Gospel
Some of the papers, McConnel specifically, treats the collaborative learning as gospel and feels very dismissive towards any other method. I didn’t get the feeling it was investigated enough in a comparative way to other methods. Most of the questionnaires have been circulated around students still participating at the course. Few authors have admitted that more research is necessary to discover reasons behind the students’ frustration and why they would drop out. I would also be interested in a study that shows if there is a difference in impact on introverted or extraverted students.
Teacher
Another issue would be the role of the teacher, which after reading the various articles, I’m not sure we can call “a teacher” anymore. In our discussions we were wondering if maybe we should start using the term “coach”. It would be interesting to find out more how the role should/could be developed as not all researchers agree on that.
Content
All the examples, defences and pro-articles describe courses that are designed for more mature students. They are usually in their master programme and they are participating in courses for teachers. What about other content? How would collaborative teaching function in other contexts? Would it work, and if so, how could it work for example in foreign language acquisition? The studies found online are very limited, concern only English as the second language and often come from outside of the western teaching traditions.