Collaborative Skills with the 21CLD Collaboration

Collaboration Summary

All members of the team must have strong collaboration skills and integrate their individual expertise and ideas into one product. To be successful, they need to:

• Work respectfully,
• Communicate clearly, and
• Make compromises to accomplish a common goal.

How do we prepare learners for such experiences? To begin, we must develop a shared understanding of what collaboration means. The component skills required to collaborate effectively include:

• Negotiation,
• Conflict resolution,
• Agreement,
• Distribution of tasks,
• Open communication, and
• Integration of ideas into a coherent whole

Placing learners in small groups and giving them a task doesn’t guarantee collaboration. To learn effective collaboration skills, children must work with others in specific ways. Activities that promote collaboration require learners to:

• Share responsibility,
• Make substantive decisions together, and
• Work interdependently.

When designing activities that incorporate collaboration, educators must consider the following questions:

• Are learners working together?
• Do they have shared responsibility?
• Do they make substantive decisions together?
• Is their work interdependent?

Are learners working together?

For collaboration to take place, learners must work with others in the learning activity. To meet this level of collaboration, learners must work in pairs or groups to:

• Discuss an issue,
• Solve a problem, or
• Create a product.

When learners work together, they may be working face-to-face or using technology to share ideas or resources. Their collaboration might also include people from outside the class, including:

• Learners from other classes,
• Children from another school,
• Community members, or
• Experts in the field.

The following scenarios don’t meet the requirement of learners working together:

• Learners doing their work alone
• A whole class discussing an issue
• Each learner creating his/her own story and sending it to the educator for feedback

The following scenarios meet the requirement of learners working together:

• Pairs of learners giving each other feedback
• A small group discussing an issue together
• A learner using Microsoft Teams to interview a peer in another town via the Internet
• Learners using OneNote to share their story and give each other feedback

Do learners have shared responsibility?

To reach a deeper level of collaboration, learners also need to have shared responsibility for their work. They have shared responsibility when they work in pairs or groups to develop:

• A product,
• Design, or
• Response

Shared responsibility is more than simply helping each other. Learners must collectively own the work and be mutually responsible for its outcome. If the group work involves learners or adults from outside the class, this qualifies as shared responsibility only if the outside participants are mutually responsible for the outcome of the work.

The following scenarios don’t meet the requirement for shared responsibility:

• Learners giving each other feedback. This activity structure implies that one learner “owns” the work and the other is only helping.
• A learner interviews a peer in another country about the local weather. This is a task that learners conduct together, but they do not have mutual responsibility for its outcome.

The following scenarios meet the requirement for shared responsibility:

• Learners conducting a lab experiment together. Learners have joint responsibility for carrying out the lab experiment.
• A learner working with a peer in another country to develop a joint website using Microsoft Office 365. The learners share responsibility for the development of the website.

Do learners make substantive decisions together?

At a deeper level of collaboration, learners also need to have the opportunity to make substantive decisions together. Learners make substantive decisions together when they must resolve important issues that will guide them as they work together. Substantive decisions are decisions that shape the

• Content,
• Process, or
• Product of the learners’ work.

Learners make substantive decisions regarding content when they use their knowledge on a topic to make a decision that affects the academic content of their work together.

With regard to process, to make substantive decisions together, learners must plan:

• What they will do,
• When they will do it,
• What tools they will use, and
• Who will complete each task.

Finally, to make substantive decisions about their product, learners must make fundamental design decisions that affect the nature and usability of the product.

The following scenarios don’t meet the requirement for substantive decisions:

• Learners working together to identify capital cities of countries in Europe. This decision doesn’t affect the rest of their work.
• Pairs of learners choosing which animal they will study. Learners will probably make this decision based only on personal preferences, not on their knowledge of the subject.
• Teams assigning roles to team members based on the list of roles the educator has defined. The educator has planned the process of their work, not the learners.
• Pairs of learners selecting a color scheme for their presentation. Decisions about surface features aren’t considered substantive decisions that fundamentally affect product design.

