Coming from a social constructionist perspective on learning, collaborative work for students is given. Or at least group learning processes of different kinds. What does collaborative learning mean in the online context, that is not also true for collaborative learning processes in the face to face environment?

Brindley et.al (2009) stresses the importance for teachers to reflect upon different strategies to engage and instruct students in collaborative processes, when teaching in an online environment. Isn’t that also the case for a physical face to face environment? 

Could it be, that the online classroom whether it is mostly synchronous or asynchronous teaching, needs more active attention brought from the teacher towards collaborative aspects of the learning processes than face to face classrooms do? Or, does the online course stress a higher consciousness from the teacher towards issues related to interaction between peers as more of a prerequisite, compared to the face to face classroom where the effect of simply attend the same physical space might make the collaborative aspect taken for granted?

Working as a teacher in higher education, educating teachers as I do, collaborative elements in class are vital. I teach art for teacher education towards the whole educational system. That means that my students will meet pupils age 1-20 years old in their coming profession. To generalize coarsely, one could say that the teaching they will exercise will be group focused in the early years and become more and more individualized towards the later years. Regardless of these conditions, group processes tightly or more loosely thighed to the curriculum will be a vital part of their work. This does of course have an impact on the way I as their teacher in higher education arrange my pedagogical affordances.

How do we as teachers motivate and support engagement in collaborative learning in an online remote teaching course where students will never meet face to face, and have different goals with taking the course? Suppose that the course has a pedagogical perspective and focus transformative learning processes through art, but not all students will be studying to become teachers or at least not work didactic in a school context. 

Suppose that there is another course that has the same focus for the knowledge content, but students in the second course are all going to work as teachers in preschool. 

Working in preschool the teacher is never working alone. There are always two or three teachers working together with a group of children. Thus, a given relevance to integrate collaborative learning in the education.

Even if it’s a course with students from different backgrounds and with different futures in mind, collaborative learning can be useful to problematize the knowledge and expand it.

I would like to reflect upon a collaborative exercise that I have shaped for face to face teaching, but which I intend to try out in an online environment. I think that it could be useful as a collaborative element in a course where the structure of the course itself  might not be collaborative.

The exercise is called “Reflection-Rhizome” and is inspired by the philosophical and pedagogical notion of rhizomatic learning, which in turn is inspired by rhizomatic root systems of different plants. Wood Anemone and Fern for instance. What is special about this kind of system, is that any part of the root can be attached to any other part, at any place, in any time. It differs from the tree-metaphor which is based on a predictable growth pattern. I think the rhizome metaphor is especially interesting to use when it comes to collaborative processes. This because different persons’ ways of thinking can connect to one another in different and not expected ways and places. It supports difference as a value by highlighting that different perspectives can lead to expanding everyone’s knowledge.

Is it possible that this strategy would work even better in an online context? Maybe one could even argue that online environment, and further the internet, is built in a rhizomatic shape? Could this lead us back to the question asked in the beginning of this post; What does collaborative learning mean in the online context, that is not also true for collaborative learning processes in the face to face environment? 

In physical contexts we need to overcome aspects such as social awkwardness, time, space to further engage in collaborative work and let ourselves to think rhizomatic together. I imagine that the online context could pose hindering aspects such as narrow logarithms. The need for us as educators to constantly stay open with a critical gaze on knowledge content as well as collaborative learning strategies is true in physical classroom as well as the online classroom. Maybe a visualisation of the collaborative and rhizomatic notion might be the artistic contribution that I will investigate further?

References

Brindley, J., Blaschke, L. M. & Walti, C. (2009). Creating effective collaborative learning groups in an online environment. The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(3)