Students explore ideas and bodies of knowledge, not in order to recite verbal formalisms on demand but to understand phenomena more deeply and search for information they need for their project work. Instruction becomes interactive . Complex, authentic tasks lend themselves to collaborative work . Among the advantages of collaborative learning for students are opportunities to negotiate the purpose of their work, the meaning of the terms they use, and so on. As students justify their conclusions and act as external critics for each other, they become more reflective about their own thinking and able to evaluate the quality of their own work.
Collaborative projects facilitate the adjustment of tasks to accommodate individual differences.
Within such groups, the experience of explaining something to a fellow student who does not understand it can in itself be an educationally valuable experience. Teachers are responsible for setting up inquiry projects, arranging for access to appropriate resources, and creating the organizational structure within which groups do their work, but once work begins, teachers no longer have the total control of the direction of instruction that they exercise in more conventional classrooms. Rather, they allow students to follow diverse learning pathways. This is not to say that all school activities need be, or should be, project based. We need not throw every piece of skills practice out with the bath water as we seek to make schools more stimulated, student-centered places for learning.