Michelle Lewis only
Collaborative learning is an instructional method in which student's team together on an assignment. It can vary widely in scope and objectives. Participants may have varied experience and a limited understanding of collaborative learning and its potential to enhance instruction (Moore, 2014).
The strategies suited for collaborative learning include:
• Case studies
• Discussions
• Student-moderated discussions
• Debates
• Collaborative writing
• Collaborative presentation
• Games
• Demonstrators
The above policies are beneficial to students who are involved. These benefits are:
• A celebration of diversity. Students learn to work with all types of people.
• Acknowledgment of individual differences. When questions are raised, different students will have a variety of responses. This helps reflect a wide range of perspectives thus more complete and comprehensive.
• There are more opportunities for personal feedback. Because there are more exchanges among students in small groups compared to large groups
IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNITY IN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
The sense of engagement between learners as being mutual interdependence and sense of trust is the community. Members of the community have shared goals and values. The components of classroom community include spirit which is the feeling of belonging. Trust, which is confidence in one another. Interaction also is the belief that community members have that they may benefit from interacting with others (Sposojevic & Suding, 2012). Finally learning which comes after discussion.
The importance of community in the online environment are:
• It enhances cohesion among community members who participate in these forums
• Through online interaction sharing of ideas among students becomes easy therefore learning is efficient.
• Socializing among students in mixed groups is more interesting, and those with resources share with others and diversity in learning is created.
• Career-related education can be easily accessed by individuals, industries which became more flexible, quicker to react to developing technology and other wider changes.
REFERENCES
Moore, K. D. (2014). Effective instructional strategies: From theory to practice. Sage Publications.
Spasojevic, M. J., & Suding, K. N. (2012). Inferring community assembly mechanisms from functional diversity patterns: the importance of multiple assembly processes. Journal of Ecology, 100(3), 652-661.