Collaborative Learning Spaces

Collaborative Learning Spaces

Methods, Ethics, Tools, Design

Abram AndersUniversity of Minnesota Duluthadanders@d.umn.edu

GPACW Fall 2010

Emergent Spaces

Demand Side• Professional Environments:

collaborative, networked, just-in-time• Information Workers: new media skill

sets and flexible adaptation to new tools and contexts for cooperative action

Emergent Spaces

Supply Side • Institutional Values: online learning,

non-traditional network communities• Pedagogical Innovation: technology

and cooperative learning, Open Education, Connectivism, COINs, etc.

Emergent Spaces

Personal Motivation; Situated Innovation

• Research Interests: new media, open source, rhetoric, and professional communication technologies

• Service Learning: University online learning initiative, College-level team and group-work initiative

Emergent Spaces

• Social media, crowd-sourcing, collective intelligence

• Composing common spaces and shared interfaces

• Ethical and practical challenge for the immediate future

METHODSBest practices for collaboration and technology-use

Criticisms of Group-work

Student Feedback• Waste of time, too unfocused• Too complicated and/or inefficient; • Mismatched goals and/or abilities• Social loafers vs Dutiful achievers

Group-work goes wrong

• Pooled work; group structure is non-essential

• Homogeneous membership: dynamics for invention are weak

• Heterogeneous motives and/or weak management: goals and processes are unclear or underdeveloped

Best Practices for Groups

• Shared Purpose, Goals, Interests• Interdependence and Mutual

Accountability• Make work relevant, competitive,

evenly distributed• Structured Processes: Group

Contracts, Peer Evaluations, Group and Individual Assessments

Achieving Purpose

• Daniel Pink, “Drive”: simple incentives are counter-productive

• Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose• Make profit motive and purpose

motive congruent

Purposeful Group Learning

• Tragedy of commons = higher order purpose; making the best of a bad situation

• Need to get “self-interest” out of the way; better higher order purpose

• Must make project/process purpose congruent with grade incentives

Similarly, Technology

• Avoid redundant, irrelevant, over-complicated, needless proprietary

• Usability (and accessibility): Effective, Efficient, Engaging, Error Tolerant, Easy-to-Learn

• Specific tools are too often solutions in search of a problem

ETHICSValues for Technological Commons

Values for Learners

Students who are engaged, interested, challenged, motivated

• Autonomy: choice, immediate action, 3rd person play

• Mastery: activity-specific goals for skill development (intrinsic)

• Purpose: long-term objectives; continuing value; community investment

Collaborative Commons

Facilitate connections and create common ground between:

• Pedagogical Goals and Opportunities• Technological Tools and Applications• Collaborative ProcessesEngage the unique challenges of

situated learning communities

Composing Ethical Commons

Common Purpose• Develop sustainable processes of

innovation• Develop sustainable communities of

learners

Composing Ethical Commons

Immediate Value• Overcome pedagogical challenges• Achieve emergent goals/objectives

TOOLSExamples and Applications

Building a Better Bullet Point

• Resume Draft-work• Open Source process• Typewith.me

• Unique challenges: self-representation; rhetorical sensitivity; writing process

Crowd-sourced Editing

• Editing business correspondence• Assembly line: identify, rewrite• Microsoft Word

• Unique challenges: first author inertia; “pretty-good”-isms; achieve action bias in revision

DESIGNPutting it TOGETHER; Iterative development

Collaborative Service Learning

• Inspiration• Implementation• Iterative Development

Inspiration

• Overcome traditional zero-sum “coverage v group” work problem

• Students teach each-other• Build connections between

successive generations of students• Practical knowledge developed by

students for students

Implement

Best Practices • autonomous results: products and

assessment • interdependently structured

processes for invention, distribution, and performance

• Utopian impulse must be matched by pragmatic application

Iterative Development

• 1 ed. Basic Assignment; Teamwork Instruction; Screencast Capture

• 2 ed. Group Selection; Work Roles• 3 ed. Commissioned Assignments;

external (local) clientsFuture: Web-based deliverable for

public portal site, videos with abstracts and supporting references

Creating Collaborative Environments

• Purposeful, Interdependent, Group Processes

• Highly Structured Interfaces and Infrastructures for Learner Practices

• Scaffolding and Iterative Development for Learners and Curriculum

Summary Outline

1) formulate an Ethics: identify stakeholder goals, values, and formulate outcomes;

Summary Outline

2) choose appropriate Tools: consider institutional/contextual affordances, consider issues of usability and integration;

Summary Outline

3) outline a Design: strategically integrate writing, technology, and collaboration knowledge and skill sets, employ scaffolding, regular reinforcement, and achievable expectations;

Summary Outline

4) review, revise, Redesign: always try something new, expect to improve, iteration is the key.