Reflection: Think, Question, Explore

Using the strategy 'Think, Question and explore' I reflected on cooperative/collaborative strategies through three different questions:

In this activity I do a reflexion about the simmilarities and differences between cooperative and collaborative learning through the strategy think, puzzle and explore.

Think: What do you think about cooperative/collaborative learning?

Before doing this reflexion, I wasn't sure about the difference between cooperative and collaborative learning, for me, they were synonimous. But after a research, I can see that they are interconnected concepts since both of them are based on working together toward a common goal. However, there are some specific and clear differences.

On the one hand, cooperative learning is focused on finding a solution together, while collaborative learning has the goal to encourage students to be critical thinkers, it means that it doesn't always finish with a product (as cooperative learning does) since the end product is to discuss and collaborate together.

On the other hand, the organization is also different. Small groups around an structured activity is the one of cooperative learning, so they are activities clearly defined and divided into subtasks. Nevertheless,  the collaborative one is based on groups of discussion that can be bigger and they aren't as structured as cooperative activities since its aim is to discuss and generate a debate.

Moreover, one of the goals of cooperative learning is to work as a team and to reflect about their own work together. However, the collaborative one looks for achieving that students are able to be resposible for resolving conflicts on their own and agree or disagree with others about different ways to solve problems.

Consequently, as we can see they are completly different strategies, but in both of them, the most important aspect is the active role of the student in its own learning.

Puzzle: What questions or puzzles do you have?

There are several questions that come to my mind about these two strategies: cooperative and collaborative learning:

How results differ between collaborative/cooperative clasrooms from traditional ones?

Which of the two strategies is better to use depends on the knowledge that we want that our students learn?

Can collaborative and cooperative support acelerate the learning process?

What can you do in case students don't feel motivate working together?

I consider then, that the only way to answer these questions is reflecting about these strategies in deep.

Explore: How could you further explore this topic?

From my point of view, to answer the previous questions, the best way to explore more on this topic would be putting it into practice because using this strategies with a real group of students is what can help you know the differences between them and the best way to apply each of them depends on the topic, group of pupils, motivation, etc. Also, it is necessary to assess results, so as teachers, we should use assessments and rubrics as a way to go in deep into results and be able to answer the previous questions.

Regarding the rubric that we can find in the session 5 about teamwork and collaboration assessment, I would say that it is a good one to use if you are part of a team, as a way to reflect about your partners and your own way to participate with them as a team. For example, if I would use it to talk about the collaborative activity that I did with one of my classmates I would say:

-Team has an extensive project management plan that outlines the tasks to be accomplished, resources that are needed, due dates, assigned aspects to various members and anticipated future needs. The team engages in regular follow-up activities to monitor progress and provide feedback to team members: since before starting the activity (recording), we decided together the context that we would like to talk about, the different difficulties that we could find from our personal point of view and we give ideas to each other about the solutions to fix these issues.

-All team members mobilize personal strengths to set forth their ideas and to negotiate a fit between personal ideas and ideas of others, using contrasts to spark and sustain knowledge advancement of the entire team, acknowledging that each member has a significant role to play and personal responsibility in decision-making: After deciding what ideas we wanted to develop in our recording and taking some notes about it, both of us gave our opinion about what we thought about the ideas of our partner and some improvements that we could do in each idea, always expressing our opinion respectfully.

-Team members know that working to achieve goals requires flexibility in thought and action, being creatively adaptive, “unfreakable” in the face of challenging problems and changing situations: both of us were realised about it since some of our first ideas were changed after reflecting about it together and taking into account our partner's opinion due to de fact that flexibility is necessary in a team activity and the others ideas can help to get better results since you can see the same activity from different points of view.

In conclusion, I consider that our way to work together was very good. We were able to understand each other and it affect to our result positively.

Moreover, I consider that another way to know more about cooperative and collaborative learning and other ways to apply them is asking to other teachers or looking for different applications on the internet. Since knowing about other experiences can help us to take ideas to implement in our classes and to have a clearer knowledge about them.