Strong Team Collaboration Skills
Prepare Students
for the 21st Century Workforce
What is collaboration?Collaboration occurs when two or more people work together to accomplish a shared, common goal.
Today’s Business World
Working in teams is at the core of many corporations today. The business world realizes that team collaboration often produces better problem-solving results, thus superior solutions. Group collaboration enables people to build on each other’s ideas and prior knowledge, resulting in new innovations. Team members often work faster and more cost-effective when working collaboratively.
The old saying “Two heads are better than one” is often true. More knowledge, ideas, and creativity can be found in two, three, four, or ten brains than in one.
The shift from a document-focused work style to a people-focused work style is a dominant factor in today’s global economy. Communicating and working collaboratively with diverse groups of people, often at a distance, are essential skills in the 21st century workplace.
In the ClassroomOpportunities for today’s graduates often depend as much on their communication and collaboration skills as they do on pure academic skills.
To build good team collaboration skills, students must learn to:
• Work effectively with different groups of people, including people from diverse cultures.
• Be flexible and willing to compromise with team members to reach a common goal.
• Demonstrate responsibility as a team member working toward a shared goal.
To better understand why collaboration is a “must-have” skill for our students, view Jackie Halaw’s video
"3 steps for 21st Century Learning."
Web 2.0 ToolsOur students must learn to communicate and collaborate using a variety of digital media and environments. Group collaboration in the classroom can become Web 2.0 collaboration using appropriate Web 2.0 tools.
Communication and collaboration skills go hand-in-hand. Many of the Web 2.0 tools listed on the Communication page support working collaboratively. Here is a list of Web 2.0 tools to explore that provide opportunities for students to work in collaboration.
Diigo - A powerful collaborative research tool
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