What I have learned on my journeys so far is that when you push yourself to go to the limits, you really get to know better both yourself and your company. Sometimes not even words are needed. I think it's the same in all collaboration. You really get to know people when doing some group work and the better you know them, the better the collaboration is. With the right group you don't hesitate to push each others to the limits and squeeze out everything you can.
The recent topic on ONL181 course has been learning in communities and collaboration on online courses. We have had very interested discussions in our PBL (Problem Based Learning) group. One of the most essential aspects has been how to go from group work mode from schools - dividing the tasks and glue them onto the same board. Even if the task was to think about what the real collaboration is and how to avoid the mode where learners would just split up the task and do their own share of it by themselves, we still ended up with this by ourselves. We had a nice shared document, a table about the different aspects we should investigate and I was just going to suggest that maybe we should divide the task so that everyone would just think about one or two of the questions. It was so lightening moment, when I suddenly realized it was excatly what we should not do in the name of collaboration. It made me smile and I think I will remember the lesson.
In true collaboration we should build up the knowledge by bringing together all the competencies we have. We should discuss and share what we know and find out what we need to investigate more. That's what our group then did. Even if we eventually had to divide a task a bit to prepare the presentation, we agreed that we had constructed the knowledge together. For the presentation we chose a very collaborative tools, Padlet with links to FlipGrid-videos, and decided to refer each others in our own videos.
Learning in groups and communities can be challenging but also very rewarding. Learned contents and the presentations or other kind of implementations of the results can be much bigger and greater when the group utilises all the strengths of group members and everyone can shine. It's also a choice, if the group just goes on just by utilising each ones expertises or if it recycles the tasks so that everyone would get familiar with the tools for instance. Especially on online courses it's important to make sure the work doesn't land just in the lap of the person most familiar with the tool.
When hiking, collaboration means everything. Even if someone is in charge of orienteering, everyone should read a map. You have to decide together, what to do and where to go. Especially in extreme conditions it's good to know all the strenghts of the group members. Someone is very handy in setting up the tent, someone lights the fire very easily. It's also good to know the weaknessies of your mates. Does someone become paralyzed by cold or hunger and needs some chocolate? Yes, that's me. So, the most important thing in all collaboration, no matter of the context: Take care of the group members and help them when needed.
Skills take time to develop. Sometimes we are so impatient that we expect to master a new skill instantly, especially when it comes to using digital technology. We need time to try, fail, try again and fall down and then one day it just works!
VastaaPoista