Collaborative Learning Environments

Cooperative learning, peer learning, collaborative learning, are several ways of saying the same thing, "we learn from each other."

By nature, humans are also competitive. America may have developed the first car, but the Japanese are known for taking a product and making it smaller, more practical, or improving a product for the simple reason of making it better. All is a result of sharing, comparing, and collaborating with each other.

Educators follow suite, and with today's technologies, on-line discussion platforms have become popular meeting places. Tapped-In is an international online community where education professionals meet and discuss development programs in an informal on-line setting with colleagues and peers who share the same interests. Tapped-in also provides members with personal offices where members can call private meetings with the use of a dialogue box and even a whiteboard. A monthly calendar provides a schedule of discussions generally led by educators who specialize in certain fields of interest.

Blackboard.inc offers software for for online teaching and learning. This program has many capabilities which include campus communities, support services, Web-enabled student services and back office systems. It is a location where students and teachers can meet at anytime. In this learning environment, instructors can create exams, a syllabus, calendar of events, discussion boards, listserves, and just about everything an instructor might need to carry out lesson plans as well as his/her entire course.

List serves are very useful Internet tools used to contact many people at one time. It's a popular way for educational institutions and educators to communicate with students. In this world of communication and sales, a list serve is a powerful marketing tool. Casinos send special offers to their members via list serves. It's a fast way to announce last minute special events and fill in those days that are projected to be slower than others. Airlines broadcast flight schedules and discounts to customers who fly often. Special interest groups of all kinds use list serves as a powerful tool to communicate to many.

Attractive elements of a list serve include cost effective messages and announcements to many people at once, time saving, and security, plus they're easy to use.

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