It can involve groups of almost any size working on one project together or on several individual projects. It can even be informal study groups that meet periodically, enabling students to study together and learn from each other. Perhaps the most typical form of collaborative activity is formal problem-solving groups or teams, in which students work in groups to complete extended, and often applied, projects. These projects may be used to mimic the kinds of professional collaboration students will encounter as they enter the world of work. When all goes well in these kinds of formal assignments, the result is much greater than what individual members of the group could have achieved on their own.
Collaboration can also involve more subtle variations of other teaching methods.
One example is the modified lecture, which gets students actively involved in solving problems while still in class and also gives an opportunity to guide student problem solving. Even in very large class sections, faculty often interject a bit of collaborative learning by having students work on a single problem with one another and then discuss their solutions with the class as a whole. Similarly, following in-class demonstrations or experiments, it is often effective to ask students to break into groups to articulate or apply what they have just heard or seen. Or, after students have read about and analyzed a specific concept, you can ask them to explicate how changes in one set of variables affect other variables. Collaborative activities require a lot of preparation, largely because teachers can't control the agenda as they can in a lecture.