Collaboration
by Donald Clark
Collaboration is learners working together to increase the chance of deeper learning. It is a more radical departure from cooperative learning, in that there is not necessarily a known answer. For example, they might try to find the answer to "how effective is e-learning," as there are wide ranges of possibilities to this question. Because the collaboration sometimes results from less purposeful and focused activities, some of the learning will be unintentional. Both cooperative and collaboration promote learning from the mere interaction of people.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is more useful in tutoring and coaching situations than collaboration, in that it involves the more conventional notion of learning. Learners work in small groups on an assigned project or problem under the guidance of the trainer who monitors the groups, making sure the learners are staying on task and are coming up with the correct answers. It includes five basic elements:
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Individual Accountability - The learners work on a clear task with a group goal. All learners must make a contribution or the goal cannot be achieved. |
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Positive Interdependence - The group is accountable for achieving its goals and each individual member is accountable for a particular, identifiable contribution. |
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Face-To-Face interaction - Learners interact with each other face to face as part of the task. They discuss problems, explain their learning to each other, and tease out ideas. In online cooperative learning, they would interact with each other using electronic means, such as e-mail. |
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Social Skills - Groups skills such as attentive listening, questioning to clarify ideas, eliciting responses, or disagreeing in a constructive way are explicitly taught. Their development is not left to chance. |
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Group Processing (Reflection) - Groups reflect on the cooperative learning skills they have used and consciously focus on developing their skills in working together. |
Groupware
The software used to perform synchronous and asynchronous communications is called groupware. Some methods of doing online collaboration and cooperative learning include:
1. Use of e-mail and the exchange of work files. Unless the receivers learn something from the material, then it is simply data exchange, rather than being collaboration or cooperative learning.
2. Participating in an online conversation in which one person sends a question or comment by e-mail to a list of people who have signed up for discussions on the topic, hence the name discussion list (see egroups, a free online discussion list solution). Respondents view the messages, and their reply is sent to everyone on the discussion list.
3. Check a site on the internet for announcements, status reports, and other information of interest to the work team.
4. In
the above instances, collaboration occurs at the learners'
convenience, as they work together, but do not need to
be online at the same time. It is said to be asynchronous.
However, during a chat session or online discussion
session, (synchronous), the learners and trainers
have to be signed on to the system at the same time.
Their messages are are sent to the other learners instantly
and are meant to be replied to during the session.
Tacit Knowledge
Collaborative learning allows a process for revealing and using tacit knowledge - the knowledge resident in an individual's head, verses Explicit knowledge (see article on Knowledge Management). Unbeknownst to an individual who is able to express her tacit knowledge, her ideals may hold the key to a new approach or innovation for another individual or group. Only through group interaction does this tacit knowledge become useable. This is the power of groups -- the ability to transfer learning. It is not always trainers who train, educators who educate, or gurus who gurunate, but the learners themselves who transfer their knowledge and skills so that others may learns.
Templates for Groups
Templates allow you to ensure the learners cover all the bases in the projects you assign. You can create templates (stationery files) and place them in a global shared folder (accessible to the network learners). When the learners access this read-only document, it will open as an untitled copy of the original. The learner then works with that copy (adding and modifying) before saving it as her own work in an individual folder or shared workgroup folder. With templates, trainers can scaffold learning activities - moving the learners from simple to more-complex tasks in terms of technology use and the curricular material. For example, if you are training trainers to build a lesson plan, you could use a template similar to this one.
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