With the start of this topic I realized the importance of working with a team in collaborative way. Also, I found that if you really want to get the best result out of the team there should be some mixing and balancing of both ways of collaboration and cooperation. There is lots of strategies to fulfill that, one of them is Jigsaw Technique. It works by include all of the participants with the work to let them start preparing different parts of the topic then discussing together and exchanging their knowledge. They collect and then work collaboratively to get a full understanding of the topic and to present the final assignment together.

I had read a lot of resources other than just the one which were given to us about this topic, because I was interested in it and because I was one of the team leaders. Through my reading I came to find out that there are there main elements to make collaboration work in the best way.

The first and the most important one at my opinion is having the same purpose and the same goal to be achieved. When all the participates share the same vision and try all to get to it, collaboration will be at best because everyone is doing his/her best to reach the same target and that maybe is more reached when all participants are at the same physical place or institution like school or university. Of course, it is not impossible to achieve with open online course but it is much harder because each participant enrolls in the course for different goals to be achieved and reached.

The second element that is key in making collaboration works better, is that all participant should get socialized before the start of the course and try to know how each one is thinking and what skills they have, in order to build some trust and build small community with the same purpose to get to the final goal. Again, this may be easier to get in a classroom where probably all students know each other, while in an online course it is a little bit tricky to do that with people from all over the world enrolling for the same course with a  diversity in culture and different ways of thinking and different backgrounds too.   

The third element that is debated on is the importance of having leader/ facilitator to guide the group. In my opinion there should be a leader / facilitator to guide the group to set the course back if the group discussion goes off the track of the topic. Also, he/she may take the final call in decision making for the entire group when the participants are indecisive and democracy is not working. One of our team found a very useful resource about the importance of the presence of leader, and what are the types of leaders there are. you can check out at our Padlet to find more about it.

By the end of this topic, I really enjoyed leading with Laura (my co-lead ) and I felt we really achieved what this topic is all about while working together and with the whole team . So thanks Laura and PBL 8 for this amazing experience.

Thanks ONL 211 for this opportunity.