Reflecting on Collaboration

Reading Organizing Higher Education for Collaboration, I could not agree more with the authors when they mentioned that one of the most prominent and desired result from collaborations is innovation. Thinking over the research on my own collaborative works with the academics, I struggled for some time to pinpoint why I perceived some cases to be less collaborative in nature than others. It wasn't until just now, as I was driving home and caught in traffic that I came up with an answer that satisfied my inquiry. The reason some works with the academics were deemed more collaborative is due to the degree of joint-ownership sensed by each collaborator in the collaborative effort. The ones I considered as less collaborative are those where my collaborators seem to show a lack of ownership in the process and outcomes of the collaboration. They were merely satisfied to passively cooperate and carry out the plans or designs without making much effort or giving priority to contribute deeper thoughts to its development. Although interests was shown in the ideas of innovation, it seldom accompanied with a greater commitment to pursue its development beyond mere implementation. Quite often, the interest shown towards the novelty of the innovation slowly fades away after an initial implementation in practice. What can be done to sustain the interest and develop a higher level of joint-ownership amongst the collaborators? I believe this is where Wenger's concept of communities of practice will provide insights into my research. I believe that the dimensions of a community of practice are the building blocks of a healthy collaborative effort.

ascilite 2009

I hope to present this small piece of my dissertation at ascilite 2009 if I finish writing it.

Anecdote

I find plentiful of resources relevant to my studies on collaborations in communities of practice such as the video below.

Building a collaborative workplace using stories from Shawn Callahan on Vimeo.

Community and its Analogy

Reading Block's book on community, when he mentioned the need to understand the fabric of community, I started to relate this to the fabric of the universe and how the gravitational pull of large cosmic objects will pull and affect other smaller objects much like how the our sun pulls together the 8 planets to orbit around it. This is because the gravity of the sun shapes the fabric of space into a curvature that forms the orbits that the planets travel on. The sun also nourishes the planets around it and most successfully on earth. So a community of practice is somewhat similar to the solar system where its members interact with each other peripherally from a safe distance, pulling and pushing each other through ones gravity of influence while all the time orbiting in a predictable manner around the core interest of the sun which undoubtedly provide the strongest gravitational pull. Thus, nurturing the 'nuclear force of the sun' is vital for the health and the continuous existence of the 'solar' community of practice. What is this force in terms of a community of practice or a collaborative practice?     

Pushing and shoving do not produce quality uptake

What many senior management in institutions do not realise is that in their eagerness to push through the implementation of online learning and increase its uptake for strategic reasons, this pushing and shoving will eventually lead to a mass adoption in a shallow form that does not necessary guarantee an increase in the quality of learning. The masses will adopt a learning management system or a virtual learning environment simply to ease their current administrative task such as grading assessments and communicating important information to large groups of students. These reasons do not automatically lead to more effective teaching or learning experience. It will make the work of the academics who adopt the technology more efficient in completing their administrative work, but it does not necessary mean that this efficiency will be transferred to teaching and learning practices. 

Quality implementation requires learning about the enhancement that the technology brings. This learning process is achieved through both formal and informal interactions between those who have already mastered certain best practices and understand the affordances of the technology, and those who are just beginning to embark on their journey to explore the possibilities of integrating technology. Thus, the concept of community of practice is well-suited as a model to understand these interactions between the masters and their apprentices that would lead to fruitful collaborations between the two parties.  

Collaboration without administration

As I ponder over many of the new collaborative tools being touted for use to promote learning, I just wonder how many of these tools would really make it to the mainstream of lecturers' teaching practice.

To me, most of the people whom I have met would consider monitoring and assessing, (which they must do), student activities online as something of an extra to their current workload which they would rather not participate in if given a choice or if there are no overt recognition financially and socially.

Add to the fact that the goal of education has switch its focus on the masses rather than the elite few, it is incomprehensible how any of them would be able to promote collaborative learning and yet at the same time, manage the overwhelming task to assess the work generated and its quality.