Week Seven; Collaboratives, Collectives and Clouds

[Anil]

Hi friends,

I think, for a good start of our seventh weekly discussions, we have
to discuss the query “How does a collaborative work differ from a
collective work? “

My rough idea is that a collaborative work means working together to
achieve a common goal. Whereas a collective work need not necessarily
maintain a common goal, instead, most often, it will be based on some
general interest in a common domain. Each participant can work for his/
her individual goal with respect to the common domain.

Your thoughts?

Warm regards

Anil
http://www.apletters.blogspot.com
http://www.wikieducator.org/User:Anil_Prasad

[Ulises Escárcega Prieto]

Having read Anil Prasad's recent intervention and invitaion to
collaborate, I'll start by stating on the obvious: I agree with the
initial assertion, which offers to become contentious, that there is a
difference between COLLABORATIVE and COLLECTIVE, the former being more
in tune with what we generally aim at in online education than the
latter. There indeed lies the instrinsic characteristic we should
ideally aim for in a teaching/learning scenario, whereby we are
attempting to bring together and ultimately exploit the richness of so
many resources (human, printed and electronic) being available at one
time. But the distinction between COLLABORATIVE Vs. COLLECTIVE also
brings about the issue of appropriateness. To what extent can either
concept address learning. I believe that any COLLABORATIVE enterprise
opens the door to (and blends more easily into) a model of learning
that does not require any form of conventional sanction. On the other
hand, a COLLECTIVE approach may work better where the learning aim
surpasses the needs of those involved (therefore making colaboration a
secondary requirement, that may indeed not be addressed at all);
modalities aimed at certification appear to be the obvious example.
Ulises.

[b.d.boardman]

So, does it come down to a fundamental difference between
collaboration and cooperation? Is either (or both) needed when trying
to achieve a "higher" level of cognitive development/critical thinking
in students?

My experience has been that all (or nearly all) institutions agree
that collaboration is necessary and important in higher ed. The
problem is that these same institutions also struggle to define (let
alone measure) what collaboration really is and why it is important.

That being said, fundamentally, I don't believe that the modality of
the learner (online, at a campus, etc) actually has any bearing on the
actual quality and/or capability of a student (or anyone for that
matter) to collaborative effectively.

b.d.boardman

On Aug 9, 9:00 am, Ulises Escárcega Prieto <makarenk...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> > Anilhttp://www.apletters.blogspot.comhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Ani...- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Ulises Escárcega Prieto]

In response to P.D. Boardman's very interesting lure, I’ll start by
saying that, sadly enough, neither "collaboration" nor "cooperation"
are permanently present components of the online courses I have been
able to follow, oversee, or monitor; let alone other forms of
cognitive development tools. In an old participaton of mine within
this same EduMOOC, I purported that WE (the Online Community) seemed
too crazy about the gadgetry now available to pay sufficient attention
to "old dogs", such as defining what it is that learners are supposed
to go through as part of their training.

My critique was that PPP methodology (Presentation-Practice-
Production) had made a very strong come back (with a vengeance) with
learners being asked to cursorily approach materials, make acritical
statements about the very limited available contents, and eventually
produce extremely limited evidence of their having accessed those
materials; mostly in the form of poorly atended online fora or weakly
structured Wikis.

In this scenario, I'd welcome purely collaborational approaches, if
such materials forced learners to work within a path that led them
across the use of higher cognitive development/critical thinking
competencies. In thsi regards, I would in principle agree with P.D.
Boardman in that it is not necessarily the (Access) modality what
makes a difference on the quality of a student's work, but rather, the
task design.

Ulises E.

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[Murray Turoff]

i regret you have not had a chance ot experience online collaborative
oriented courses. The research that has been done on evaluation of
online courses has shown a great deal of evidence that collaboration
is what makes an online course very successful in terms of learning
outcomes. See the two books that roxanne hilitz has published in
this area. http://is.njit.edu/hiltz

the following paper on my website will give you a good set of examples
of collaboration by both all the students in a class and also by
teams.

