Working Collaboratively

Team work skills is one of the main aspects a company looks at in a potential employees profile. There is a big demand now-a-days for people to be able to work collaboratively. Most experience working
collaboratively happens in school. Students work collaboratively on power points, presentations, and even peer lessons. So, the question is how can teachers facilitate collaboration? One way this can be accomplished is purely in the way the room is structured. By putting desks in groups instead of rows a teacher’s can encourage students to work together instead of individually. With the desks in groups, students will naturally be inclined to ask questions of their peers. Another way teachers can encourage collaboration is assigning projects that need more than one participant. An example of this is a presentation. Whether using power point or some other software such as prezi, by assigning a group presentation, you require the students work together to make a final product. From the simplest presentation on photosynthesis, to the most complex presentation on Apple’s fourth quarter earnings, assigning a presentation requires students to somehow have contact. Of course, we have all seen presentations where the students didn’t work together. Those usually turn out to be disasters.  The final way  teachers can facilitate collaboration is assigning a multi-step project. For example, if the project is a research paper on crabs there are certain steps students have to follow to produce an acceptable product. For research, you have the students work together in order to speed up the process. By collaborating, the students will only include the most important information. In addition, giving multiple students the opportunity to work on one research paper allows them to focus on one part of the paper and do it really well. Sometimes it is hard for a child to put in consistent effort throughout a very long assignment. For multiple reasons the child gets distracted and more often than not puts out a flawed product. By delegating the work to group members, students can learn from their peers and put the most effort into their specific part of the assignment. Working in collaboration with others is one of the most highly sought after skills by employers. As teachers, it is our job to prepare our students to work in the world. By rearranging the classroom, assigning presentations or multi-step projects, teachers can foster the collaborative skills kids need later in life.