PROMOTING COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION IN A LARGE CLASS SIZE

Abstract

The study examines the features of collaborative feedback among students in their writing process in the blended learning environment and finds their experiences during this collaborative learning. This study used the qualitative method. Twenty texts of the students' writing were used as the primary data. Then, this research employed an interview and an observation. Through textual analysis and survey results, I first found a similar trend of texts the students primarily focused on in giving writing feedback. There are tenses, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization. These facts mean that the students are good enough to understand the correct and incorrect features used in writing at those features. Second, during the implementation of this collaborative learning, students have the opportunity to negotiate any feedback, give and respond to any available text, and practice decision-making skills. These findings imply that first, lecturers are supposed to acknowledge the students' language skill level to create better material for them. Second, the students can be categorized as self-regulated, other-regulated, and object-regulated. The number of self-regulated and other-regulated learners is dominant compared to object-regulated ones. Understanding the type of learners is vital to developing a better approach in teaching and learning in a large class, especially for developing countries like Indonesia. The research is limited to a large class size where English is a foreign language. Hence, the method of blended learning for writing in a large class size needs to adjust to any local context. However, the challenges come from the students themselves, the classroom management, or the infrastructure available for teaching and learning. This collaborative feedback is a pedagogical breakthrough for most developing countries with many students.