Turoff, M., Hiltz, S. R., Li, Z., Wang, Y., Cho, H., Yao, X., (2004)
Online Collaborative Learning Enhancement through the Delphi Method,
Proceedings of the OZCHI 2004 Conference, November 22-24, University
of Wollongong, Australia


It is my view face to face classes can be much better when online
collaboration among students is included.
there is a paper on my website about that subject (no more segregation
of distance students from face to face students)

Turoff, Murray (1999)

An End to Student Segregation: No More Separation Between Distance
Learning and Regular Courses. A summary of the invited plenary for the
Telelearning 99 meeting in Montreal, Canada, November, 1999. (Also:
ppt presentation used in talk.)


On Aug 10, 11:23 am, Ulises Escárcega Prieto <makarenk...@gmail.com>

> > > > Anilhttp://www.apletters.blogspot.comhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Ani...quoted text -

[Ulises Escárcega Prieto]

Thank you Murray, for your comment and suggested readings; I will make
sure to take a good look at them. As I re-read your posting, I realize
I may have given you the wrong idea that I have been faced with only
poor achievement opportunities, in terms of the online experiences
I've had, but my contention was in the exact opposite direction. What
I was trying to bring forth was the argument that collaboration is a
form of interaction that needs to be constructed and which does not
come out naturally in either scenario; whether this be face-to-face,
online, or blended learning/teaching.

What I have indeed been able to see is a recurrent use of PPP
methology-based materials whereby users are asked to approach a
singled out piece of information (that in itself being a debatable
action, for our choices of material endow them with a certain gleem
that they don't necessarily possess). My opinion is that we have
gotten into online education without having fully solved issues of
collaboration as the basis for student interaction; now, fully
inserted in a medium that makes collaboration a must, we find
ourselves (probably not everyone, but it would seem quite a few)
looking for ways to promote a type of work that demands that the
subject mater be deconstructed, analized, and eventually reconstructed
through group work. Something we geenrally take for granted in face-to-
face teaching, where repair occurs at such a speed that there is
little need to enhance it.

I want to say that I have been designing collaborative activities as
a result of the very poor results that I was getting when I simply
stuck to the original format given to the teaching materials.
Eventually I found that through group participation, users managed to
handle and ultimately achieve much complex goals , than was the case
with, say, analysis-oriented resources.

This reminds me of something I'd like to ask you all: have your users
resented the change onto a more collaborative type of activity, or
have they embraced the new dynamics more keenly?

Ulises E.

> > > > > Anilhttp://www.apletters.blogspot.comhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Ani...text -

[Murray Turoff]

In a required courses the students who don't like the collaboration
can be anywhere from
5% to 20% based upon the evaluations that have been done and my own
experience.
There are students always who just want a course credit and are not
interested in
really learning. Some change their mind but not all.

In elective courses the students usually knew i was oriented to
collaborative learning since i
explain it in my syllabus and gave examples of collaborative
assignments for that course, so they don't choose me and they know i
will give more work than others
that just teach the lecture on teh stage format with individual
assignments.


On Aug 12, 11:16 am, Ulises Escárcega Prieto <makarenk...@gmail.com>

> > > > > > Anilhttp://www.apletters.blogspot.comhttp://www.wikieducator.org/User:Ani...-

[Murray Turoff]

Marynelle brings up an interesting point. some of what you can do
depends very much on the software.
i had the advantage of using for many years software where i could
establish conferences and put student teams in conferences to do their
work collaboratively.
I never forced a person to be on a team and they were always allowed
to work alone and to choose up their team.
However, teh conference gave me a history of their individual
contributions if it was needed. Sometimes you get a situation where
some students do a lot less work than others and some then complain
about everyone sharing one grade. For most assignments i specified
reports to be written and the need to base the size of the report on
the number of student in a team which i also specified. All reports
were available to the whole class to view and comment on later. In
some cases i would ask the class ot vote on the top five reports but
not on their own. Students can definitely recognize A work and
distinguish it from C work.

Part of the psychology of online learning is that the student is more
motivated to do good work when he or she knows the other student will
see their work. The professor is paid to see bad work and some of
them don't care that much if they don't do their best work.

