Abstract
Collaborative teaching is a powerful strategy that leads students to an effective and deep learning and to attain successful academic achievements. Collaborative learning exerts its influence through three important processes: cognitive, attitude, and behavioral. There are three different levels in the cognitive process in which collaborative teaching contributes to reach academic achievements: training, knowledge retention, and problem solving. Regarding attitude and behavioral processes, collaborative teaching fosters active participation and interest for peer discussion, research-based learning, the pleasure and motivation to learn. This review is centered on providing evidences on the efficacy of collaborative learning techniques for the teaching of physiology, including mainly their impact on learning and the academic achievement of students.
Keywords: Collaborative Teaching; Peer Instruction; Physiology; Active Learning
Introduction
An increasing body of evidence suggests that the collaborative learning strategies are intellectually stimulating, and their use provides an effective way of making students active learners. It is also assumed that these strategies help learners to develop and improve critical thinking skills, such as hypothesis testing, verbal reasoning, argumentation, decision-making, problem solving [2- 5,8]. The collaborative approach has been focused strongly on improving both the academic achievement and retention of the learned concepts. Methods like team-based learning, collaborative learning, cooperative learning, peer instruction, think-pair-share, collaborative-group testing, peer tutoring foster learning through social interaction. Furthermore, these methods arise from a fundamental premise: teaching of sciences must be supported largely on a universal scientific attitude [6]. In communication in the form of dialogue, there are four main elements that play an essential role in the collaborative approach:
a) Argumentation,
b) Controversy,
c) Discussion and
d) Debate [2-5,7-12].
Academic activities in small groups are purported at having
students talk and discuss their ideas or opinion about a topic in
particular so that they can construct and reconstruct their own
ways of representing their knowledge [12,13]. To learn through
the communicative interaction is perhaps the most important
generalization that can be made about this approach. In agreement
with this notion, learning to discuss is considered the main
fundament for a proficient academic learning to develop; on one
side, scientific thinking and, on the other, identifying and using
abstract concepts to construct new knowledge and/or solve a
problem [3,5,8,9,13].
In the collaborative learning, short tests become a regular
practice of the students’ daily activities, which allows for a more
reliable evaluation of the student’s progress and the appropriate
supervision of the learning quality. The test has the advantage of
allowing them to keep learning, knowing the level of the learned
concepts, and acquire new knowledge. Besides, the paradigm can be used to assess the retention of learned concepts [3,14,15].
Knowledge expressed orally or in writing implies the risk of errors
in its transmission and, hence, to give rise to misconceptions
[13,15-17]. In the collaborative learning, after the discussion,
students receive a feedback, strengthening thereby the efficiency
of the learning process and preventing opportunely the acquisition
of conceptual errors [18]. On the other hand, the practice of
collaborative learning could help, on one side, to an integration
of scientific advances and knowledge and, on the other side, to
prepare students for their future professional activities.
Collaborative Teaching of Physiological Sciences
The physiology subject is part of the teaching programs of
undergraduate and graduate studies in different fields of biological
sciences and other professional disciplines [1,11,19,20]. Physiology
deals with issues of normal function of organisms. Besides,
physiology requires students to integrate knowledge from physics,
chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology
to understand how molecular and cellular interaction can affect the
organic systems and the whole organism [21]. In recent decades,
knowledge of the fundamental processes has flourished notably,
and it appears that in the following decades there will be new
important advances in the knowledge of the intricate physiological
mechanisms. In view of foregoing, the higher education institutions
and universities will be facing large challenges, i.e., the curricular
design and the teaching of physiology.
Collaborative learning is centred on learning and adequate
evaluation of the curricular contents, two key aspects for the
effective teaching of physiology. Many investigators have revealed
the essential role of the multiple-choice testing to assess the
advancement of students in comprehending the physiology
concepts. According to the literature on the teaching of physiology,
results confirm that the collaborative teaching methods yield better
academic results than those based on conventional teachings. In one
of the first studies that had a considerable influence, Beaton and
Mitchell in 1979 [22] described for the first time the collaborative
teaching as an alternative approach to the traditional teaching of
physiology. Their article showed convincingly the contribution
of the collaborative approach to active and student-centred
learning and oriented to problem solving. They chose third-year
medical students attending the physiology course. The teaching
strategy was an interesting innovation, there were no lectures,
tutorials, or laboratory practices; more than receiving information,
students had the obligation of compiling and registering it. All
academic activities were developed in small groups of students.
Perhaps the most striking differences between this approach and
the traditional arise when students are required to teach, learn,
and evaluate their fellows, as well as exert self-evaluation. This
educational experience fostered the integrated understanding of
concepts and helped positioning physiology in its due perspective
for the medical practice. Positive attitudes were also perceived
toward this collaborative proposal, pointing out that learning is the
responsibility of the learner. This study revealed new perspective
and ideas on how to improve the higher education system.
