By: Alissa Damiano
Benefits of Group Collaboration
In the article titled, “Writing Eyeball to Eyeball: Building a Successful Collaboration” the author Rebecca Ingalls discusses the importance of collaboration in the classroom as well as the important steps needed to make group work successful. Group work within the classroom can be very beneficial to students since it allows them to collaborate on different ideas created by each individual student and helps them to brainstorm new ideas. Students tend to learn a lot from their peers and having this influence on one another can help students understand a concept better and teach it to students who may be struggling to understand the topic. Group work can also be beneficial to students since it allows them to fail and learn from their mistakes. Collaboration works best through the process of trial and error since ideas are thrown out and determined whether they work or not within these groups. Having different ideas and opinions in a group can help students come to an effective solution for the problems they are working on.
Group work works best when all of the students in the group are collaborating and inputting their ideas. There should not be one student within the group that is working harder than the others, that is not group work. It should be established in the classroom that every member needs to pull their weight in order for there to be a successful collaboration and solution to their work. Good, effective communication needs to be established within each collaborative group and that should be discussed between the teacher and the students prior to group collaboration starting. If these rules and guidelines are established by the teacher, the students will understand their role in their groups and have an effective learning environment.
Using Group Collaboration in the Future
Personally, I would love to use a lot of collaborative group work in my classroom in the future. I feel that students benefit greatly from learning new ideas from their peers and bouncing their ideas off of one another. I want my students to understand the rules as well as their roles within their groups in order to help this learning strategy become effective. I would take the time to ensure that each student within the group gets the chance to work with everyone in the class to evaluate who they work best with. Sometimes students may not work the best with certain students so grouping students that work best together is important and will help students to perform at their best.
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