Collaborative Learning is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together. Usually, students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product. Collaborative learning activities vary widely, but most center on students’ exploration or application of the course material, not simply the teacher’s presentation or explication of it (Smith and MacGregor, 1992).
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Mobile collaboration allows multiple users in multiple locations the ability to synergistically combine their input while working towards the resolution of problems or issues in today’s complex work environments. This can be done in real time with advanced video, audio and telestrator capabilities, comparable to working together in the same room but without the associated expense and downtime typically involved in getting the experts to remote locations (Herrell, Whitely, and Crumb, 2010).
Virtual collaboration is the method of collaboration between virtual team members that is carried out via technology-mediated communication. Virtual collaboration follows the same process as collaboration, but the parties involved in virtual collaboration do not physically interact and communicate exclusively through technological channels (Peters and Manz, 2007)..
Virtual collaboration is often used to connect experts in a scientific field to others that wish collaborate for researching or educating purposes. Many colleges and learning institutions use virtual systems to host information where both students and experts can share information on a certain subject. Both wikis and virtual conferencing have shown to be effective in sharing expert information to educate students or other individuals interested in the subject (Jackson, 1999). Experts can also virtually collaborate with other experts, across subjects, to discover new things that were not apparent when the collaborators were isolated. Virtual worlds are also now providing platforms for people to collaborate using easily accessible visual analytics. Virtual worlds also provide an arena to observe social science as it pertains to the collaborative efforts of a community (Zyga, 2009).
Sources:
- Herrell, Elizabeth; Whitely, Robert; Crumb, Alex (March 9, 2010). "Enterprise Communications: The Next Decade". Forrester Research White Paper.
- Peters, Linda M., and Charles C. Manz. "Identifying antecedents of virtual team collaboration." Team Performance Management 13.3/4 (2007): 117-129.
- Jackson, Randolph L. Peer Collaboration and Virtual Environments: A Preliminary Investigation of Multi-Participant Virtual Reality Applied in Science Education. Proc. of Symposium on Applied Computing 1999, San Antonio, TX
- Smith, B. L., & MacGregor, J. T. (1992). “What Is Collaborative Learning?". National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment at Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved from http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-collaborative-learning-benefits-theory-definition.html.
- Zyga, Lisa. "Virtual Worlds May Be the Future Setting of Scientific Collaboration."Phys.org, 4 Aug. 2009.
Contributed by Tina Cortese.