Utilization of Collaborative Learning Activities for Effective Teaching and Learning of Computer Education in Colleges of Education in Enugu State

ABSTRACT  

This focused on the Utilization of Collaborative Learning Activities for Effective Teaching and Learning of Computer Education in Colleges of Education in Enugu States.

Based on six of Collaborative Learning Activities ennunciated by Experts, six Research Questions were generated and six Null Hypotheses were formulated for the Study. The Study adopted Descriptive Survey Design.

Population of 1097 Computer Education Students, Lecturers and Laboraratory Attendants was gotten. Sample size of 290 generated from the Population using Yaro Yamene Statistical formular.

Structured Questionnaire titled Utilization of Collaborative Learning Activities for Effective Teaching and Learning of Computer Education Questionnaire (UCLAETLCEQ) was used for data collection.

The Instrument was Content and Face validated by Experts from the Faculty of Vocational and Technical Education, University of Nigeria Nsukka.

It was trial tested using 30 students with an internal consistency of 0.95 using Cronbach Alpha Co-efficient Statistical method. The Instrument was randomly distributed to the respondents for data collection.

The data collected was analyzed using Mean, Standard Deviation for acceptance or rejection of items in the Questionnaire while the Hypotheses were analysed using t-test statistics for acceptance of Null hypotheses or Alternate hypotheses.

The major findings of the study revealed that, parity, mutual goal, shared responsibilty, shared accountability, shared resources and voluntriness affects the utilization of collaborative learning activities.

Specifically, the findings revealed that, collaborators recognize individual values possessed by members, have common objectives, the collaborators resolve disagreement in the collaborative acitivities amicably, they make of references to knowledge sources like textbook, they are open and trustworthy among themselves.

INTRODUCTION  

Education will not achieve its objectives without and effective utilization of teaching and . Effective learning requires effective teaching methods or approaches. 

Offorma (1994) stated that the common aim of teaching and learning methods is all about means of making teaching and learning process easy, more meaningful, understandable as well as effective.

The author further stated that teaching and learning resources include methods of teaching and learning such as the lecture, project, discussion, co-operative, tutorial or discovery as well as .

According to an Intelligence Community Collaboration cited by Santamaría and Thousand (2004), collaboration can broadly be defined as the interaction among two or more individuals encompassing a variety of behaviours, including communication, information sharing, coordination, cooperation, problem solving and negotiation.

In the context of teaching and learning, collaboration according to Wiersema (2000) is the whole process of learning; to students teaching each other, students teaching the teacher and of course the teacher, teaching the students too.

Kagan in Lin (2015) highlights four main elements of collaborative learning as simultaneous interaction, positive interdependence, individual accountability and equal participation.

Friend and Cook Powell (n.d.) listed the defining characteristics of successful collaboration in teaching and learning as: being voluntary; requiring parity among participants; based on mutual goals;

depending on shared responsibility for participation and decision making; consisting of individuals who share their resources and consisting of individuals who share accountability for outcomes. 

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