In return, these social clubs provide companionship that is predictable, reliable, aesthetically unimaginative, and intellectually unchallenging. But their structure emphasizes individual mastery, self-sufficiency, and exclusion of outside distractions. While encouraging individual achievement, such courses often foster little substantive social interaction among students. Colleges can do a great deal more than they generally do to make classrooms a source of social engagement around substantive issues. One approach is collaborative learning and related ways of organizing course work into learning communities, team projects, and peer tutoring.
Research can guide colleges in such efforts.
We need to know whether collaborative learning actually does help students bring to the surface suppressed curiosity and thought, and, if so, how. Granted, research is unlikely to show that collaborative learning is a universal solution to social problems at colleges. Research certainly will not demonstrate that collaborative learning alone can empty out fraternity and sorority houses. But I am confident that research will show that collaborative learning can give entering college students a chance to experience a refreshingly new kind of social intimacy with their peers. It could help American colleges chip away at the problem of binge drinking by helping to generate social cohesion, civil discourse, and, yes, even friendship among young people who arrive on campuses green, scared, lonely, and small-town.