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Enhancing CEL through social interaction strategies

15 January, 2016 - 09:49

Social interaction is a key to collaboration, and collaboration results in social interaction. If there is no social interaction, there would be no real collaboration. Research (Burleson et al., 2011; Kreijn et al., 2003; Beetham, 2005) shows that collaborative learning leads to a deeper level of learning, critical thinking, shared understanding, and long term retention of the learned material. It also provides opportunities for developing social and communication skills, developing positive attitudes towards co-members and learning material, and building social relationships, and group cohesion. These effects are strengthened further when collaborative learning is applied to ill- planned complex tasks embedded in an authentic context. Such conditions also increase the effectiveness of social construction of knowledge, and enable competencies’ development.

However, there is agreement in the literature that placing students in groups does not guarantee collaboration (Montoya et al., 2011; Wolf et al., 2009). The incentive to collaborate has to be structured within the groups. A complex of simultaneously applied instructional approaches, reinforcing and/or complementing each other can actually enhance collaborative learning and social interactions among group members. These approaches can result in group members socially interacting in ways that encourage elaboration, questioning, rehearsal, and elicitation. For eliciting social interaction that would enhance collaborative learning, three approaches are proposed by Kreijns, et.al. 2003:

a. The cognitive approach: This approach is aimed at specific activities in the learning task that promote ”epistemic fluency”-which is defined as the ability to identify and use different ways of knowing, to understand their different forms of expression and evaluation, and to take perspectives of others who are operating within a different epistemic framework (Morrison et.al. 1996). Note that epistemic fluency can be achieved by applying a set of epistemic tasks within the group learning tasks including describing, explaining, predicting, arguing, critiquing, evaluating, explicating, and defining – all in the context of a discourse.

b. The direct approach: This approach involves the use of specific collaborative techniques that structure a task specific learning activity- such as writing a report. Each specific collaborative technique can be used as a template for adaptation to a slightly different learning activity.

c. The conceptual approach: Centers around the notion of applying a set of conditions that enforce collaboration. It involves tailoring a general conceptual model of collaborative learning to the desired or chosen circumstances that specify the types of collaborate on to be created or enforced (Kreijns et al., 2003). However, conceptual methods cannot be easily learned, but can be used in any subject area, with any student groups, and are highly adaptable to changing conditions. The general dimensions and features of the conceptual approach are outlined below(Gierlowski et al., 2009; Zhou et al., 2008; Monahan et al., 2008; Kreijns et al. 2003; Johnson et al., 1999; Sharan et al., 1992; 1976)

  • Positive interdependence: success can only be achieved through mutual dependency- a team member cannot succeed without other team members.
  • Promotive interaction: Individuals encourage and help each other’s efforts in order to achieve the group’s goals.
  • Individual accountability: all team members are held accountable for doing their share of the work, and for mastery of all the material to be learned.
  • Interpersonal and small-group skills: Specific skills are needed when learners are learning within a group.
  • Group processing: The group determines which behaviors should continue or change for maximizing success based upon reflection of how the group has performed so far.