Research collaborations usually arise when people identify an issue or task that they need to address and realise that other people have skills that can contribute to solving the issue/task. Or people recognise the potential of combining different knowledge and skill sets and start coming up with novel projects. In any case, a collaboration requires a shared vision with individual efforts. Can you learn this? Well, you can learn skills and practice it but it’s always going to be different and that the great potential! But how to best prepare students at University for it? To me, it is highly important that the ground rules are crystal clear to everyone, which entails detailed agreements on the responsibilities and more importantly, on how and when communication takes place. Further, in order for a project to be a collaborative effort, the related tasks shouldn’t simply be split but jointly developed. And I suppose, the biggest challenge is to communicate and listen well to all thoughts and ideas – which is easily said and rarely really done. And this brings me back to the focus of this topic – online collaborations.

Usually, you do not only collaborate with someone that you share an office with but with people that physically are more distant. Therefore, face-to-face meetings are not always possible or the most practical. Hence, using online tools for communication is a first step in online collaborations. In current times, we all are forced to refrain from face-to-face meetings and solely rely on online meetings, which does not mean that we automatically start collaborating. We actively have to pursue them. What might help with focussing on the collaborations that help us most, is to consider carefully how one’s personal learning network (PLN) should look like in order to achieve the desired goals. Are students actively introduced to such concepts?

What PLNs are – or rather can be – has been nicely outlined by Kay Oddone [1], which I wasn’t aware of as such. Bringing attention to PLNs early on and to the fact that you are in the driver’s seat can be useful! I realised many more areas in which I could advance my network and also a few areas, in which I should change my current network. But mainly, I realised that I need to invest more time into the structures and the quality of some parts.

In the educational learning process at university, students should learn what collaborations are and how they can be done. However, not all students will take on the task in a way that the goal is really a “shared vision” amongst all group members. This most likely would entail frustration on all sides. Therefore, I think that education should first focus on the tools that are necessary for someone to be able to be part of a collaboration. The tools for online and offline collaborations (do sole offline collaborations still exist??) clearly differ and additional time is needed to address questions that arise with the use of online tools. Having collaborations early on in university facilitates a learning-by-doing process. However, the learning experience might be very subjective and not very well controllable by the educator. But maybe this is the best preparation for “real-life” collaborations… ideally with a mix of online and offline tools.

[1] Kay Oddone. PLNs Theory and practice. Part 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8mJX5n3IEg) & part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqSBTr9DPH8). Page visited on April 27th 2020.