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What Students say… Collaborative Learning : Adding Finesse to Vocational Teaching No books weigh down my shoulders now, No exams make my fngers crossed I enjoy these classroom sessions more, For teachers keep me ever engrossed. With the world adopting a holistic view of learning and competition gaining a quicker pace, the Indian education system demanded a more considered and wide-spanning view of learning. While we march proudly ahead in various other competitive aspects, leaving so many of our contemporaries far behind, the need of the hour is defnitely to revolutionize the classroom content, because as they say, a competent and able citizen is born out of valuable and values based-education. Attention was thus switched to what the Indian student learns when s/he sits for his/her lectures in the classroom. After all, the futuristic dreams of a more developed, India fnd root in the eyes of a school going pupil. Moreover, attention was also attributed equally to make education reach the rural school goer in the same manner as is to the urban child. Consequently, what came up as a result of much thought and deliberations was one with solid and promising outcomes ± COLLABORATIVE LEARNING literally and fguratively. It is, basically, a student ± friendly learning system to promote enhanced classroom learning with ample examples. It provides exemplary benefts to the students. Te young mind, flled with seemingly revolutionary ideas, fnds theory dry. Collaborative learning supplements theory with diverse examples to make ‘boring and difcult’ concepts gripping. Teaching is defned as the process of collective learning. Keeping this in mind, the system also encourages learning through the combined eforts of teachers and students. In earlier days, the education system forced the students to mug-up concepts and spew them out in the answer sheet. Tis new teaching aid promotes and encourages students to think and answer, and helps their neurons to charge-up, interact and retain information for long complementing this, collaborative learning provides continuous assessments, carried out on various wide aspects, ensuring that knowledge once acquired is not discarded at the next opportunity. Rather, it is retained for future benefts. Let’s now fip the mirror around to see the drawbacks. Collaborative learning requires immense hard work on the child’s part thereby cutting down time for exposure to physical ftness and co-curricular development. Tis learning system is expected to generate revolutionary results in the future, opening up the current classroom populace to better, brighter and more defned careers and providing better exposure to the outside world. Hasan Moaiyadi XII ‘C’ Sica Sr. Sec. School No. 2, Indore, Madhya Pradesh  44 Collaborative Learning