Preface

The twenty-first century continues to pose a paradox for higher education. At a time when students and parents consider a college education a necessity and getting into a “good” college is more important and more competitive than ever before, legislators, accrediting agencies, the American public, and educators are raising questions about what students are learning in college—and they are asking for evidence.

Widespread concern has spawned more research, more publications, more legislation, and more exhortation for improvement focused on teaching and learning than at any time in history. The scrutiny has even generated what many consider a whole new field: the scholarship of teaching and learning. The major questions driving this attention concern how to improve the quality of student learning, how to improve the effectiveness of teaching, and how to do both affordably and efficiently. While opinions differ on how much progress we have made in this quest thus far, there is virtually unanimous agreement on the enduring need for improvement.

Collaborative learning attracts interest because it addresses several major preoccupations related to improving student learning. First, the predominant conclusion from a half-century of research is that teachers cannot simply transfer their knowledge to students. Students must build their own minds through a process of assimilating information into their own understandings. Meaningful and lasting learning occurs through personal, active engagement. The advantages of collaborative learning for actively engaging students are clear when compared with more traditional methods—such as lecture and large group discussions—in which only a few students typically can, or do, participate.

Second, many employers consider willingness and readiness to engage in productive teamwork a requirement for success. For some companies and professions, it is a prerequisite for employment. Collaborative learning offers students opportunities to learn valuable interpersonal and teamwork skills and dispositions by participating in task-oriented learning groups; thus, even beyond enhancing the learning of content or subject matter, collaborative groups develop important skills that prepare students for their careers.

Third, our increasingly diverse society requires engaged citizens who can appreciate and benefit from different perspectives. At the same time, most local, national, and global challenges require long-term, collective responses. Learning to listen carefully, think critically, participate constructively, and collaborate productively to solve common problems are vital components of an education for modern-day citizenship.

Finally, colleges and universities want to provide greater opportunities for a wider variety of students to develop as lifelong learners. In traditional lectures, students generally are treated as a single, passive, aggregated entity. Collaborative learning engages students of all backgrounds personally and actively, calling individuals to contribute knowledge and perspectives to the education of all developed from their unique lives as well as academic and vocational experiences.

Background and Audience

It is in this context that we came to this work, which is a collaborative endeavor in itself. We share some characteristics: we are educators seeking to make higher education better, we are researchers seeking evidence about how to accomplish that, and we are teachers with a vested interest in improving practice. We came to this project with the following questions about collaborative learning:

• How will collaborative learning improve learning? What is the theoretical basis and pedagogical rationale for collaborative learning?
• What is the evidence that collaborative learning promotes and improves learning? And how convincing is that evidence?
• Which students are most likely to benefit from collaborative learning? And for which learning tasks is it most appropriate?
• How can discipline-oriented college teachers organize effective learning groups in their classrooms? How are groups formed and learning tasks structured?
• What are some imaginative and creative strategies and techniques for challenging students? How can teachers adapt collaborative learning techniques (CoLTs) to their courses and teaching goals?

In this handbook, we address these questions as well as many others.

While preparing the first edition of this book, we considered the evidence for collaborative learning sufficiently compelling to add a new question: Given the evidence demonstrating that most students learn more and more deeply when teachers employ collaborative methods effectively, why didn't more teachers use collaborative learning? We believed the answer probably lay in the following reasons: many teachers were unaware of the evidence about the benefits of collaborative learning, and many teachers did not know how to implement group learning activities effectively. The primary purpose of this handbook therefore was and continues to be to provide college and university teachers—regardless of prior knowledge and experience with instructional design or pedagogy—a resource for implementing collaborative work successfully.

A second purpose of this handbook is to encourage faculty to experiment with collaborative learning methods in well-informed and reflective ways. It is no more possible to learn to teach effectively by reading alone than it is to learn to practice medicine by studying only books. Both are part art and part technique. Both take practice. For that practice to be most effective, however, it should be well informed and reflective. Informed teaching requires making instructional decisions based on the collected wisdom from scholarship and practice. Reflective teaching implies assessing and documenting its efficacy. Without this, it is difficult to know whether even well-informed innovations actually make a positive difference in student learning or there is enough difference to justify the effort invested. To that end, we have included advice on assessment techniques that can help document and determine the effectiveness of collaborative learning activities.

A third purpose emerged as we started revising the handbook for this new edition. During the ten years since it was first published, there has been a significant growth in online learning. While instruction in higher education has traditionally taken place during a meeting between an instructor and a group of students at a shared location, online learning, in which teachers and students are separated by distance and quite possibly by time, has become an increasingly mainstream form of higher education. A recent survey of 2800 institutions of higher education indicated that as of fall 2011 6.7 million students, representing 32% of total enrollment, were taking courses online (Allen & Seaman, 2013).

Whereas early online instructors typically focused on transmitting information to students in a manner similar to onsite lecture courses, today they are adopting a range of instructional methods, many of which prioritize learning “through interactions among students” (Stahl, Koschmann, & Struthers, 2006, p. 2). The methods they are choosing seek to contribute to the development and practice of student teamwork skills and dispositions. In short, online instructors are moving away from using content delivery as the primary instructional format and are looking for ways to create opportunities for collaboration between learners (Dirkx & Smith, 2004).

In addition to searching for strategies to enhance the effectiveness of online learning, college teachers are also experimenting with other curricular approaches. For example, in the flipped classroom, students study material independently first and then work in class in more meaningful ways with the content, including interacting with their peers. Collaborative learning activities are ideal in the onsite classroom sessions of flipped courses, so we provide examples on how to implement them throughout Part Three of this handbook.

Finally, due to the increased cost of providing higher education combined with the rising demand for it, large lecture classes, in which several hundred students are enrolled, is also becoming a more common course structure. Professors who have been asked to take a lead role in developing these high-impact classes often have demonstrated particular effectiveness as teachers. Many of them recognize the value of collaborative learning and are looking for ways to implement it effectively in classes with a large number of students. A primary third purpose of this second edition, therefore, is to provide guidance on implementing collaborative learning effectively in the online classroom and other alternative classroom environments.

This handbook is written for current and aspiring college and university teachers. However, we hope it will be read and used in collaborative ways—not just by individual teachers but also by faculty developers, instructional designers, department chairs, and other academic administrators interested in promoting teaching, and improving learning. Teaching circles, seminars, departments, and other educator groups also can employ the material presented in this handbook to provide participants with opportunities to try out, discuss, and get feedback from each other on collaborative learning techniques before transferring them to the classroom.

How to Use This Book Effectively

This handbook is divided into three parts that attempt to address the what, why, and how...