The following scenarios meet the requirement for substantive decisions:

• Learners in teams are preparing for a debate and must decide what side of the issue they will argue. This is a content decision that will shape their work together and learners must negotiate their ideas.
• Pairs of learners are developing a presentation about climate change and must decide what causes to write about. Learners must decide together what the most important causes are; this decision will shape their presentation.
• Teams are conducting a research project and must decide on their own work plan and roles on the team. Learners must plan the process of their work.
• Pairs of learners decide how to shape their presentation to a particular audience. This is a fundamental design decision that will affect the nature of their overall product.

Is learners’ work interdependent?

Most interdependent work involves two levels of accountability:

• Individual accountability: Every member of the team is responsible for a task that he or she must complete for the group to succeed; therefore, the role of each learner on the team is essential.
• Group accountability: Learners must work together to produce the final product or outcome; they must negotiate and agree on the process design and conclusions of their work.

The work must be structured in a way that requires learners to plan together and consider the individuality of each member’s work so that their product or outcome is complete and cohesive.

The following scenarios do not meet the requirement of interdependent work:

• Group members work together to research frogs, but each learner conducts their own dissection and writes their own lab report. Learners work together on the research component, but the products don’t require input or participation from others.
• One learner uses a device to plot coordinate points and create a star shape with input from group members. Only one learner is plotting coordinates; the others may contribute, but they could also disengage without preventing the group from completing the product.
• Learners each create a webpage about the history, culture, attractions, or accommodations of their local area that will be linked to the class homepage. Learners don’t have to strategize together in any particular way.

The following scenarios meet the requirement of interdependent work:

• Group members each research a different internal system (e.g. circulation, digestion) of frogs. Learners then work together to dissect a frog and write a lab report about the dissection, identifying the parts of the frog and the systems to which they belong. Learners rely on each others’ work to successfully identify what they see during the dissection.
• Learners each use their own networked device to contribute coordinate points that collectively create the shape of a star. Each learner’s contribution is necessary so the group can create the completed shape.
• Learners create a tourist website presenting the history, culture, attractions, and accommodations of their local area. Everyone might create a different piece of the overall website, but learners need to work together to determine how to organize the information to create the best possible website.

Promote collaboration with Microsoft tools

 In the 21CLD collaboration dimension, learners collaborate face-to-face or through digital tools. Even when face-to-face, a variety of Microsoft tools enhance collaborative work and allow learners to work more efficiently.

Microsoft Teams is a class’s digital hub and a wonderful tool for collaborative work. Learners collaborate in a variety of ways within Microsoft Teams.

• Channels– Educators create channels for each team so the group has a designated place to share all their resources and files. Educators decide if the channel is viewable by everyone or to specific team members.
• Posts– Learners share resources, discuss ideas, and ask questions to teammates in the posts tab of any channel.
• Files– Learners collaborate on documents, PowerPoint slides, and Excel spreadsheets directly within Teams and upload media files for easy access.
• Forms– Learners may add a Forms tab to their channel and collaborate on a survey. Once distributed to respondents, learners analyze the results directly in Teams.
• Teams calls– Learners may connect with each other via Teams calls when school is not in session. They may also consult with outside experts by inviting the expert to visit the class via Teams.

OneNote class notebook is a digital three-ring binder for the class. Class notebooks include a collaboration space that is specially designed for learners to work together. Each group uses a specific section designated for the team. Learners add research, brainstorming notes, and presentation drafts to the section. Group members offer feedback directly on the page. With inking devices, learners sketch designs, draw diagrams, and annotate research, making their ideas and resources accessible to everyone.

In both Microsoft Teams and OneNote, Immersive Reader provides reading and translation support to learners.

Microsoft Whiteboard provides a freeform intelligent canvas where teams can ideate, create, and collaborate visually. Learners can draw, write, or type. They can also add images or sticky notes. It enhances teamwork by allowing all team members to edit and comment directly on the canvas in real time, no matter where they are. Microsoft Whiteboard is available across platforms (Windows, Apple, and Android), allowing all learners to collaborate regardless of device type. It is also available within Teams calls, supporting real-time collaboration in a virtual meeting.