# | Video | Duration |
---|---|---|
1 | The importance of teamwork | 03:26 |
2 | Teamwork as a learning strategy | 03:28 |
3 | Basic elements of teamwork | 01:29 |
4 | Facilitating teamwork | 03:18 |
Part II: Teamwork as a learning strategy
We will talk about differences between collaboration and cooperation. You have some ideas on the slide. According to the authors you can see different shades, but generally everyone agrees that when you think about cooperation, the emphasis is on the final product.
In the field of learning more times you’ll hear the theme of work in collaboration, collaborative work, collaborative learning... and there the emphasis is not so much in the final product, it’s in the process. It’s in the process used to reach the final product, therefore, it is expected that during this process one learns.
Collaborative learning, collaborative work... can promote learning of specific aspects of a subject. So many times teachers propose you to do some group activities, team activities.
Some of you might have younger brothers, others might have little cousins, neighbors... and I guess you may have met in circumstances where you had to explain an issue or a subject of some complexity to this little brother, little cousin... etc. And you may have seen that simply verbalizing and thinking how you are going to make this explanation to this person, younger if you will, has helped to give you notice if, indeed, you knew this concept. So teachers also propose that you work in teams: in seminars, when we suggest that you work with complex concepts... it’s because we want to enter into processes of mutual explanation.
So when you tell each other: concepts, procedures, associated to practices with some complexity, you will realize if you really understood these concepts.
Notice that in the activity that I proposed earlier: think individually about what are the basic elements of teamwork, and then you had to talk about it and put those concepts in common… What I was looking for? I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to orally express your opinions, your ideas. What else I wanted?
I wanted that after your interaction, the debriefed summary of what you have spoken between the two peers was more concise from an intellectual point of view. The debriefing would not be an improvised idea because you had already thought, reasoned and expressed it, before with your peers.
But look that, with this strategy, I was not achieving improvements in teamwork skills, at no time. It was just a learning technique.
So sometimes the teachers propose more complex assignments. Because besides that they will serve you as learning processes they will also serve you to practice teamwork skills.