Collaborative Learning Essay

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Collaborative learning is defined as “a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together”.1 On the Peninsula course, there is a wide focus of group work compared to the lecture based, individual focused course structure of some other medical schools. Considering years 3-5 are clinical years, is there a need for such a focus on group work so early on? Could learning individually focusing on what one considers most important be more beneficial than group learning? In the pre-clinical years, group work is involved in PBL sessions, CSRC, LSRC sessions and Jigsaw sessions, each focusing on different parts of the curriculum. In this essay, I will reflect about my collaborative learning abilities and see how I’ve changed and can improve my group learning. PBL is a group session of 8-9 students and a facilitator, where the students work together to identify learning objectives in a given scenario. The reason I will focus on group learning specifically in PBL is due to my first PBL professionalism judgement. Despite being described as an “active an enthusiastic group member”, both generally positive things, my weakness to try impart all information learned, therefore talking over others and interrupting, led to a borderline grade.2 Without an intention to do this, my over-enthusiasm led to me sometimes being distracted from the whole group topic, leading to small conversations with the person next to me. In hindsight, this is an action which appears arrogant and rude, and may make the person talking at that moment to the group lose confidence. I had never noticed me doing this specifically until that professionalism judgement- at school, despite various comments of ‘your talking distracts others’ at parents evenings and in class, I didn’t notice the full ramifications of my actions as it had never held me back in terms of grades at GCSE

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