But having software where you as the instructor can control setting up
conferences and their membership is very important or doing things
like assigning pen names in some conferences where you have debates,
or bringing in an outside expert as a member of class and allowing
each student to ask them one insight full question (where you grade
the question) is another necessary feature. I have taught at a few
places where the university does not allow outside experts in because
the system is tied to the database of students and instructors and
they cannot give you an account for this.

from Marynelle Chew marynel...@byuh.edu
to "murray...@gmail.com" <murray...@gmail.com>
date Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 3:01 PM
subject RE: [eduMOOC] Digest for edu...@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages
in 2 Topics
mailed-by byuh.edu
Important mainly because you often read messages with this label.

hide details 3:01 PM (14 minutes ago)


I haven’t been participating the MOOC, just dipping in now and again.
Your topic post caught my attention and I’d like to put my two cents
in. (Can’t do it on the MOOC because I don’t use Gmail.)



My experience with those who dislike collaborative learning is that
there are always 1-2 people in the group who don’t pull their weight,
refuse to attend meetings, won’t plan ahead, etc. and make it
difficult, if not impossible, for those who actually do want to work
and learn to accomplish anything. It’s not that students object to the
collaboration method per se. The main objection seems to be that they
say that when they complain about it, the professor just tells them
something to the effect that it’s their responsibility to ensure that
the group works smoothly.



I think if professors were to allow students to kick out the non-
contributors, it would be better for both parties. Those who want to
learn and are willing to put in the collaborate work, can do so. Those
who want to goof off will get a lesson in real life—to wit, there
ain’t no free lunch.



Marynelle Chew



From: edu...@googlegroups.com [mailto:edu...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of edumooc...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2011 4:40 PM
To: Digest Recipients
Subject: [eduMOOC] Digest for edu...@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in
2

[Apostolos K.]

I'd also say that collaborative work also has a connotation of
actually working together, discussing, and working out problems.
When I was a student a number of school projects were labelled as
"collaborative" - our group had one deliverable for the professor.
However, in some groups, especially early on in my career as a
student, it wasn't very collaborative in that we didn't really talk to
one another, or work out problems together. Each person took a section
and wrote it out. In the end we had a product that looked like
frankenstein :-)

[Apostolos K.]

It seems like institutions of higher education can be a bit bipolar
when it comes to collaboration.
When papers are co-researched and co-authored they seem to have less
value for promotion (or just a plain on kudos) than having done the
work all on your own. At the same time, institutions do talk about
how important it is to collaborate. Until the perks/kudos are aligned
with that, it won't become a reality (at least for the people who
think of the pay and fame).

Personally I find that I like working on my own on **some** topics,
but on most topics I prefer to work with others because in the end we
all strengthen each other's knowledge.

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[Apostolos K.]

Disclaimer: I don't teach - my points of view come only from being a
student and having completed four masters degrees where at least 50%
of the work was some sort group work (or so it seemed).


I have to say that as a student I hated group work, because I had
classmates that just weren't responsive. I once had a classmate (a
friend of mine) tell me that she would purposely not respond to emails
that I (or others) had sent regarding where we stood on the various
components of the project if she had not completed her parts. It would
be done when it would be done. This didn't bother me once I found out
(it bothered me before) because I knew that she would get the work
done, even if it came down to the wire.

Then I started thinking about WHY I didn't like group work and what it
came down to was communication. In groups where poor communication was
an issue, group work would suffer. Freeloading was *never* and issue,
but different expectations were, and that was often interpreted as
freeloading. If communications issues are worked out, groups work! In
both academia and in the non-academic world people work in groups all
of the time, we are social beings, and doing group work in school was
as important as the "share your toys" mantra that your parents taught
you when you were a kid.