The great influence of the collaborative teaching approach
on learning has been revealed in further research that not only
corroborated the contributions of the Beaton and Mitchell study
[22], but also evaluated quantitatively its impact on the academic
performance of students. At the end of the nineties, Lake [23]
demonstrated for the first time the effectivity of peer tutoring
on the teaching of sciences in the university. This study revealed
that students being tutored by their fellows of higher courses had
a better academic performance in the advance physiology course
than their non-tutored peers. Besides, students reasserted the
great relevance of participating in the implementation of peer
tutoring, as well as their interest in continuing to participate in
future courses within this educational instruction. An additional
powerful model of collaborative teaching is the instruction among
peers. In this model, after a lecture of some minutes, one or several
multiple-choice questions are posed regarding the just covered
topic. Students use 1 to 2 minutes to answer the posed questions,
initially in an individual manner and afterward they use 1 to 2
minutes to answer the same questions in collaboration with the
members of their team [3].
In general, the questions of the tests were developed according
to the six general levels of Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive
level [24]. In 2000, Rao and DiCarlo [10] reported that the peer
instruction significantly increased the percentage of correct
answers in respiratory physiology tests. As are common, medical
students presented twice the same multi-choice test, the first time
they took it individually and subsequently they answered it through
a group discussion. These discussions were particularly useful for
the students as the average percentages of their correct response
increased significantly after the discussions. In addition, the average
grades were usually better in the items of the tests constructed to
assess the higher order cognitive skills, suggesting that students
developed a profound conceptual understanding [24,25]. Similarly,
but to a lesser extent, there was an improvement in the answers
to the questions that assessed lower order cognitive skills. In the
last years, it has been shown that peer instruction increases the
learning level of the contents of cardiovascular, respiratory, and
renal physiology [11,16,17,19,26-28], of exercise physiology [29],
of acid-base physiology [19,30,31], of nervous system and hemato
encephalic barrier physiology [11,20], excitability [32] and of a
laboratory course of physiology [16,33,34].
It is worthwhile noting the essential role played by collaborative
teaching in improving the academic achievement in both students
with higher and lower individual grades. However, benefits
have been greater for those students with lower grades than for those with higher grades. More importantly, team conversations
have produced more benefits particularly when there has been
dissensus more than consensus in the individual responses of
the team’s members. Debates on the different perspective had a
positive effect on the learning by students, supporting the notion
that peer argumentation in the classroom practice can contribute
to the improvement of the students’ understanding of theoretical
concepts of physiology [1,2,11,14,35]. On the other hand, it has also
been documented that peer instruction increases the skill to solve
new problems [36]. It must be pointed out that the collaborative
approach has also offered perspectives about the retention of
physiology concepts. A serious risk for retention of learning of
sciences is implicit in the decay of the learned concepts from
memory. Information processed in a rehearsal memory system can
delay and/or avoid the decay of the learned material from memory.
Thus, the information can be stored in memory for a long time
and be retrieved later from memory storage. In the collaborative
learning, after the lecture on a particular physiology topic, students
can evoke the concepts several times. For example, after the lecture,
they complete twice the same quiz, discuss with their peers and,
finally, with the professor; thus, a topic is revised several times in
the same class, which implies a better learning experience.
Many studies now have demonstrated that the collaborative
methods increase the possibility that the information stored in
the short-term memory can be coded in the long-term memory.
To estimate the learned knowledge, an initial test is followed an
interval of several weeks by a retention test, with the characteristic
that both tests examine the same contents [37]. For example,
knowledge on exercise, cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal
physiology lasted at least between 1 and 4 weeks after the student
had taken those lessons [11,29,38]. Evidence also exists that
students retain the learned acid-base concepts for 24 months [30].
All these observations suggest that the collaborative approach
promotes consolidation of knowledge toward a long-term learning
and memory [39].
In summary, all the teaching strategies that aim at helping
students to construct a knowledge based on collaborative
experiences in the classroom practice have been more successful
than the conventional tactics centred on the teacher. Furthermore,
the most profound impact of the collaborative methods is on
the capacity of students to develop a deeper comprehension
of fundamental physiological concepts [10,11,26-28]. The
collaborative approach has been associated with higher academic
achievements, the application of knowledge and critical thinking,
better problem solving, and retention of the learned material for
prolonged time periods. Collaborative teaching in the physiology
course has been used successfully in large groups [10], it has helped
to motivate students to remain keep up with their lessons, and to
have a better perception of their control on the learning process, it has influenced positively their attitude and promoted social
interaction [16,29,33,34]. Finally, the methods and skills used by
the professors become more effective in attracting and maintaining
the attention of their students, in fomenting a more positive relation
between students and their professor, and a better wellbeing
sensation, all of which can help students develop resilience in their
pursuit of physiology knowledge [11,29].
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