Collaborative Learning

Upon reading this article by Kenneth A. Bruffee, I gained some insight as to relatively new teaching methods. It completely makes sense that medical students would learn much better when put into small groups because they can bounce their ideas and hypothesizes off of the other students in their cluster. The students actually learn better from their peers than from their teachers because they can relate to their fellow students. This type of collaborative learning can be useful in many other situations as well, not only in a doctoral setting.

It is totally understandable that students are much harder to teach in today's time as opposed to a few decades ago. My generation has been named "generation me" along with "generation princess" because of (most of) our outlooks on life and work ethic. On a recent "Dr. Phill" show, Dr. Phill interviewed a few people ranging from 18-27 in age about how they expect their life to turn out. One 18 year old's answer was that she wanted to be famous and own her own island when she is really just a regular person who expects everything to be handed to her. Another male about 26 said that his 80% effort was equal to most others 110% because he is so intelligent. This is ridiculous. American citizens thinking that mommy and daddy will hand everything to them for the rest of their lives are very sad people - they will never get an opportunity to really live.

"If thought is internalized conversation, then writing is internalized conversation re-externalized." Language is a conversation. Writing is a conversation. Everything humans do comes out of normal social conversation and thoughts and is processed and re-distributed into written words or verbal speech. Conversation is extremely important in the learning process because it gets students to really put to effect what they are taking in. This is what collaborative learning does, it takes the subject that is being taught and turns it into something everybody can understand - a social conversation between peers.