Instructional Problem
The Tennessee Department of Education (2014) states that 70% of Tennessee Virtual Academy’s 8th grade students report rarely working in small groups or pairs to discuss written work. This is 15% lower than Union County, 39% lower than the district of East Tennessee, and 46% lower than the state (see Table 4). Toten (1991) claims that students who engage in dialogue by actively collaborating and debating ideas within a peer-group are more likely to become critical-thinkers both in and outside the educational setting. With the push for Common Core standards, critical thinking skills will be more important than ever within our school systems.
Despite commitment and dedication, teachers at Tennessee Virtual Academy, a fully-online school, have difficulty facilitating significant and meaningful academic peer collaboration during live, synchronous sessions. The school, which uses Blackboard Collaborate to host online sessions, has not provided official or mandatory training for teachers on effective group interactions in the virtual setting. Now closing its third year in operation, observation and survey feedback suggest that teachers randomly assign students to groups and do not prepare students for effective collaboration.
Current Conditions and Desired Conditions
Current Conditions
The current teaching and learning environment at Tennessee Virtual Academy does not consistently provide meaningful and dynamic teamwork between students in the virtual classroom. Over 80% of students surveyed believe that they are randomly assigned to groups (see Table 1), and only 33% of teachers surveyed believe they have spent sufficient class time training students to collaborate effectively (see Table 2).
Observations of teach...
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...ion of the effective use of breakout rooms as well as a student satisfaction survey.
Goal of Instruction
Given company laptops, Blackboard Collaborate tools, and Microsoft PowerPoint, Tennessee Virtual Academy teachers will plan and implement lessons on a weekly basis that provide purposeful peer interaction among students during synchronous sessions with a satisfaction rating of 3.0 or better as scored by a proficiency rubric.
Works Cited
Tennessee Department of Education (2014). 2012-1013 Responses to Writing Survey.
Totten, S. (1991). Cooperative learning: A guide to research. New York: Garland.
Beckman, M. (1990). Collaborative Learning: Preparation for the Workplace and Democracy. College Teaching, 38(4), 128-133.
Slavin, R.(1980). Cooperative Learning. Review of Educational Research, 50(2), 315-342. Retrieved May 8, 2014 from the Wilson Web database.
Hartman, H. (2002). Scaffolding & cooperative learning. Human learning and instruction. New York: City College of City University of New York.
Weiner, Harvey S. “Collaborative Learning in the Classroom: A Guide to Evaluation.” The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook. Eds. Gary Tate and Corbett. New York, NY: Oxford UP: 1988. 238-247.
Wischnowski, M. W., Salmon, S. J., & Eaton, K. (2004). Evaluating co-teaching as a means for
Cooperative learning is a powerful classroom strategy which is not merely involving students working as groups. The essential feature of this approach is that the success of one student helps other students to be successful (Slavin, 1989). Students are concerned about the performance of all the group members; held individually accountable for their learning and given feedback on their performance. This helps other group members know to help and
Rosini B. A. (2010). The Effects of Cooperative Learning Methods on Achievement, Retention, and Attitudes of Home Economics Students in North Carolina. Journal of Vocational and Technical Education. Volume 13, (2) 33-67.
The popularity and availability of online schooling, also referred to as virtual schools, cyber schools, e-learning, and distance learning, is growing rapidly throughout the U.S. I think the idea of virtual schools is wonderful, especially for those who are home bound or have medical conditions. Students at virtual schools can learn at any time and any place about any number of subjects, which is quite convenient. Students from rural areas can have the wide selection of courses usually only available to students in large suburban or urban schools.
The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C) helps learning associations persistently enhance quality, scale, and expansiveness of their online projects as indicated by their own unmistakable missions, with the goal that instruction will turn into a piece of ordinary life, available and moderate for anybody, anyplace, whenever, in a wide assortment of controls. Sloan-C underpins the cooperative sharing of information and compelling practices to enhance online training in learning adequacy, access, moderateness for learners and suppliers, and understudy and staff
Technology is rapidly advancing in the world. People’s everyday lives are being bombarded by technology. Now schools are even being bombarded by technology. Schools are learning to embrace technology for the benefit of the students. One of the new ways schools are using technology is with virtual schools. Virtual, or online, schools are schools were education is learned through the Internet. They provide a different learning environment than the regular “cookie-cutter” classroom, but should there even be virtual schools? The answer to this common question is YES. Virtual schools provide a wide range of benefits for education.
Collaborative learning is a situation where two or more people attempt to learn something together. Dillenbourg, P. (1999). Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, (born in 1986), introduced his theory that, human development—child development as well as the development of all human kind—is the result of interactions between people and their social environments. What this states is that the development of a “higher education” is the product of comparing and contrasting ideas of others ultimately to conclude a solution to a problem as a whole or group. Everyone’s input in a collaborative situation will play a role in final solution.
The application of collaborative learning strategies is a process in which two or more students work together. Collaborative strategies will be used in planning, translating and reviewing the education process to form student learning through group-oriented activities. This source will also be useful in lesson planning to help explain how collaborative learning strategies in the classroom will help students in the learning process improve by interaction; how positive interdependence of collaborative learning leads to common responsibility; how collaborative learning builds students’ self-esteem, and confidence in students. This application recommends that collaborative learning strategies can be implemented with Jig-saw technique as well as in learning technology which can be accessible to all participants working in cooperative groups (Iqbal, Kousar, and Ajmal, 2011).
Clark, T. (2001). Virtual schools: Trends and issues: A study of virtual schools in the United States. Retrieved October 18, 2003, from http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/virtualschools.pdf
Collaborative learning is an educational approach that involves groups of learners working together to reach a consensus through negotiation to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product (Bruffee, 1993). Learning occurs through active engagement among peers, wherein the main characteristics of collaborative learning are: a common task or activity; small group learning, co-operative behaviour; interdependence; and individual responsibility and accountability (Lejeune, 2003).
Moller, L. (1998). Designing communities of learners for asynchronous distance education. Educational Technology Research and Development, 46 (4), 115-122.
In contrast, in virtual learning environment, there would be a danger of procrastination among students. Moreover, students will not collaborate with each other because all learning is online, so they will feel isolation.
All of our lives, we have gone through school learning with many other students in a classroom, and using books. But what if things were to change? What if instead of getting up to go to school, we simply had to just turn our computers on. Virtual Education is becoming a new way to teach and learn. Using computers, students can interact with other students and instructors, go to a history lecture with people all across the world, and even dissect frogs.