Collaborative Learning and the "Conversation of Mankind"

We all do it; this it that I'm referring to is the collaboration of ideas. We add a little bit of what we know, to a little bit of information that she, he, they and you know; and it all pools together to give a lot of information that can be useful. This collaborative learning has been around for years and still thrives, because it is indeed useful. Information given by a group of people with many different ideas and levels of intellect; is more beneficial than getting information from one person who is smart; that one person will have his own way of thinking and nobody is completely right. If the information is from only one source, how can we be sure it is truly correct? Another benefit of collaborative learning is that while yes, we learn more because we learn new ideas from others, we can also solve problems much faster and with more ease.
Bruffee explains the benefits of collaborative learning when he talks about the group of medical students who examine a patient, compared to one medical examiner who examines the patient on his own. "What she [The researcher M.L.J Abercrombie] found was that students learning diagnosis this way acquired good medical judgment faster than individuals working alone." Students who worked in a group could find a diagnosis faster than a student working alone.This makes sense, because every member of that group could provide knowledge that they have and use that to help them with their dilemma, where as the individual would have to use the only knowledge he has and then go on to do extra work and find out what others have to say about it.
This collaborative learning is also exemplified in our class setting, when Professor Lay makes us peer review, or do the ink shedding. We each add our insights to what one person already knows to make a whole list of ideas and make something big from the little information we had at the beginning. It enriches all of our minds because it teaches each of us something new; what may be old to one of us may be something entirely different and new to another person. This is how we all learn from each other, collaborative learning.