Can classrooms truly be a collaborative environment?

 A discussion question was posed for Week 10: 

"What do you think about moving toward collaborative design in a class setting? What might be the advantages and disadvantages? What might it look like?"

I think this would be a great learning experience with supervision and regulations still in tact. 

Oddly enough, I believe younger children, pre-k to elementary would benefit most from a collaborative design environment. I think tasks with less structure would be best for collaborative design. Further in education I think it's most efficiently used among students with common interest. The forced proximity does teach soft skills, however, I don't believe group learning does much other than segment the experience. One person is assigned a task to reach a common goal, but the individual does not really deviate. 

I think collaborative design assumes a level of interest and community classrooms typically do not have.