COLLABORATIVE LEARNING: STRENGTHENING LEARNER’S INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

Abstract

Nowadays critical thinking, interpersonal skills, persuasive thinking, and emotional intelligence
are more important skill for millennial students. These skills are required for the job force in the
twenty-first century. This study is on the present teaching and learning experiences in
engineering colleges in India. The recommended collaborative learning approach that can be
applied in ESL (English as a second language) classroom in Telangana state, India. This paper
discusses the planning, designing, and implementing collaborative activity and the challenges
faced by the teachers while conducting the activity. A descriptive study was adopted in this
research. The study was on second-year first-semester engineering students and the strength was
sixty students, were divided into twelve groups and each group consisted of five students. In this
study, Jigsaw activity was conducted as a sample to test the student’s improvement. The
objective of the study is to improve these learners' social communication skills, critical thinking,
and complex problem-solving skills by coordinating with others. This paper clarifies the concept
of collaborative learning by presenting and analyzing the education benefits of collaborative
techniques. The shift of teacher-centered to learner-centered promotes all the above-said skills.