Collaborative Learning in the XXI Century

In this article, you will find the recommendations Dr. Jessica Jasso shared with us in the Observatorio Webinar for collaborative work in your class, course, or activity. Here I share a complete summary of her presentation in which she gave real examples applied in different courses to develop collaborative learning using an online platform called Miro.

Twenty-first-century pedagogy aims to create an environment conducive to shared cognition and collective thinking while valuing individuality and diversity (Ritchhart et al., 2011). In the webinar, Dr. Jasso demonstrated the versatility of the Miro tool and its usefulness in strengthening didactic strategies based on equitable work, visual thinking, and concept-based learning.

“With modern technologies for collaborative learning such as the Miro tool, we can know the students’ results, assess the learning process of each student, and promote a shared cognition in the class for the construction of knowledge.”

Professor Jasso describes Miro as “a giant blank canvas” that facilitates implementing didactic and pedagogical strategies with students to carry out collaborative work in real-time. It is a platform that contains work templates that can complement class material, embed content such as graphic videos or tables from other platforms, and use emojis in student assessments as an attention-attracting element.

Ten ways to use the Miro tool in class for collaborative work

1. Analyze images. In Dr. Jasso’s Language and Literature class, students analyzed pictures, poster infographics, and political propaganda posters. They added their comments and examined the relationships between the elements, marking and comparing the information that seemed most relevant to them.
2. Text analysis. The students used their codes as a team to analyze texts they later shared. The teacher compared how each team worked; some used basic figures such as squares, circles, or triangles, while others used lines, markings, or post-its. So, the analysis is a process performed by all the students at once as a team. It is shared content that displays the work of all teams simultaneously.
3. Exercise of cinematographic language. In the film class taught by Professor Jasso on the subject of “Cinematographic language,” photographs with different angles, shots, camera movements, etc., were reviewed. All students socialized and visualized everyone’s work simultaneously, which helped them learn from other classmates’ work.
4. Propose their exam. Individually, the students searched for a non-literary text they liked with potential for analysis, which they uploaded to the platform with its respective reference source. It allowed students to be engaged and generate their evidence of learning with good proposals that were beneficial and complex. 
5. Analyses and contextual research of songs. Students analyzed Latin American song lyrics as cultural products of a politically motivated era. These came from YouTube videos. In one place on the platform, it was possible to see each student’s embedded content and comments; they also had to consult and share notes previously published in other years to understand the message better and complement their song analyses.
6. Avoid disconnection between students’ contributions. Students can use the Miro platform to explain how they built, structured, and interconnected their knowledge.
7. Listen to recommendations from other teachers to improve the class. Teachers can share suggestions for literary texts with their colleagues to use in class with students. This way, other teachers can also collaborate in the planning of class activities.
8. Work with visible and shared thinking. The Miro platform contains several preloaded analytical models, such as fish diagrams, Venn diagrams, objective, and goal diagrams, etc. Also, we can adapt templates from other models for collaborative work on the platform.
9. Make a journey of the semester to have a personalized organization. With the program that will be followed in the class using Miro, students can decide what they want to do first according to their thought processes and logic if they turn in the activities on time.
10. Cross-peer review. Students can upload images of their work and receive feedback from their peers through comments on post-its.

Benefits of collaborative learning in class

• Visible thinking. We can transfer conceptual knowledge to factual or evidenced knowledge graphically or visibly.
• Compression of learning processes. It allows us to accompany students in their results and understanding by visualizing how they reaffirm or reconfigure their learning by self-evaluating.
• Generation of commitment. We can encourage and perceive the genuine commitment of each student to their participation, applying personalized strategies so that each student demonstrates their knowledge or points of view.
• Independence. The individual contributions of each student help to develop this competency through their contributions to each activity.
• Integrity. We foster integrity by identifying each student’s participation, input, and work interactions with the other students.

Tips for maintaining an organized class using the Miro platform

1. Keep organized according to the managerial strategy desired for the course, class, or activity.
2. Know “share” settings and “team” options to avoid student anonymity.
3. Use the platform to present content and downloadable activities.
4. Know the tools and embedded content that can be included and the type of material that can be downloaded.
5. Review existing templates on the platform that can be used to improve student learning.

View this webinar. If your native language is not Spanish, you can turn on the YouTube subtitles for instant translation of the content in this article. To activate this option, select the Subtitles option on YouTube (Spanish subtitles will appear), then select the Settings ->Subtitles -> Automatically Translate option and the language you prefer.

Jessica Jasso Ayala (jessicajasso@tec.mx) holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Aesthetics cum laude from the University of Seville. Her lines of research and participation in international presentations focus on Metacognition, Transdisciplinarity, Literature, and Education. She is the Academic Director of the Social Sciences and Humanities departments and Spanish and Literature at Prepa Tec, Eugenio Garza Sada.

Translation by Daniel Wetta

Rubí Roman

Share

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0