Trying out various different tools for collaboration on-line has been very enlightening so far; partly because I have been (and am) very ignorant of all the tools available today, partly because the exercises and our group collaborations have illustrated in a very concrete way how we think about, sort and present information. Another bonus for me has been that having to look for evidence-based research about collaboration pedagogy has made me realize that there is indeed a tremendous amount of research on this and related subjects – and that I don´t quite know now where and how to start digging into this after the course is finished.

One way to start is of course to reflect a little on my purpose, and to make some form of mind map – maybe in Padlet, maybe in Mural – and why not together with some of my colleagues. We are all worrying about how to improve teaching & learning at the medical school, and how to handle the ever-increasing size of classes and the likewise increasing amounts of things the students must learn and the increasing amounts of available knowledge in the fields of medical science.

To get my 3-4 closest colleagues to collaborate at least on a mind-map requires that I be very well prepared, with arguments and articles and suggestions, in particular for course designs and for solutions to the problem of the university having to grade students only based on individual performance, not on group performance. This is a problem – we don´t have the qualified manpower or time to grade for instance 150 individual essays 2-3 times every semester.

But we have to do something radical now – the medical education/ medical school programs of the entire country is being revised, with the new (and by no means crystal clear as yet) system starting in 2021. The program proposed by the Karolinska Institutet involves many instances of team-based learning (TBL) – all very commendable and interesting – but it will also be interesting to see how these courses and “exercises” will actually be designed and how they will be assessed.

As we have all had ample opportunity to note, the corona crisis has pushed us all to think and act concretely and purposefully towards a much more efficient use of web-based learning that will serve us well in the coming years.

I started writing this piece two days ago, Saturday, and now Monday I´m reading the scenario for Topic 4 – bingo! – it´s exactly what I´d been thinking about (see above…).

So I´ll finish this post worrying whether I worry too much, and do I see problems everywhere? No, I just want to be prepared and I want to look at things from different angles. There´s so much good to be said about collaborative learning and on-line network learning, and some of it is indeed said here on the course. But again, as I mused in one of my first posts, we must think separately of the objectives, the tools and the products.

Starting with objectives, these can be to provide information or to impart certain knowledge or skill, respectively. I predict that in the context of medical science, collaborative (on-line) learning will be particularly useful for developing the key skill of participating in scientific discussions – both in the clinic and in the pre-clinical setting, since scientific discussion is based on an exchange and weighing of arguments based on facts and acknowledged levels of observation and evidence. The tools, then, must be such that the strings of facts and arguments can be clearly presented (rather than just represented) in a logical fashion. Finally, the product of the collaboration, within the framework of the tool or not, must be such that some kind of logical consensus conclusion can be presented – while at the same time allowing for the doubt and cautiousness that characterizes the scientific mind.

Witness the scientific discussions (and the community learning!) that are on such public display these days…