Documentation:Developing Social Space/Collaboration

Collaboration

Educators know and value the power of collaborative knowledge building, but developing group activities that both engage the learners and facilitate the desired outcomes requires a balance between designing an activity and then allowing it to develop naturally. The successful use of student collaboration is a key component of developing productive and engaging social space in a course. However, as Alexis Ohanian highlights in his TED Talk on the power of social networking, collaboration also means that it is unlikely that a single person or organization can control the message or outcome. This presents a dilemma for the instructor. How much guidance do students need when engaging in collaborative activities and how much freedom is required to ensure that the collaboration is authentic and meaningful for the students?

As Xie and Sharma(2004) and Richardson(2006) show, using tools such as blogs can help students to deploy meta-cognitive strategies for monitoring learning arcs. Pachler and Daly(2009) suggest that the natural narrative structure (or narrative learning trail) of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis and blogs highlight the potential to further develop and enhance educational transactions due to the number of decisions a learner must make when determining the degree of engagement s/he will have with the content. In other words, the meaningful exchange of ideas and experiences that arise from the inclusion of collaborative tasks and activities, in which particpants are able to portray themselves in a personal and meaningful way, contributes directly to knowledge construction and critical awareness. The value of collaborative tools does not come directly from the information they contain. Rather, it is the relational nature of social media, and the concept of networked publics , that offers the greatest potential to foster the desired learning outcomes. Good collaboration starts with strong social connections.

The UBC Learning Commons Online Groupwork toolkit provides a valuable framework of ideas to guide students successfully through the groupwork process to help ensure that student efforts are directed towards meeting the educational goals desired and not simply on managing the group.

Reflection

• How might your assessment strategy be modified to leverage greater student collaboration?
• How extensively are students required to deploy meta-cognitive strategies when navigating course content?
• What difficulties might students face when collaborating within your course?

References