Kenneth Bruffee's "Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind"

Group learning is beneficial in most cases. People solve problems and interpret questions in different ways. This diversity in thinking can help the group as a whole come to conclusions faster. This is evident in human nature since we tend to cluster together and form groups. Obviously, without such cooperation and “collaborative learning” we’d still be huddled in caves still trying to figure out how to make fire. I believe that it is beneficial for students to talk amongst themselves in a guided environment in order to learn. It makes the process of learning seem more natural.
In my personal experiences as a student, I always felt that the teacher’s interpretation of a piece of information was always the ‘correct’ one. In reality, this is of course not always the case. Collaborative learning can help students broaden their knowledge of the world by listening to several different interpretations from their peers and pooling the best ideas to form an answer. Thus collaborative learning is similar to the old adage that “two heads are better than one”.
As Bruffee also stated groups are necessary for change to occur as well, something he described as “abnormal discourse”. If enough people form a group and challenge current knowledge as outdated it will be changed or abandoned in time. For example, the Renaissance came as a result of a collective questioning of social norms. Thus, “collaborative learning” also allows knowledge to become “social artifacts” with each generation learning what last generation learned as well. The cycle continues, as new information replaces the old and it is again passed on due to a collective thinking.