notes related to collaboration

Should provide opportunities for reflection.
1. Build instruction based upon students' prior knowledge and community knowledge advancement. 2. Provide scaffolding that is tailored to the learners needs in achieving the goals of the moment. 3. Scaffolding is added gradually, modified, and removed based on the needs of the learner. 4. Allow opportunities for students to Externalize and Articulate their unformed and still developing understanding of concepts. Discourse becomes a means for collaborative problem solving. As understanding becomes more developed, articulation and externalization act as reinforces for learning in an interative knowledge building process where knowledge develops as ideas improvement.
5. Provide opportunities for reflection on cognitive activities or metacognition. Give students time to reflect on the process of learning and on the knowledge they are acquiring. Understanding is emergent 6. Build instruction from the concrete to the abstract.
Learning groups should be unstructured and students should be the facilitators. The learning environment of the group should be informal and roles of the participants should be emergent. Tasks are undefined for individual group members. Assessment should be in the form of group assessment as shared meaning and knowledge artifacts are produced.