and participate proactively. Remain responsive and reactive to the different learning styles of participants, and be ready to adapt and alternate different approaches, communication tones and styles that suits the needs of people involved.
Assessment: Effective communication
Conclusion
- Effective communication skills are necessary to help VET providers operating at all levels to establish solid, sound and reliable learning environments. The capacity of the VET training and professional to be an “effective communicator” is key ingredient for collaborative learning.
- Team building and the management of groups dynamics is an essential capacity that VET providers should master to build a cohesive learning team, nurture a mutually supportive community and establish a pleasant learning setting.
- Collaborative and group-based problem solving gives VET professionals the opportunity to foster withing their education and training setting new collaborative dynamics. These mechanisms are aimed at stimulating individuals’ skills and competences to work in groups towards a common ambition, resolve and overcome challenges that might arise
- Inclusive practices in collaborative learning are aimed at sustaining and supporting the establishment of a learning setting that is perceived as safe, warm, welcoming and free from prejudices, accessible and inclusive, cultural and gender-sensitive, neurodiverse-friendly
References
- Järvenoja, H., Malmberg, J., Törmänen, T., Mänty, K., Haataja, E., Ahola, S., & Järvelä, S. (2020). A collaborative learning design for promoting and analysing adaptive motivation and emotion regulation in the science classroom. Frontiers in Education, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00111
- Cheng, F.-F., Wu, C.-S., & Su, P.-C. (2021). The impact of collaborative learning and personality on satisfaction in innovative teaching context. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.713497
- Pozzi F, Manganello F, Persico D. Collaborative Learning: A Design Challenge for Teachers. Education Sciences. 2023; 13(4):331. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040331
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them. Project Number:2022-2-IE01-KA220-VET-
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