Home PublicationsJRTEPast IssuesVolume 28 Number 5

Edited by Diane McGrath

Volume 28 Number 5 Summer 1996

Peer Collaboration in a Hypermedia Learning Environment, Data

National-Louis University

Student Essays

Juliana: One thing I really enjoy is that we are allowed to talk to our classmates and communicate with them.

JJ: Also, everybody can go at their own pace. If I feel I don't want to go ahead and do laser disc and if somebody else does, you don't have to everybody doesn't have to go, like in a regular classroom. you can stay and do whatever you feel you're ready to.

Becky: I also like that on the day when we were working in the Mac lab, we just went in and started working. We knew what to do and did it.

Nick: The teaching of hypermedia to the seventh graders was handled in my opinion very well. It involved us relying on each other a very good thing and minimal boundaries.

Bridget: HyperCard in the way the seventh grade used it was like a workshop for kids and run by kids.

Courtney: One of my favorite things about this unit was having the ability to walk around and see what my classmates were doing on their stacks.

Bev: Today HyperCard seemed to be a "discovery day". Students discovered things worthy of questions, features of HyperCard (visual effects, scripting" and how different things happened. They wondered about effects and questioned how they came about and how they could be done again, after discovering the answers to these questions themselves.

Michael: I really liked how you let us explore thoroughly HyperCard because I think that it gave me a sense of what I was going to be doing in the next some odd weeks.

Clare: I think that it went very well considering that it was our first real class. But instead of telling us everything like most teachers, you let us figure it out. Even though there were some things you wouldn't let us do I think that letting us get totally screwed up and then find our way out of a really stupid situation might teach us more than you think.

How does collaboration impact on student learning?

Tracy: This year in HyperCard I learned many new skills. One of them is to be better at sharing. Because I'm an older sister I don't do that much and am not very good at it. I learned how to share my knowledge of it with other people to help them learn. I taught them things they never knew and retaught them things they knew but forgot. Many people also taught me things I never knew and that were useful to me with later usage of HyperCard.

Nick: The major good thing about the teaching method used is that it brought us together more as a class. This was simply because we had to rely on each other for help, as well be responsible enough to help other people. It is a lot easier to come together as a community when you all have a common assignment with the same problems and things to do. You can relate to someone very well conversation are had about how the QuickTime movie won't work on your stack for some reason or how you both have had disk problems with saving stacks.

Bridget: In my opinion, the HyperCard technology couldn't have been taught better for it was taught in a way that the students were in charge of the learning. When a student really learned how to use the technology they knew it well enough to teach it by instruction to a fellow classmate.

Courtney: In many ways the learning environment helped me throughout this unit. Since I was allowed to talk with my classmates, I was free to ask questions and to ask their opinion. If I wanted to get some good ideas on stuff that I could do with my stack, I could walk around and see what my classmates were doing. Every day people were learning new ways to present their stacks, so every day our stacks became more creative and elaborate.

Katy: Mr. D is helping us more with life skills than some of us may notice.

What are the positive and negative aspects of collaboration?

Negative:

Becky: one negative I saw with the student teachers was that the person teaching didn't get enough time to work on her stack until later. This could be solved by doing one of two things. The person teaching could switch off with a couple of people and/or there could be only certain amount of time to do that one thing until later when the student teachers are done with their stack.

Nick: The one major unfavorable thing about the teaching method was the lack of help and not being able to get help sometimes. If you have a problem saving your stack or getting a laser disc to work, there is a very limited number of people that know what to do. Most of these people are normally quite busy which puts you in a kind of frustrated limbo. Normally, the things that keeps you busy are the deadlines, especially if you lost some or all of your work for some reason. There is a lot of self-applied pressure because of this; it makes you feel like if you stop to help someone else your stack won't get finished. This puts people who need your specific help in that same limbo.

Bridget: The part where students become experts was one of the hardest things about HyperCard for me. I would describe it like a day of reckoning; it was a time you would really find out if you truly understood and knew what you were talking about. The day of reckoning was when a student would have to, by instruction, teach another student how to use a certain technology. If that student could explain the technology well enough that another student could become a student expert, then they had learned something.

Brett: I felt stupid when someone else helped me. It made me feel humiliated and embarrassed. But also I was proud of that person for successfully teaching me something.

