Marcela's+Essay


 * FIRST DRAFT **

**Collaborative Learning: Education beyond the Classrooms**

Living a world where globalization is no longer a new word, but a routine, it is vital to relate, communicate and work with different people at any time, anywhere. This necessity has changed the objective of educational institutions, which aim at filling society and market with professionals capable of handling different situations. Since these new professionals must work cooperatively, collaborative learning becomes essential, since it provides students with skills that are hardly acquired through traditional approaches. Collaborative learning is active and it considers the acquisition of knowledge a shared process. This way, students are to "work together to maximize their own and each other's learning" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 3), for "The development of interpersonal skills is as important as the learning itself" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 3). Therefore, instead of sticking to the traditional method of listening to lectures and taking notes, learners practice, research, and build contents themselves while becoming a straight-forward professional and and citizen. Besides being used to cooperation and teamwork, according to Barton and Klint (2011), collaborative students acquire the much desirable sense of social and intellectual involvement, civic responsibility and management of technologies. This last one comes from the large array of tools available for online, shared and asynchronous work, of which Barron and Klint (2011) present valuable examples and explanations: Google Docs, Facebook, Google Reader, Zotero, and others are useful in all the steps of the writing process, for instance. Nevertheless, the use of technological environments is a problem for many. This is because collaborative approach's challenges and difficulties are related to the stiffness of the old-fashioned educational system, which no longer meets today's world's necessities. Still, some institutions and educators confront the cooperative methodology because they do not believe it to be the real teaching process. However, although there are other problems such as "the tension between the process of student learning and content coverage" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 8), the outcome of a collaborative approach seems to be "a community of learners in which everybody is welcome to join, participate and grow" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 9). Collaboration requires willingness to change and become part of a global world where working and learning are no isolated processes, but the products of shared experiences and combined ideas. This way, the collaborative pedagogy overcomes the traditional one by spreading and practicing the belief that two is always better than one.

REFERENCES: 1) SMITH, Barbara L. and MacGREGOR, Jean T. //What is Collaborative Learning//. 1992. 2) BARTON, Matt and KLINT, Karl. //A Student's Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies// in //Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing//. Volume 2. Parlor Press: Anderson, 2011.


 * SECOND DRAFT**

**Collaborative Learning: Education beyond the Classrooms**

Living in a world where globalization is no longer a new word, but a routine, it is vital to relate, communicate and work with different people at any time, anywhere. This necessity has changed the objective of educational institutions, which aim at filling society and market with professionals capable of handling different situations. Since these new professionals must work cooperatively, collaborative learning becomes essential, for it provides students with activeness, cooperation and participation, skills hardly acquired through traditional approaches. Collaborative learning is active and it considers the acquisition of knowledge a shared process. This way, students are to "work together to maximize their own and each other's learning" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 3), for "The development of interpersonal skills is as important as the learning itself" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 3). Therefore, instead of sticking to the traditional method of listening to lectures and taking notes, learners practice, research, and build contents themselves while becoming a straight-forward professional and citizen. Besides being used to cooperation and teamwork, according to Barton and Klint (2011), collaborative students acquire the much desirable sense of social and intellectual involvement, civic responsibility and management of technologies. This last one comes from the large array of tools available for online, shared and asynchronous work, of which Barron and Klint (2011) present valuable examples and explanations, such as : Google Docs, Facebook, Google Reader, Zotero, and others are useful in all the steps of the writing process, for instance. Nevertheless, the use of technological environments is a problem for many. This is because collaborative approach's challenges and difficulties are related to the stiffness of the old-fashioned educational system, which no longer meets today's world 's necessities. Still, some institutions and educators confront the cooperative methodology because they do not believe it to be the real teaching process. However, although there are other problems such as "the tension between the process of student learning and content coverage" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 8), the outcome of a collaborative approach seems to be "a community of learners in which everybody is welcome to join, participate and grow" (SMITH & MacGREGOR, 1992, p. 9). Collaboration requires willingness to change and to become part of a global world where working and learning are no isolated processes, but the products of shared experiences and combined ideas. This way, the collaborative pedagogy overcomes the traditional one by spreading and practicing the belief that two is always better than one. REFERENCES: 1) SMITH, Barbara L. and MacGREGOR, Jean T. //What is Collaborative Learning//. 1992. 2) BARTON, Matt and KLINT, Karl. //A Student's Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies// in //Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing//. Volume 2. Parlor Press: Anderson, 2011.