Understanding the Teaching Commons

TLC Journal: Teachers as Collaborative Learners

May, 13 2008

Collaborative learning is an umbrella term that generally refers to educational approaches involving the joint intellectual effort of learners who work together toward a common goal. Educators and researchers often note the benefits of this method of instruction, citing such things as students sharing their strengths, developing weaker skills, dealing with conflict, being actively involved with material, and having more opportunities for feedback. And when collaborative learning happens, the success of one learner usually leads to the success of others. Everyone gains.

Learning collaboratively has the same benefits for those dedicated to improving our teaching. For example, Yahoo! Teachers helps teachers share and co-create lesson plans. And through its CASTL, SPECC, and Quest projects, the Carnegie Foundation provided space and guidance for faculty and instructors to collaborate over issues of teaching and learning.

The Carnegie Teaching and Learning Commons also is based on this premise–i.e., that instructors and faculty will improve their teaching practice as they work together toward a common goal of improved student learning. Toward this end, the T&L Commons supports a few different areas meant to promote collaboration among educators. The IdeaBank helps educators find, save, and build on each other’s ideas. The KEEP Toolkit provides a set of tools that allow several people to contribute to web-representations of teaching or to share separate ideas with colleagues. Most recently, we added an asynchronous discussion section called the Commons Forum. Here, any person dedicated to improved teaching and learning can engage others in a conversation about relevant issues.

We opened Commons Forum with a four-day webevent, in which five scholars of teaching and learning posed questions and jump-started conversations. Their threads of discussion are focused on the idea of a “commons” (What is a commons? How and why does it work? What do we need to build to sustain one?) and are supplemented by a recorded interview to further spark one’s imagination. This set of online discussions are particularly interesting to those who want to find and structure ways to engage their colleagues in conversations of teaching and learning. There are 53 posts surrounding these ideas so far. What are yours? Join the conversation and share your thoughts, general queries and links. We all will benefit.

–Cheryl R. Richardson