Bev: Helping a peer was sometimes frustrating especially when they really weren't picking up new skills and I was unable to do it for them or at least demonstrate the skill. Peer tutoring was not a great help. It was like having 20 teachers who sort-of-knew what they were doing instead of one who was sure.

Positive:

Katy: I became an expert on the scanner. I helped most people do their first scans. I thought that it would be a great responsibility to be helping all those people scan. I also felt good about being someone who helps in place of a teacher. I was very comfortable when another student helped me, unlike when a teacher helps and it is sort of tense. The kids know each other fairly well, therefore, are able to help out more effectively.

Larissa: I also like how one classmate was not allowed to touch another classmate's keyboard when helping them. The explainer had to think things out and say things clearly instead of just showing them quickly on the keyboard. This helps the explainer improve his/her teaching and speaking skills and it helps the student in need improve his/her listening skills.

Barbara: I liked to help people because I felt I wasn't alone doing the project. We shared some problems. I liked it better to be helped by a student than a teacher because they went through the same problems as I did and they understand my problems and they really helped to explain. That helped a lot.

Becky: When the students help as experts you get the view of your peers instead of a teacher who might know more or not know what we might not know. And also, when we had a problem we sort of worked it out. And if we didn't get a solution right away, we asked other kids and then went to the teacher. And when we talked to the teacher he didn't just give us a solution. He helped us through it. He talked us through it to see what we had done. How we could change what we had done and fix what needed fixing.

Nick: They HyperCard environment was set up so that if you had a problem 99% of the time you had to rely on a classmate for help. This went pretty well except that some times the only person that could answer you question was busy. It felt good to help people, to know that they kind of relied on your expertise. It felt kind of enlightening to be helped, a kind of "wow! this person knows what they're doing! I never saw this person as being able to teach me something!" feeling.

JJ: In class when I was called on to help someone it felt very good. I felt like the boss for once. Helping them was fairly easy because in general they know what I was talking about which made my job easy. Being helped by people felt good to because they didn't put you down and say "Ha, ha, you don't know this!" but instead helped and opened new doors on the computer for you.

Courtney: Within the learning environment, there were class experts. I think that having class experts was a very good idea because when people had questions, their classmates could probably answer their question. Also, it was fun being the teacher for a couple of minutes. When you become a class expert you start thinking about things in other ways because you are now very knowledgeable in a subject. You can take that knowledge and use it in other things, I really enjoyed having class experts.

How is Peer Collaboration Encouraged, Facilitated, Taught?

Teacher's Reflection

Vito: The key to encouraging a collaborative learning environment is two-fold. The first is to transform the perception in the students' minds that the teacher is in charge of the learning. This can be accomplished by establishing "messin' around to discover things on your own" as the primary vehicle for inquiry. Instead of a teacher being the repository of knowledge in the learning community, each student gains multiple expertise in using, designing, and authoring in HyperCard during this exploration phase. The teacher must validate the expertise gained by allowing students to either instruct the class or one another. The trust the teacher gives to the knowledge gained in the exploration phase provides the cognitive confidence and self-esteem necessary for the students to become risk-takers in their own learning.

The second key to encouraging a collaborative learning environment is for the teacher to acknowledge that the social interactions in this community of seventh graders can be peer monitored. These students are capable of establishing and maintaining clear guidelines of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, allowing the teacher's role to transform from manager to facilitator.

Students' Reflection Essay

Juliana: One thing I really enjoy is that we are allowed to talk to our classmates and communicate with them.

JJ: Also, everybody can go at their own pace. If I feel I don't want to go ahead and do laser disc and if somebody else does, you don't have to everybody doesn't have to go, like in a regular classroom. you can stay and do whatever you feel you're ready to.

Becky: I also like that on the day when we were working in the Mac lab, we just went in and started working. We knew what to do and did it.

Nick: The teaching of hypermedia to the seventh graders was handled in my opinion very well. It involved us relying on each other a very good thing and minimal boundaries.

Bridget: HyperCard in the way the seventh grade used it was like a workshop for kids and run by kids.

Courtney: One of my favorite things about this unit was having the ability to walk around and see what my classmates were doing on their stacks.

Bev: Today HyperCard seemed to be a "discovery day". Students discovered things worthy of questions, features of HyperCard (visual effects, scripting" and how different things happened. They wondered about effects and questioned how they came about and how they could be done again, after discovering the answers to these questions themselves.

