There is considerable debate about the degree to which students can teach each other through organized collaboration. Some educators say student teamwork is superior to traditional instruction and also conforms with prevalent attitudes among today's young people. Other instructors argue that "group work," as it used to be called, just allows poor or lazy students to take advantage of superior scholars who really do all the work.
A professor at the University of Colorado recently tried an experiment with collaborative learning that also involved the use of "clickers," hand-held electronic devices that are increasingly popular in fostering responses in class. The results were published in the prestigious Science magazine (which requires a subscription).
The results reportedly indicate that, at least in this case, collaboration can improve student learning. The Colorado professor devised a new methodology to measure the beneficial effects, while avoiding any potential misleading or spurious influences. It's the methodology that apparently attracted the attention of the Science editors.
The experiment is summarized nicely in Inside Higher Ed. Here's a link to the entire article.
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