Learning within the online environment is different from the traditional classroom. In the collaborative e-learning process, learners can interact, collaborate, and take ownership of their learning. But such types of online learning environments should concentrate on the instructional and pedagogical practices for delivering effective online instruction. Apart from that, there are various other reasons due to which collaborative e-learning activities have now become very important. Hence in this article, we have come up with various reasons for which collaborative e-learning has now become very effective.
Reasons for which collaborative online activities remain very effective
When collaborative activities are included in the online courses it will lead to positive performances of the student. Hence, all kinds of collaborative group interactions will facilitate active learning which in turn will help in promoting social interaction as well as in forming a supportive e-learning community. With collaborative e-learning activities, students will also learn how to work with others in a real word situation. Apart from that, collaborative e-learning activities also help you to understand how to share ideas, express their own opinions, and manage the time as per their convenience.
Although the outcomes of the collaborative activities in e-learning courses are always found to be positive still there are benefits as well as challenges for implementing these activities into e-learning activities. Collaborative activities are a way to establish communication with teachers and others who have enrolled in the same course. It is also observed that the researchers and practitioners largely support the advantages of true collaboration with the help of discussion and sharing new information.
All successful collaborative group permits the learners to feel a sense of community and give the learners an active role and responsibility. The research comes up with several benefits for collaborative online group activities. Apart from that, it may be a little difficult task for the instructors and online learners for establishing a collaborative group. But this problem can be solved if the whole group can be divided into some small chunks.
Choosing the right tool is also very essential for getting an improved online collaboration for group learning. Some of the popular online collaboration tools that are highly used are ProofHub, MindMeister, Google Docs, BigMarket, SideRocker, Skype, etc. All these online collaboration tools provide a very smooth way of communication which in turn helps in providing effective education. In the online collaborative activities, feedback and assessment also play a great role which supports a student-centered approach at the time when the assessment is implemented with the help of collaborative peer-to-peer communication, active participation as well as interactivities. If the feedback is given properly then it can help the learners to process new information. However, you need a different approach to pedagogy as well as learning for collaborative activities. Finally, it can be said that collaborative e-learning activities provide the learners as well as instructors with both advantages and challenges but if implemented properly can be very useful for the learners.
