Page 69 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

3.2 Linking Instructional Strategies to Learning Objectives 57

Collaborative Learning
Collaborative learning is broadly defined as a situation in which two or more people
attempt to learn together (Dillenbourg, 1999) or to accomplish shared goals
(Johnson & Johnson, 1986). Characteristics of effective collaborative learning
include positive interdependence among members, group and individual account-
ability, interpersonal skills, the ability to self-monitor, ensure consistent progress,
and discontinue patterns of behavior that impede the progress (Johnson & Johnson,
1986). Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or
attempt to learn something together. Examples for collaborative learning are parents
completing a task with their kids, participating in community economic activities
(Collaborative Learning, 2017). Small groups of 3 to 5 learners are often effective,
and on occasion, roles may rotate among the members of a group to ensure that
everyone learns all aspects of the task (Johnson & Johnson, 1996).

Collaborative Knowledge Building
Collaborative knowledge building focuses on problems and depth of understanding;
it takes steps of the creation, testing, and improvement of conceptual artifacts in
groups. Knowledge building represents an attempt to refashion education in a
fundamental way, so that it becomes a coherent effort to initiate students into a
knowledge creating culture. Accordingly, it involves students not only developing
knowledge building competencies but also students coming to see themselves and
their work as part of the civilization-wide effort to advance knowledge frontiers. In
this context, the Internet becomes more than a desktop library and a rapid mail
delivery system. It becomes the first realistic means for students to connect with
civilization-wide knowledge building and to make their classroom work a part of it
(Sardamalia & Bereiter, 2014). Examples of knowledge building are group dis-
cussions, interactive questioning, dialogue, and so on.

3.3 Types of Technology for Educational Uses

Technology
According to Rogers (1995), a technology is a design for instrumental action that
reduces the uncertainty in the cause-effect relationships involved in achieving a
desired outcome. Others define a technology as a systematic application of
knowledge to solve a problem valued by a group or society. In both cases, the aim
of a technology is to achieve a desired outcome.
A technology may have two components: (1) a hardware aspect, consisting of
the tool that embodies the technology as a material or physical object, and (2) a
software aspect, consisting of the information base for the tool. Some technologies
lack one or both of these components and may simply consist of a standard pro-
cedure or general purpose algorithmic approach.