Cooperation And Collaboration In Group Work

Towards Better Group Work: Seeing the Difference
between Cooperation and Collaboration

Whenever a teacher thinks of a class working, he/she sees interaction. Whenever a teacher plans a lesson,he/she includes some kind of group work. Thus, this is basically why I chose the article entitled “Towards better group work: seeing the difference between cooperation and collaboration,” written byOlga Kozar, an English teacher from Russia. In fact, I found different interesting points connected to cooperation and collaboration in group work.

One of the ideas that I found interesting in thearticle is that there is really a difference between cooperation and collaboration. As mentioned in the article, “the key difference between these approaches to group work is the cooperation is morefocused on working together to create an end product, while successful collaboration requires [students] to share in the process of knowledge creation.” That is collaboration implies a more profoundeffort from the participants in a group. How useful this could be in our class at ICPNA, which would not only be another activity in class, but also part of the learning process.

In addition to thedifference between cooperation and collaboration, is there a real chance to have collaboration in class? Can students really succeed on it? It is not easy to achieve. Collaboration requires activeparticipation in the process, makes students use more interpersonal skills to enhance good communication with their peers, and demands a more complex cognitive process. However, we need to reevaluate howteachers are encouraging students to be part of a collaborative activity. In other words, are teachers really giving students chances to work in such an activity? In our classes, we emphasizeindividual success since every single person receives a personal grade; however, we develop activities in which students are required to work as a team in order to have a final product. As a result,...