Abstract:

It is well understood that humans learn in groups and the effectiveness of peer learning is well established. There are different schools of thought on how these groups should be created.
There have been many a research and case studies on the right size of teams, evaluating the ideal team compositions, teaching methodologies on implementing peer and collaborative learning.

One approach is to create homogeneous groups of students which have similar abilities, aptitudes and objectives. Multiple assessment techniques have been used to categorise students in such groups. The basic premise behind this approach is to allow a group of students learn at a common pace. Though the advantages of this system have been debated over for a long time, this is still widely prevalent throughout the world.

Since naturally humans being are very different from each other so homogeneous grouping is not a natural order.

The purpose of our research was to develop suite of methodologies and techniques which can be effectively used to make a heterogeneous group of students learn together. The research was carried out on a group of 60 students at an engineering school in North India. A typical sample of students in Indian engineering schools are heterogeneous not only in terms of their capabilities but also in terms of the cultural background given the diversity of population in India. This requires a customized methodology for Indian students as well as teachers.

The students were from multiple engineering schools and from different streams of engineering viz. Computer Science, Information Technology, Electronics Engg and Electrical Engineering. There was also a mix of students undergoing their pre-final year and final year undergraduate program. They even had different objectives for attending this program.

The overall common objective of the program was to make these students industry ready and to align their vocational training with the demands of the industry.

In this paper, we describe some of the innovative improvisations of collaborative learning which we learned and developed. We will also be giving our perspective on 
a) How to make engineering studies more interesting?
b) The customisations we did on the Moodle framework to use if effectively in Indian Engineering Schools.
c) The significance of creating small teams and the parameters which should be used to create teams. We will also be analysing some case studies on the team compositions which were successful and which were not.
c) The power of re-iteration.
d) The effective use of regular student feedback. Developing students trust in the feedback system.
e) How we used role-play to enable effective peer learning.
f) We will show how the knowledge of the background and history of the students can be used to created a highly effective Individual Development Program.
g) We will also touch upon our our findings of the changing the role of the teacher in today's world.
h) We will also describe our findings on how to catch the symptoms of improvement in different type of students and how to effectively use them to further fuel their imaginations.

Keywords:

Collaborative Learning, New Age Teacher, industry aligned education, Heterogeneous, Indian Engineering Schools, Feedback, Re-iteration, Blended Learning.