Promote higher-level thinking, diverse perspectives, community building, and the development of interpersonal communication and digital literacy skills through collaborative learning in your classroom.
Collaborative learning views students as active, social agents. Students may work in small or large groups to discuss readings, work on projects, and solve problems.
By working together and supporting one another through their diverse knowledges and skills, groups of students can gain a more complete understanding of course content and learn how to tackle complex problems within their discipline.
Increasingly, this approach is being facilitated by a wide range of digital tools, such as learning management systems, online writing platforms, schedulers, and even virtual reality or other cloud-based services.
While these tools can be effective in facilitating collaboration, appropriate pedagogical design and facilitation are important to create a successful learning experience.
O’Donnell, A. M., & Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2013). Introduction: What is collaborative learning?: An overview. The international handbook of collaborative learning, 1-15.
Zheng, B., Niiya, M., & Warschauer, M. (2015) Wikis and collaborative learning in higher education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 24:3, 357-374.
Funded projects
Between 2020W2 and 2022W2, Arts ISIT partnered with instructors through a Small Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF) grant, Strategies for the Effective Design and Implementation of Collaborative Peer Learning Activities.
Together they sought to build capacity within the Faculty of Arts to facilitate the adoption of peer pedagogies through collaborative writing while supporting activities like peer review and group projects.
View the summary report to learn more about the project outcomes, including common affordances, barriers, and collaborative learning technologies.
Teaching stories
Some of the instructors who took part in this Small TLEF grant wished to share their experiences with others. Their teaching stories provide recipes to inspire others when seeking to implement collaborative learning in their own classrooms.
Featured resources
Arts ISIT support
Arts ISIT has a wide range of supported tools and can provide guidance when determining how these may best support the collaborative environments that you are envisioning.
Contact us for consultation and support with learning technologies and tools to support collaborative learning.