Collaborative Learning

In this topic I reflected the benefits and restrictions of collaborative learning.
I think sometimes collaborative learning is a new hype but it’s not adequate for every topic or every group. I think the biggest advantages for me are the possibility to discuss a topic and to collect new ideas. You can get really creative and think outside your bubble. But to get a result like a presentation or a paper is far more time consuming in a group.
For teaching my idea is to use collaborative learning in a later state of a topic. I would start with some materials or videos so that everybody can get a first impression of the topic by themselves and use collaborative learning for a later discussion or to collect ideas about possible exam topics.

So what do you think is a good learning-scenario for collaborative learning?

Open Educational Ressources

This Week we talked a lot about OER (Open Educational Ressources) and our experiences with them.
For me OER are an ideal tool for learning especially in higher education. I think it’s very important to publish articles and research findings in general open and free. Therefore everyone no matter of there country or status has access to them.
But there are many obstacles for OER:

  • most people do not upload materials but only download them
  • there are many different platforms for OER so that it’s hard to find material
  • the licensing can be a problem, especially in Germany with our restrictive copyright law

These are just a few problems for OER.
For me I have decided to publish something as an OER this year