From co-operation to collaboration: helping students become collaborative learners

College and university students are increasingly being asked by faculty to work co-operatively and learn collaboratively. This increased emphasis on group learning is partly a reaction to societal changes including a new emphasis on team work in the business sector (Millis and Cottell 1998) coupled with a realization that in a rapidly changing information society (Hansen and Stephens 2000) communication skills are increasingly important. At the tertiary level of education, the reasons include an increasingly diverse student population who need to develop ways of learning together in order to achieve (Millis and Cottell 1998), the increased use of teaching and learning that emphasize learner-driven approaches such as peer learning (Hansen and Stephens 2000), the growth of online courses (Carlson 2000) that may include a computer-mediated conferencing component requiring online dialogue, and student projects that often require a team approach because of their scope, depth and type (Puntambekar 1999).