Collaborative Learning

Consider the times you've been asked to learn collaboratively in your classes. In which subjects does it work best? In which subjects is it counterproductive? Why?

Before I read Bruffee's article, I never would have considered using collaboration in a writing class. To me, writing is personal and individualistic -- asking students to collaborate on a writing piece would take away the entire meaning of the process. This is probably because I've had a handful of negative experiences with writing in groups. My experiences have run the gammit ... I've had group members who have terrible grammar/spelling, those who don't contribute anything useful, and even those who plagiarize (and it's a well-known fact that I am on the Honor Council! Come on, people). The worst of them all, though, is working with students whose core ideas and thoughts differ from my own. It is nearly impossible to work collaboratively with a student whom you have nothing in common with! For all of those reasons, writing collaboratively has always been a sore subject for me ... but the I read Bruffee's definition of collaboration more closely.

It seemed to me that Bruffee treated collaboration in writing as an additional way to try to grasp concepts and ideas; working together to piece together an understanding of subjects. In this way, I wholeheartedly agree with him. He speaks about writing as an extension of conversation -- and that is how I operate. I learn things by talking them through, hearing other people's points of view and modifying mine. My writing often sounds stream-of-consciousness because I write like I talk. Bruffee and I definitely agree on this "conversation" thing.

However, I hardly think I'm alone in my preconceptions of how collaboration works in a classroom. So, how do we reconcile Bruffe's definition with mine? How can we modify our existing ideas about collaboration in order to use it effectively? I still think that collaboration works best for science or reading -- these subjects provide explicit instances about which you can compare opinions and understandings. Math is more straightforward, and there's not much room for disagreement. Writing is more personal, and there is a lot less to argue about because it's okay for each person to be right in his or her own way. Where can we collaborate effectively? And how?