Collaboration-- Stand By Me

Here is an example of people working together.

Online and F2F Community Collaboration

This past week my class on Program Development explored the problems and possibilities of creating community-based collaboration in F2F settings and online. In general, most of us were reluctant to give up the importance of some F2F interaction as a part of creating communities.

I think it is still hard for me to completely believe that I can create as deep and rich of relationships with only online communication. We pushed the idea with a discussion of whether the addition of audio and video would overcome the limits of not being in the same room with people. Most of us neither had the experience to make a firm judgement about this or were aware of research findings that helped us answer this question. We did read a chapter in a very interesting book called Leadership at a distance (2008), edited by Susan Weisband. The chapter we read was by Brian Butler and his colleagues, titled, "Community effort in online groups: Who does the work and why?" A key point that Butler and his colleagues make is that successful online groups are the result of social behavior, not technical infrastructure. They write,

"At least four kinds of social behavior are necessary. First, people must tend the tools
themselves by managing software versions, keeping address files up to date, and so on. People also must recruit members to replace those who leave. They must manage social dynamics. They must participate. Without these group maintenance activities, even sophisticated tools and infrastructure will not sustain viable online groups" (p. 4-5).

There is a lot of "stuff" buried inside these four social behaviors that they identify and these are complex interactions to maintain and sustain in online settings (and in F2F settings). There is still much we do not know about online collaboration and the kinds of efforts it will take to make these work.

eXtension-- opening session, Louisville, KY

Thanks to wireless access throughout the Brown Hotel, I can sit in the meeting room and type you this message as the opening session begins.

One quick observation regarding participants in eXtension is that there are now three "communities of practice" that have ties to "family life." In addition to Just In time Parenting there is the Family Caregiver group and the newly formed "child care" team. Our colleagues are spread across these teams. Clearly we have numerous issues in common and there are many joint opportunities, issues and topics that we can explore together. As we go forward we should think about how we work across these teams.

All the conference presentations are being recorded so you have the opportunity to watch the program as well. These will all be linked to the eXtension wiki. As this unfolds I will add these links directly.

I have tagged all the entries of "COP_2008" so you can find all our entries for the conference in one place.

Persuasion in Facebook: An example of Collaborative Learning

In his work on mass interpersonal persuasion, BJ Fogg has been exploring how apps in Facebook are adopted. One of the ways he has explored this work is through a class he has been teaching at Stanford University. Although you can't see all the "collaborative" processes that Fogg is using, this is a good example of Learning 2.0 strategies in higher education.

This class has extended past the usual 15-week boundaries and others can join in on this discussion and learn about The Psychology of Facebook.

Although non-class members cannot get into the current course, you can get a glimpse of the collaborative strategies that Fogg seems to be using to engage students in learning and some of the tools he uses to facilitate collaborative work among students.

Strategies

• Invitation to join the extended version of the course

• Student generated reading list for a topic in the course

• Fogg's orientation to class about next session including, streamed lectures, the use of survey for peer feedback on student work, and group process guidance.

• An invitation to advance the scholarship of the "psychology of facebook."

• Postings of student work.

Tools for Collaboration

• Google Documents

• Facebook platform

George Siemens continues to expand his discussion of a "world without courses." His latest post expands his discussion of this idea.

He identifies for major problems in the creation of open learning enterprises:

1. Finding quality content
2. Creating pathways through content
3. Fostering connections between teachers and learners
4. Determining competence (accreditation of learning/teachers/schools)

I would add the following challenges to this list (some of these only apply to higher education and graduate education)

1. Creating quality content. We have models for textbooks, f2f lectures, etc and know somethings about effective teaching in traditional classrooms. We have not identified the effective models for open learning and we have barely begun to learn how to create effective multimedia instruction.

2. Creating learning communities. Perhaps this idea is encompassed in Siemen's "fostering connections," but there is a lot of work to be done regarding the creation of effective learning communities in regards to roles of instructors and roles of students. Here are some ideas I have been working on in regards to the roles of teachers and learners.

3. Developing collaborative relationships online. I think we have underestimated the amount of time, effort and skill that it takes to develop effective collaborative relationships from a distance. This is at the heart of advanced learning between teachers and graduate students. We have much to learn in this area.

4. Conducting research online. I am not sure if this is true, but I think that effective graduate training will require that we have our research tools online. In short, this means that we need to put our research labs online. The challenges of this task vary by field. Some fields already have much of their labs online (astronomy) and some fields would have significant difficulty moving all their work to an online space-- biology and chemistry for example. Some types of social science research can be moved online, but there are ethical and privacy issues that need careful attention.

Open Science among plant science

Here is a good example of where we need to be heading in terms of creating open systems of scientific development. There has been alot of talk about Learning 2.0, perhaps we need to begin talking about Discovery 2.0. (or maybe we are still at 1.0). The point is that there are many new tools and strategies that can be employed by scientists, science educators and the interested public around research and discovery.

NSF just funded a major effort to bring together plant scientists to share data, work on common problems, etc. Here is a quote from iPlant about its mission:

"This is an exciting time for science education! A user-friendly cyberinfrastructure will mean that for the first time in history everyone can work with the same data using the same tools in the same timeframe as high-level researchers. The goal of our Education Outreach and Training (EOT) is to ensure that everyone – students, teachers and faculty, from middle school to graduate school – will have the access and training to use these data and participate in research in real time."

They note that there is even room for social and behavioral scientists in terms of their willingness to create opportunities for social and behavioral scientists who are interested in collaborative processes and other other aspects of people working with each other across time and distance. As we know from some limited work in this area, there are substantial questions in this area. Well here is a chance for others to take a first-hand look.

More thoughts about data and extending science

Some of the most expensive data that we collect is qualitative and/or observational data. Making these data available to other researchers so that they can ask other types of questions or re-analyze data seems like an especially good idea.

There is one good example of this at the U of Illinois that begins to open up these data. This project is called the "Ethnography of the University." Faculty and students have agreed to share their data, publications, etc. in a common space. This allows more students to have access to the data, extend the questions, develop new ideas and exchange information.

Students who are interested in various topics about student life among university students have the opportunity to view multiple perspectives on this topic. Students interested in learning more about how scientists create ethnographies can see science in action.