Four students at a table with a shared task — is that collaborative learning? Not necessarily. It depends on one question: does every student need to learn, or does the task just need to get done?
An employer with a team solving a problem doesn't care who contributed — only that the solution is good. Cooperative learning has a different aim: every student in the group has to learn. A group that produces a great poster while two of its four members coast hasn't achieved cooperative learning, no matter how good the poster is.
Next:
The two conditions that separate genuine collaborative learning from students merely sitting together.
