flex-e-bility

Collaborating online. Learning together in community (Palloff & Pratt, 2005) is designed for faculty, designers and developers interested in using online technology to support learner collaboration. The authors acknowledge that the notion of collaboration can bring both opportunity and difficulty. Problems associated collaboratively activities are identified as little resistance to working groups, the difficulties associated with creating a equitable and productive teams, variations in participation and difficulties in assessment of group and individuals. Alternatively, collaboration assists with deeper levels of knowledge generation; promotes initiative, creativity, and critical thinking; allows students to create a shared goal for learning and forms the foundation of a learning community; addresses all learning styles and issues of culture (Palloff & Pratt, 2005, pp.6-7).

There is an assumption that the development of a community and the presence of collaboration are mutually dependent. And, that both are dependent on involvement or “social presence” (Palloff & Pratt, 2005, p.7). Stages of team development are identified as normative, problem solving, disagreement or conflict, action and termination phases. That's a strong sense of community can assist groups in meeting through these phases more effectively.

It is the responsibility of the instructor to: set the stage; create the environment; model, guide and evaluate the process. These responsibilities can be assisted through clear communication regarding the reasons for collaboration, guidelines regarding participation and expectations, and assisting tends to agree on the rules of engagement. Despite all the efforts some learners may still resist working collaboratively. Instructors need to self-aware as well as monitoring the activities of the group.

Whilst this text provides useful advice on how to establish collaborative activities and stresses the importance of good planning and monitoring it fails to provide adequate guidance on what to do when things go horribly wrong. This criticism may be seen as unjustified as even experienced practitioners struggle with this issue. However, a second shortcoming of this book is that whilst difficulties associated with group assessment are acknowledged and chapter 4 is titled Assessment and evaluation of collaborative work the issue individual assessment of group work is not considered.

Palloff, R., & Pratt, K. (2005). Collaborating online. Learning together in community. San Fracisco: Jossey-Bass.

# posted by Ian @ 4:11 PM