Michael: I really liked how you let us explore thoroughly HyperCard because I think that it gave me a sense of what I was going to be doing in the next some odd weeks.

Clare: I think that it went very well considering that it was our first real class. But instead of telling us everything like most teachers, you let us figure it out. Even though there were some things you wouldn't let us do I think that letting us get totally screwed up and then find our way out of a really stupid situation might teach us more than you think.

Student Reflections

  JJ

Exploration

J.J.: The teaching really let us explore by ourselves and solve our own problems. If you don't solve you own problems how can you learn?

Rachel

Teaching on a need-to-know basis

Rachel: Mr D would explain one thing by just telling us how. Then he would have us all try it on a computer by ourselves. This was fun because we knew what we had to do but we didn't know how it was going to turn out. Another way Mr D would do this is by having us all watch him do what we were to do next. He would actually open a stack and do the step on the computer so we could see what was going to happen and know exactly how to do it. Mr D would come to us individually and help us.

Marina

Mastery-oriented help-seeking and help-giving

Marina: One thing that went well was people teaching other people general things. An example is if I didn't know how to put the menu bar up then I could ask a friend and get the right answer.

 Matt

Teacher as facilitator of peer collaboration

Matt: I like to be the teacher and give advice. It's neat how the teacher calls a student over to give another student advice.

Jessie

Student experts

Jessie: I learned lots of new ideas from the other student experts. It helped me very much when other students gave me suggestions about my stack. I was an expert on sound, laser discs and scanning. I felt helpful when I gave other students suggestions.

Jacob

Teacher as co-learner

Jacob: We could show the teacher something and get off track so easily and still learn a lot.

Becky

Peer assessment

Becky: When I was being taught [by another student], it was a little different. I felt more comfortable asking questions because I knew that if I was off-track we could just joke and the student would explain it to me. With a teacher I'd feel that I had to do everything right. Once I was finished doing what I wanted with a classmate's advice, I felt good.

Courtney

Sense of audience

Courtney: Since I was allowed to talk with my classmates I was free to ask questions and to ask their opinion. If I wanted to get some good on stuff that I could do with my stack, I could walk around and see what my classmates were doing. Every day people were learning new ways to present their stack so every day our stacks became more creative and elaborate.

Pearce

Sense of community

Pearce: One thing that worked was that you created atmosphere so people could work better and not be all uptight because most people can think better when they are relaxed.

Teacher Reflections

Vito Dipinto

How is collaboration encouraged, facilitated, taught?

Vito: The key to encouraging a collaborative learning environment is two-fold. The first is to transform the perception in the students' minds that the teacher is in charge of the learning. This can be accomplished by establishing "messin' around to discover things on your own" as the primary vehicle for inquiry. Instead of a teacher being the repository of knowledge in the learning community, each student gains multiple expertise in using, designing, and authoring in HyperCard during this exploration phase. The teacher must validate the expertise gained by allowing students to either instruct the class or one another. The trust the teacher gives to the knowledge gained in the exploration phase provides the cognitive confidence and self-esteem necessary for the students to become risk-takers in their own learning.

The second key to encouraging a collaborative learning environment is for the teacher to acknowledge that the social interactions in this community of seventh graders can be peer monitored. These students are capable of establishing and maintaining clear guidelines of acceptable and unacceptable behavior, allowing the teacher's role to transform from manager to facilitator.

How does collaboration impact on student learning?

Vito: Learning is constructed both as a cognitive and social experience--the two are intertwined to the point that the learning and teaching become indistinguishable in the classroom. I see students becoming empowered as the Questioners who guide their learning. This carries over into the regular science classroom for the next two years. Students are able to accomplish multiple learning tasks and establish realistic criteria for self-assessment in their study of chemistry and physics. They begin to look critically at the essays they read as part of the science, language arts, and social studies curricula in eighth grade. School for them actually is the place where learning occurs since the social (the most important aspect identified by middle school students) and academic worlds are not separate. These students are able to negotiate curriculum issues that go well beyond the "less homework" syndrome. They challenge themselves to excellence! A student who has been part of the Hypermedia Zoo Project has learned to seek out and value input from all members of the learning community--peers, teachers, administrators and parents. They experience decision-making as part of the process of learning and they realize that their voice is essential in this process in school.

What are the positive and negative aspects of collaboration?

