Abstract:

Collaborative learning refers to an approach that requires students to work together on problems resulting in a joint solution. Groups interact given a common goal, creating meaning, exploring a topic, or improving skills. Students teach and learn from each other, helping them to think critically and participating with explanations and justifications. The idea is to encourage thinking and sharing, in a way to make students more engaged with the learning experience and so with a better understanding of knowledge. Other positive consequences of collaborative learning include student involvement and satisfaction, as well as the likelihood that the entire group will learn instead of only few students.

Beyond supporting the development of technical skills, collaborative learning provides opportunities to enhance transversal competences, for instance communication, negotiation, and creativity. It fosters positive interdependence, individual accountability, self-discipline, and interpersonal skills. Technology has been a positive allied of collaborative learning, as systems are developed to facilitate the application of activities. In this trend, web systems are relevant to make collaboration possible in e-learning applications. Collaborative learning obtained relevance with flipped classrooms, since class moments focus on having students involved in activities to make them understand and investigate concepts studied previously.

There are distinct kinds of collaborative activities. For instance, pair programming can contribute to increase learning outcomes; meanwhile it can improve learners’ satisfaction and confidence. Code reviews can help students to improve code quality and software testing, to stimulate elaborated discussions about programming issues, and to promote sense of community. Sharing of rationales is a way to promote reflective thinking during collaborative learning activities. Collaboration can also be used during course assessments, for example with reviews of questions, allowing a better performance of students when they have access to partners’ answers, but also an improvement on learning effectiveness.

We investigated the application of three collaborative activities used as assessments in a computing course. In the first activity, each student answers an exercise, he/she receives two written reviews of other students, and then he/she has the opportunity to make again the own exercise. In the second activity, each student answers an exercise, and later in groups students discuss the exercise and provide a joined answer. In the third activity, students are divided in groups and should provide a joined answer for the exercise at the end. The difference is that, after established intervals, students migrate among groups, so they can interact with others.

Compared to the experience of students in performing assessments with traditional exams, we found that collaborative activities decreased students’ anxiety. Collaborative activities also improved learning effectiveness, learning satisfaction, social learning, learning timing, and self-confidence. We argue that the dissemination of collaborative activities is interesting to allow application and validation in other contexts. The proposed activities can be adapted, especially regarding duration and exercises’ subject.

Keywords:

Collaboration, Learning effectiveness, Learning satisfaction.