The last two weeks we have been thinking, debating, researching about communication and collaboration in the ONL202 course. What is collaboration in the classroom and does it differ from collaboration online? How do we collaborate in our working team, with colleagues and friends? How does our PLN (personal learning network) look like?
I have heard so many students telling me that they hate collaboration and group work because it is so unfair. Someone will do almost all the work and someone will not do anything – and it ends up with everybody getting the same grade anyway. Some students are more ambitious and some just want to get through the course. Someone is more demanding and controlling and someone only follows the leader if there is one. Quite few have experienced well functioning collaboration or group work.
I can remember that I was not that in to collaboration when I was a student, because I wanted to do things my own way, in my own tempo. I did not want to compromise that much. I did not see the benefits with collaboration. I thought I could do better on my own. Nowadays I know that that is not true. I need other people to learn more.
Research is showing that collaboration will be beneficial for you in several ways. Kay Oddone stressed the fact that social learning is happening every time when you interact with others. It might be formal or informal and it can happen in communities or networks. Maybe we do not reflect upon it enough? I think that the most important thing is that you can expand your way of thinking when discussing and sharing thoughts and experience with others. Together you can co-create and make something new. There is so much you can learn. Not only content-wise but also about social skills, respect and understanding. Skills we definitely need in a growing world with broad international networks and different cultures.
Patrick Lencioni has written about what kind of virtues we need to be able to work together. He says we need to be humble and listen to others. To be humble is not about thinking less of yourself but to think of yourself less, he says. We also need to be hungry. We might have to do a bit more than just what is required of us, not meaning that we have to be workaholics though. The third virtue that is required is that we need to be socially smart. We need to know how to communicate with other people. These three virtues together is something to strive for. We might not be as strong in every field but we can work on the one that is not that easy for us. Because if we do not pay attention to all of these, we might not be a very good team player, Lencioni says. We do need to be good team players to be able to collaborate successfully.
In our PBL group we have a very fine way of communicating. We actually do learn together, we do trust each other and share our knowledge and the “burdens” together. How did it happen? We noticed that we had a lot of time to get to know each other in the beginning, during the reflection week. We laughed about having to introduce ourselves so many times. We shared our insecurity and doubts. We supported each other when someone had a hard time doing something. During the past week we have become a well functioning group online. I knew it was possible offline, but online?
Yes it works and it has been a wonderful week of collaboration. It takes time and trust in the beginning but it is definitely pays off and my personal learning network (PLN) has now expanded, and I am learning from and together with a wonderful group of nice, experienced and smart people.