Vito: This is a difficult area for me to address. It is obvious that I feel the advantages of this approach far outweigh the negative aspects, but just what are these advantages? Why do I find naming them so elusive? Perhaps what is at stake here is the personal philosophy that the any teacher brings to his/her classroom. I certainly am the "sage on stage" type, but I know that although this image is useful in modeling a style of learning, it does not empower students to take charge of their learning. This latter point is the essence of collaboration among all the stakeholders in the process. More than anything, establishing a collaborative learning environment requires the teacher to confront his beliefs about what school is all about. It requires him to critically and passionately examine his practices to ascertain whether they reflect his theory of teaching and learning. This confrontation with one's beliefs is difficult in a vacuum. Here the collaborative relationship between the researchers is essential. It provides a platform for us the analyze, discuss, rethink, and implement the practice of teaching as it occurs in my classroom. The negative aspect of this approach is the amount of time that is consumed to make it all work! Many teachers feel that they cannot afford the luxury of doing what they know is best for students with all the required work (state and local mandates and initiatives). The other difficulty is assessment. We have addressed this issue in our Zapping the Hypermedia Zoo article, but essentially assessment must be part of the learning process. This is a different culture than a grade and test-taking culture that usually exists in schools!

What are the Benefits of Peer Collaboration and What is its Impact on Student Learning?

Vito Dipinto

Teacher's Reflection

Vito: Learning is constructed both as a cognitive and social experience--the two are intertwined to the point that the learning and teaching become indistinguishable in the classroom. I see students becoming empowered as the Questioners who guide their learning. This carries over into the regular science classroom for the next two years. Students are able to accomplish multiple learning tasks and establish realistic criteria for self-assessment in their study of chemistry and physics. They begin to look critically at the essays they read as part of the science, language arts, and social studies curricula in eighth grade. School for them actually is the place where learning occurs since the social (the most important aspect identified by middle school students) and academic worlds are not separate. These students are able to negotiate curriculum issues that go well beyond the "less homework" syndrome. They challenge themselves to excellence! A student who has been part of the Hypermedia Zoo Project has learned to seek out and value input from all members of the learning community--peers, teachers, administrators and parents. They experience decision-making as part of the process of learning and they realize that their voice is essential in this process in school.

Students' Reflection Essay

Tracy: This year in HyperCard I learned many new skills. One of them is to be better at sharing. Because I'm an older sister I don't do that much and am not very good at it. I learned how to share my knowledge of it with other people to help them learn. I taught them things they never knew and retaught them things they knew but forgot. Many people also taught me things I never knew and that were useful to me with later usage of HyperCard.

Nick: The major good thing about the teaching method used is that it brought us together more as a class. This was simply because we had to rely on each other for help, as well be responsible enough to help other people. It is a lot easier to come together as a community when you all have a common assignment with the same problems and things to do. You can relate to someone very well conversation are had about how the QuickTime movie won't work on your stack for some reason or how you both have had disk problems with saving stacks.

Bridget: In my opinion, the HyperCard technology couldn't have been taught better for it was taught in a way that the students were in charge of the learning. When a student really learned how to use the technology they knew it well enough to teach it by instruction to a fellow classmate.

Courtney: In many ways the learning environment helped me throughout this unit. Since I was allowed to talk with my classmates, I was free to ask questions and to ask their opinion. If I wanted to get some good ideas on stuff that I could do with my stack, I could walk around and see what my classmates were doing. Every day people were learning new ways to present their stacks, so every day our stacks became more creative and elaborate.

Katy: Mr. D is helping us more with life skills than some of us may notice.

What are the Positive and Negative Aspects of Collaboration?

Vito Dipinto

Teacher's Reflection

Vito: This is a difficult area for me to address. It is obvious that I feel the advantages of this approach far outweigh the negative aspects, but just what are these advantages? Why do I find naming them so elusive? Perhaps what is at stake here is the personal philosophy that the any teacher brings to his/her classroom. I certainly am the "sage on stage" type, but I know that although this image is useful in modeling a style of learning, it does not empower students to take charge of their learning. This latter point is the essence of collaboration among all the stakeholders in the process. More than anything, establishing a collaborative learning environment requires the teacher to confront his beliefs about what school is all about. It requires him to critically and passionately examine his practices to ascertain whether they reflect his theory of teaching and learning. This confrontation with one's beliefs is difficult in a vacuum. Here the collaborative relationship between the researchers is essential. It provides a platform for us the analyze, discuss, rethink, and implement the practice of teaching as it occurs in my classroom. The negative aspect of this approach is the amount of time that is consumed to make it all work! Many teachers feel that they cannot afford the luxury of doing what they know is best for students with all the required work (state and local mandates and initiatives). The other difficulty is assessment. We have addressed this issue in our Zapping the Hypermedia Zoo article, but essentially assessment must be part of the learning process. This is a different culture than a grade and test-taking culture that usually exists in schools!

