Collaboration: Key to Success and Time

Collaboration allows me to be a better student and a better teacher. When you work with other people on a project, or seek input from others, you end up with a superior product. In business it is called team buy-in when you are brainstorming and collaborating on a project, and as many people as possible are included in the process in order for the project to be successful.

In my first year at NDNU, most of my EDU foundation courses required at least once to collaborate on a group project or assignment. Each time, our group used Google docs and worked together to write the final paper submitted. This method was especially important in the multi-cultural case study presentation. Each of the team members edited and inputted extensively over the course of the assignment. The beauty of working this way allowed us to work on the project whenever we wanted to and we did not have to worry about emailing documents back and forth. Google docs allowed for flexibility given each of our different schedules, while at the same time made us all equal contributors.

The document that I have shared in this blog post is a document that a peer and I collaborated on for the EDU Special Education Course. Both of us were familiar with Google Docs, having worked on a multicultural project together in a previous class. We each contributed to the document, inputting as necessary all of the brainstorming steps we needed for instructional accommodations. Each of us picked a color to keep track of our edits and inputs. What I have shown is the final project that we submitted.

While I was a paraeducator in 5th grade, the most successful events, projects, lessons and assignments came from the collaboration of the 5th grade team. Often times, one teacher would have an idea and she would float it by the entire team. Sometimes the teachers wouldn't necessarily agree on the approach, but eventually one teacher would join her colleague and they would start to collaborate on the lesson plan. Before you know it, they would have this awesome plan going and their excitement would start to build. As the teachers worked together, their excitement would then bubble over to the other 5th grade teachers and before you know it, all would be working together. The end result was always perfect and well-thought out. Collaboration made for a better experience for the teacher and guess who won in all of this? The student, because they received the BEST of all of the teachers.