Topic 3: Collaborative learning for creative outputs in a social learning community

When finishing the FISH document during our small group learning, we were asked to distinguish two terms “collaboration” and “cooperation”. According to the Collins dictionary:

           “collaboration is the act of working together to produce a piece of work, especially a book or some research”

           “cooperation: joint operation or action; assistance or willingness to assist”

I was curious about the interpretations of these two terms in the context of learning. Thanks for the book “Teaching crowds” by J. Dron and T. Anderson [1]. In the book, the two terms were distinguished in the context of social learning as follows:

“Generally, collaborative learning is considered to be less teacher-driven and more ill-defined than cooperative learning. Learners working collaboratively deliberately support one another’s learning, negotiate the division of tasks, and help one another to learn by using and/or developing group processes in more or less formal ways to produce some common or individual outputs. Cooperative learning tends to be based on more structured sharing.”

Although the book did not further distinguish the two terms, the above-mentioned definition gave clear features of collaborative learning in social contexts. These features were well reflected in the book when the authors discussed the development of social learning theories. Through the learning of these theories, I have got new understandings of the collaborative learning as follows:

• Learning is not only about the facts and the understanding of the concepts but also the discussions and interactions with other learners, teachers, or even with other objects, tools, and technologies.
• Beside the formal learning context, informal learning context is one of the main features of the collaborative learning. The learning is cross the boundaries of the organized institutions and knowledge exist in both social and physical contexts. 
• The collaborative learning happens through the activities and interactions of groups, network, and sets.
• Through collaborative learning, a group of learners with diversities co-create output in various formats through a learning process of negotiations, discussions, and decision-makings.
• The learning environment is very often ill-structured and with chaos. The collaborative learning in such environment should be dynamic and adaptive. The learners in the community target the same objective, follow the rules, divide the tasks, use activity-mediated tools, and adapt in terms of change.

Among all the theory families discussed in the book, I felt that the theory of transactional distance can well guide my future practices of the implementing the teaching in the social learning context. According to the theory, the transactional distance has three dimensions: structure, dialogue, and autonomy. 

• The structure requires more input from the teachers about the learning outcomes, selection of contents, degree of activities, and media. 
• The dialogue is the interactions between the learners, learners and contents, learners and teachers, and is determined by many factors. 
• The autonomy means that the learners decide the goals and is dependent on self-disciplinary and self-motivations. 

As the teachers, we should adjust the “distance” and “control” according to the context in the process of the social learning. As we have always discussed in our small group learning, in some cases the learning process is more relevant than the learning output. When trying to have an end product from the fruitful collaborative learning process, it is necessary to target a creative one.

Reference

[1] J. Dron and T. Anderson (2014). Teaching crowds: learning and social media, AU Press, Athabasca University.