In one of my courses, I actually had a group member leave our group to
do her own thing - again, this was an issue of communication and group
expectations (and possibly inflexibility on her part). Looking at the
group assignment instructions and the rubric three out of the four
group members approved of a plan of work. For the fourth member of the
group this work was "too simple" and not extravagant enough (even
though it perfectly satisfied the given rubrics). Being a democratic
group, the three people out-voted her and we went with something she
deemed too simple. She didn't like it and petitioned the instructor to
work on her own (citing a hectic work schedule which didn't allow her
to work in groups that semester - I called BS, but thought that it was
OK since we'd have less friction in the group). I am not saying that
there isn't a reason to go above and beyond the homework assignment;
however everyone in the group was working 40+ hours per week at their
day job and was taking 2 graduate courses (plus whatever family
obligations). If you don't need to make something a herculean task,
why make it one?

I think that the instructor did us (the group) a great service by
having her do work on her own, but in the long run, if she can't work
with others and negotiate outcomes, then what is the point of group
work?

> from    Marynelle Chew marynelle.c...@byuh.edu
> to      "murray.tur...@gmail.com" <murray.tur...@gmail.com>

[Dave Braunschweig]

Marynelle,

Here's my approach to collaborative / team efforts addressing both
those who don't pull their weight and removing students from the team.

1) Students form their own teams. I've read research recommending
otherwise, but I prefer to let students form their own teams. This
gives them both an affinity for their team / topic and ownership of
their selection.

2) Teams are not formed until the third week of the course. Two weeks
of individual effort shakes out many of the students who won't be
completing the course.

3) Teams consist of two or three students. This doesn't leave any
room for slackers. Everyone needs to do their part.

4) Everyone on the team evaluates everyone's performance for the week
on a ten point scale with up to two points each for Participation,
Preparation, Communication, Collaboration, and Quality (Academic
Excellence). It's very important that they must evaluate themselves
as well as their teammates. Their evaluation and comments are not the
only factor in determining grades, but they are given significant
weighting.

5) I have them use Google Sites for their project development. Google
Sites allows me to see who contributed what parts, and when those
contributions occurred. Very important in sorting out discrepancies
when individual team evaluations don't match the overall effort
produced.

6) Because of the way students form their own teams, the proactive
students end up together, the "meet the deadline" students end up
together, and the procrastinators end up together. Interestingly, the
proactive students end up driving each other crazy because they all
want to succeed but each is convinced their way is the only right way
to proceed. The "meet the deadline" students do fine. The
procrastinators all procrastinate, and then end up with no one to
blame but themselves.

7) The instructor reserves the right to dissolve teams and reassign
teammates at any time for any reason. If it happens, those involved
will understand why. In each class I typically have to dissolve and
reform one or two teams. Either there are proactive students who just
can't work out their differences, or there's a procrastinator who
demonstrates an ability to get his or her act together and join a
productive team.

I've used this approach for four semesters now and have found it to be
very effective.

Dave

[Helen OTUK]

My latest blog post. Collaboratives, Collectives and Clouds - linking my edumooc experiences to my OT world.

Let me know what you think?

collaboratives-collectives-clouds.

Helen

[Vanessa Vaile]

From designing group work for classes, admittedly smaller ones, I'd add that successful group work takes good design and organization on the part of instructor. That includes taking the time to train / accustom students to work in groups.  Then good group dynamics make a difference, not necessarily something one has control over. It could take a several course for a really good group project design to evolve - and the students had as much a hand or more in that than I did. 

I always let students pick their own groups, mostly because I never liked  being told what group I had to go in. Early group work was mostly practice stuff, nothing heavy duty until they had the hang of it. By then everybody knew who worked well in a group. Not even their roommates and girlfriends wanted them so they all ended up in the same group. A surprise too when they turned in the best work - and had a good time.

 Vanessa

[Murray Turoff]

There is a a lot of difference between cooperation, coordination, and
collaboration. Unfortunately,
a lot of academics don't know the difference and you can find articles
where all three are treated as
the same thing. Collaboration is where a group works together on the
same problem and any contribution by any one
member is reviewed by all the others for potential improvements.
This is also what is done in the "Delphi method"
and the original reference book for that method is free on my website
http://is.njit.edu/turoff A lot of
specific Delphi designs for collaborative communication are useful for
educational purposes.

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