Collaboration Project Paper

COLLABORATION BETWEEN STUDENTS 1
Collaboration Between Students
Tory Stout
Collaboration Project Paper
May 2, 2017
Purpose of Project:
Collaboration between students starts at a young age in the classroom. There are multiple
strategies used to make this cooperative learning the most effective, and hopefully beneficial for
students’ learning. In secondary education and as students get older, they are asked more and
more to participate in group work. However, also as these students are getting older,
collaboration can be harder to implement depending on the classroom and environment.
Collaboration is also affected by the relationships between not only the students, but the students
and teacher as well.
While collaboration between students is great for a student’s learning, it is important that
it is implemented correctly. When this happens, students work together to support each other as
well as themselves in a classroom. Through this process, they are strengthening their social skills
as well as their metacognition. It is important to recognize the relationship students have with
collaboration to make it effective and useful for students all throughout their education career.
When creating this project, I used the practicum class I was placed in this semester. This
class is a Special Education Language Arts class. There is a total of ten students and they are
split up into two groups of five. In the classroom, group work is a main component of their
learning. However, I found that when these students were in group work, there were a few issues.
Students were not on task when engaging in group work because they didn’t know where to start.
They would also argue over which slides each student would be in charge of, and each student
wanted the “easy” slides. When the students did work on a project, they would not collaborate on
their ideas. As a result, the power points would not be cohesive and they would not make sense.
Literature Review:
The key to collaboration is that the students are still finding their own answers, but they
are using each other as resources and support in order to help them arrive at those answers. This
social support gives the student the ability to then self-reflect and elaborate with a responsive,
questioning partner (Higgins, L., Flower, L., & Petraglia, J, 1992). The fact that students are able
to work together to support each other as well as themselves is a topic that should be explored
and used more exclusively in classrooms. When asked, “do you think it is important for students
to take part in cooperative learning? Why or why not?”, the teacher I worked with this semester
replied, “It is extremely important for all students to participate in cooperative learning. They
learn social norms, taking responsibility, and being accountable. They learn how to work
respectfully, negotiate, and compromise. It also helps cover some of the standards for speaking
and listening,” (Castillo, 2017).
Methodology:
For the collaboration project, I decided I wanted to focus on the power point projects my
practicum students completed quite frequently. To do this, I started by implementing roles and
rules. I decided to keep it simple, so I established two basic rules for each group of five students.
They were to listen to everyone’s input and to be respectful of group members. I thought that
these two rules encompassed other smaller rules within them and were a great baseline to start
with. In order to help with the organization and cohesive-ness of group work, I decided to assign
roles to each group member.
The roles were: on task manager, organizer, recorder, artist, and time keeper. These roles
would be rotated once a week. The task manager is responsible for what it sounds like, making
sure everyone in the group is on task. The organizer’s job is to organize the power point in ways
that made sense. The recorder writes down the ideas the group has regarding the power point, as
well as any questions that they may have for the teacher. The artist looks up art to decorate the
slides. Finally, the time keeper tells the rest of the group when it is time to wrap up for the day. It
is important to note that while the students each have their own roles, they are still responsible
for looking up content related to the topic. They are expected to work together and share their
ideas regarding the content, and use the roles to help them with this process.
Results:
After these roles and rules were implemented, there was a significant difference in the
way students participated in group work. Students knew what was expected of them and because
of this, the time that it took to get started on a task was significantly less than before. Lastly, the
process of creating presentations was more cohesive and organized. As a result of this, the power
point presentations made more sense. However, it is important to note that the teachers still had
to assign specific slides to each student for them to complete. The students were unable to fairly
divide tasks among themselves and still needed assistance to make sure everyone was getting the
same amount of work.
Conclusion:
Based on the students I was working with in my practicum, I think it was a great idea to
start off by implementing roles and rules for them to follow. This gave them structure and
consistency, which I think is what they needed. However, as stated in the results, the students
still had trouble working together to assign slides and other tasks fairly. If I had time to continue
with this project, this would have been the next step. In order for this to work successfully, the
students need to have a fairly strong relationship with one another. This way they can trust that
everyone is going to contribute to the slides that they are assigned. It takes strong classroom
management and a solid learning environment for this to happen. I would have liked to look into
these relationships more.

References
Arends, R. (2015). Cooperative Learning. In Learning to Teach (tenth ed.). McGraw-Hill
Education.
Castillo, L. Student Collaboration Interview. [Personal Interview].
Higgins, L., Flower, L., & Petraglia, J. (1992). Planning text together: The role of critical
reflection in student collaboration. Written communication, 9(1), 48-84.
Lazonder, A. W. (2005). Do two heads search better than one? Effects of student collaboration
on web search behaviour and search outcomes. British Journal of Educational
Technology, 36(3), 465-475

Collaboration Project Paper

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Collaboration Project Paper

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Collaboration Project Paper

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

COLLABORATION BETWEEN STUDENTS 1

Collaboration Between Students

Collaboration Project Paper

collaboration can be harder to implement depending on the classroom and environment.

and teacher as well.

and listening,” (Castillo, 2017).

roles to each group member.

same amount of work.

these relationships more.

Arends, R. (2015). Cooperative Learning. In Learning to Teach (tenth ed.). McGraw-Hill

Castillo, L. Student Collaboration Interview. [Personal Interview].

reflection in student collaboration. Written communication, 9(1), 48-84.

on web search behaviour and search outcomes. British Journal of Educational

Technology, 36(3), 465-475

You might also like