Organizing to Collaborate: A Taxonomy of Higher Education Practices for Promoting Interdependence Within the Classroom, Across the Campus, and Beyond the College

This book focuses on the terms "collaborative learning," "cooperative learning," and "learning community" in which they have been bandied about in American higher education with great frequency and enthusiasm. One primary purpose of this monograph is to provide a more precise delineation of postsecondary practices that are subsumed or assumed to be embraced by the umbrella terms, collaborative learning, cooperative learning, and learning community, and organize these practices into a coherent classification system or taxonomy. Other major objectives of the taxonomy are to: (a) create a common language for improving the clarity of communication and discourse about diverse forms of collaboration in higher education; (b) articulate a strong, research-based rationale for greater use of collaboration practices in postsecondary education, (c) provide a panoramic overview of, and a convenient catalogue for, the wide range of collaborative initiatives that have been imp! lemented at colleges and universities; and (d) serve as a stimulus for triggering wider use of collaborative practices in higher education. (From the Publisher)