?

This topic is, to me, the absolutely most interesting so far in this great course. One week into the topic I realize that we, the teachers, or at least me, take a lot for granted when we initiate collaboration assignments for our students, that is group works. This might be a mistake and I’m very happy to be in the course, with my group 02, to discuss these matters. And in particular I look forward to come out as a better teacher being able to better helping the students to reach the learning goals of the various courses I teach. (I teach mainly courses in fire protection engineering.)

My first reflection is that typically the students, hopefully, receive relatively well formulated and clear instructions for each assignment, on the actual subject. But no help is given to the students on how how to collaborate in their groups. This is not in any way related uniquely to networked, or online, learning, but applies as well to teaching on campus. In fact, in a paper from 2012 by Capdeferro and Romero it is found, using a questionnaire, that “Commitment imbalance” is by far the most important source of frustration in online collaborative learning. This merits a smiley? since this has been the major source of frustration for my students in almost all group works I’ve given to my students through the years, even when the students have been working on campus. So, some things doesn’t change just because we make the courses online. Anyway, although, if in some course, I’ve given clear instructions on what the problem is (for example the dynamics of smoke filling in a particular apartment in case of a fire) and how the assignment is assessed (for example a report plus oral presentation where the required content and peer-review process is clearly described) I often leave the students on their own regarding how to collaborate. Of course it can be good to give responsibility to the students, but in some cases the collaboration doesn’t work very well, causing frustration and sometimes low-quality deliverables. In honesty I’m not sure if anyone has ever taught me how to collaborate in groups either (I’m 52 years old), but at least I’ve had the time to participate in some project management courses through the years. From now I will at least give the students some inspiration on how to collaborate efficiently so the assignments become collaborations, and not a cooperation between individuals contributing with their disjunct input. Maybe just using the Canvas function of automatically assigning a group responsible could be a start. Or a more advanced approach could be to discuss and encourage distributed leadership, which is considered as preferential in online collaborative learning according to a study from 2003 by Bennet, Wise, Woods, and Harvey. Well, I will not go more into this here since I don’t want to precede next week’s discussions in our group 02.

Event if there are similarities between collaborative learning online and offline, such as sources of frustration, there are also major differences. In my opinion one of the major differences is the much lower threshold for social misbehavior between students online. This is just a mild form of the general problem with the sometimes violent discussion environment found in social media. But even if is just a mild variant of this disease it is a challenge for us when teaching goes online. Of course social issues between students also exists in group collaborations in the classroom, but, as Aschcraft and Treadwell formulate it:

because of the anonymous nature of online group work, these negative experiences can be magnified

This problem is not easily solved, as we already know from social media. Anyway, I think it is always a good thing if the teacher is explicit about these matters and discusses with the students what is acceptable and what is not. Aschcraft and Treadwill also give a concrete recommendation, very appropriate in the academic context we’re in, that might be helpful:

The intellectualization of unpleasant team processes is helpful in reducing emotionally-aversive group experiences, and learning from them.
Labeling unpleasant, yet common, events with technical terms removes
some of the emotional distress associated with group or individual
conflict, and discussing methods for resolving these issues generally is
practical, and less threatening, than personalizing them.

Looking forward to the discussions in my group 02 next week. It truly believe I will obtain new tools for improving my courses and for sharing with my colleagues.

Topic 3: Learning in communities – networked collaborative learning