Students' Reflection Essay

Negative:

Becky: one negative I saw with the student teachers was that the person teaching didn't get enough time to work on her stack until later. This could be solved by doing one of two things. The person teaching could switch off with a couple of people and/or there could be only certain amount of time to do that one thing until later when the student teachers are done with their stack.

Nick: The one major unfavorable thing about the teaching method was the lack of help and not being able to get help sometimes. If you have a problem saving your stack or getting a laser disc to work, there is a very limited number of people that know what to do. Most of these people are normally quite busy which puts you in a kind of frustrated limbo. Normally, the things that keeps you busy are the deadlines, especially if you lost some or all of your work for some reason. There is a lot of self-applied pressure because of this; it makes you feel like if you stop to help someone else your stack won't get finished. This puts people who need your specific help in that same limbo.

Bridget: The part where students become experts was one of the hardest things about HyperCard for me. I would describe it like a day of reckoning; it was a time you would really find out if you truly understood and knew what you were talking about. The day of reckoning was when a student would have to, by instruction, teach another student how to use a certain technology. If that student could explain the technology well enough that another student could become a student expert, then they had learned something.

Brett: I felt stupid when someone else helped me. It made me feel humiliated and embarrassed. But also I was proud of that person for successfully teaching me something.

Bev: Helping a peer was sometimes frustrating especially when they really weren't picking up new skills and I was unable to do it for them or at least demonstrate the skill. Peer tutoring was not a great help. It was like having 20 teachers who sort-of-knew what they were doing instead of one who was sure.

Positive:

Katy: I became an expert on the scanner. I helped most people do their first scans. I thought that it would be a great responsibility to be helping all those people scan. I also felt good about being someone who helps in place of a teacher. I was very comfortable when another student helped me, unlike when a teacher helps and it is sort of tense. The kids know each other fairly well, therefore, are able to help out more effectively.

Larissa: I also like how one classmate was not allowed to touch another classmate's keyboard when helping them. The explainer had to think things out and say things clearly instead of just showing them quickly on the keyboard. This helps the explainer improve his/her teaching and speaking skills and it helps the student in need improve his/her listening skills.

Barbara: I liked to help people because I felt I wasn't alone doing the project. We shared some problems. I liked it better to be helped by a student than a teacher because they went through the same problems as I did and they understand my problems and they really helped to explain. That helped a lot.

Becky: When the students help as experts you get the view of your peers instead of a teacher who might know more or not know what we might not know. And also, when we had a problem we sort of worked it out. And if we didn't get a solution right away, we asked other kids and then went to the teacher. And when we talked to the teacher he didn't just give us a solution. He helped us through it. He talked us through it to see what we had done. How we could change what we had done and fix what needed fixing.

Nick: They HyperCard environment was set up so that if you had a problem 99% of the time you had to rely on a classmate for help. This went pretty well except that some times the only person that could answer you question was busy. It felt good to help people, to know that they kind of relied on your expertise. It felt kind of enlightening to be helped, a kind of "wow! this person knows what they're doing! I never saw this person as being able to teach me something!" feeling.

JJ: In class when I was called on to help someone it felt very good. I felt like the boss for once. Helping them was fairly easy because in general they know what I was talking about which made my job easy. Being helped by people felt good to because they didn't put you down and say "Ha, ha, you don't know this!" but instead helped and opened new doors on the computer for you.

Courtney: Within the learning environment, there were class experts. I think that having class experts was a very good idea because when people had questions, their classmates could probably answer their question. Also, it was fun being the teacher for a couple of minutes. When you become a class expert you start thinking about things in other ways because you are now very knowledgeable in a subject. You can take that knowledge and use it in other things, I really enjoyed having class experts.

Copyright © 1996, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.