Content through Collaboration

I have just been reading a very timely article by John Seely Brown and Richard P Adler about ‘social learning’. My reading coincided with a recent discussion I had with a colleague, Lee Simpson, about the use of VLEs in higher education. We both see VLEs being used primarily as repositories for lecture notes; for posting PowerPoint slides, or for turning acetates into electronic documents – all no more than putting books online. Academics are still the guardians of content. 

This is the worst case scenario, but all too familiar. Of course there are always the early adopters who are experimenting with second life, wikis and other web 2.0 tools while there are others who understand the power of ICT for bringing to life so many concepts that a text book cannot do. There are amazing online models and simulations that students and teachers can experiment with to enhance their learning, many using virtual versions of tools that students would be able to access rarely, if at all,  in the real world. 

What Seely Brown and Adler are saying is that it is the ‘power of us’ that transforms our capabilities for learning. Seely Brown has argued for many years about the role of informal learning in developing tacit knowledge in furthering our understanding, and his book the Social Life of Information demonstrates this quite convincingly. There is much evidence around to suggest that students who discuss their studies together perform better: they are socially constructing their knowledge through conversations and interactions with others. This is what Seely Brown and Adler call ‘social learning’. In the article they sum this up succinctly by describing the Cartesian view of knowledge and learning ‘that has largely dominated the way education has been structured for over a hundred years’ with the premise ‘I think therefore I am’ and contrast it with a view of social learning described by ‘We participate, therefore we are’. 

The notion of ‘We participate, therefore we are’ “shifts the focus of our attention from the content of a subject to the learning activities and human interactions around which that content is situated”. In formal education, however, the focus is still strongly around content. Content that is deemed ‘suitable’ is validated against specific criteria, and meets the requirements of the syllabus. We are still in a Cartesian environment where the emphasis is on the individual; where recall is still important; and where content is provided in a ‘pre-digested’ format. There is a fear that through technology students will gain access to ‘raw’ content which may be inaccurate or defamatory, or it might go beyond the curriculum boundaries.  If we consider Seely Brown and Adler’s words then perhaps this is no longer as important since it is the discussion and debate that goes on around this content that makes meaning, not the content itself.  But how does that become operational in an education setting?   I have long argued that based on a social constructivist view of learning, which is the premise of ‘social learning’, students should be encouraged to work more collaboratively and be assessed, not only on their individual efforts, but on their collaborative work. After all, an effective work place often depends on team members working together to improve output and meet targets. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills consortium in the US has produced some interesting designs for the future curriculum in schools that recognises, among others, the importance of collaboration. 

With the proliferation of web 2.0 tools anyone can create content, so why not students?  It is in the process of content creation where real learning takes place as students have to make choices about what is valid information, what is relevant and what to leave out. They have to agree a process whereby a consensus can be reached and decisions made about when the product of that collaboration is complete and publishable, and in what format(s) it should be published.  They have to agree on their audience; how to present them with their information; the format and suitability of that content; and whether and how they want others to interact with it. 

All this implies the acquisition of a new set of skills for teachers in order to provide the right level of support and intervention. After all, teachers are experts in their domain and as experts they have learnt how to operate within that domain; how to use certain skills and develop robust and effective techniques to solve problems; and how to further their knowledge and understanding. They need to be au fait with the tools that students use to create their content and to help their students to make choices about what resources to use and when; what to reject and why; how to extract the most valid, useful and relevant information and how to be critical and sceptical of information; how to mediate when groups disagree and how to support a group when they reach an impasse. Teachers also need to encourage students to seek and gain ideas and advice from experts inside and outside the school. And if the process of working and collaborating around content is what is important then teachers need to convene debriefing sessions where students discuss the processes they have gone through and the resulting output with each other and other groups. 

The tools available for collaboration are varied and which to use depend on whether the group are co-located or are in different regions, whether time differences vary and whether thinking time is required, as well as on cost and availability of the variety of tools. Both teachers and students need to be aware of the range of tools available and to make informed decisions about which to use and when. When is a wiki better than a bulletin board? When would a real time conversation serve the purpose better than an asynchronous discussion? Is an audio conference preferential to a video conference, and does it need to be recorded? Or would a text chat in real time be a more useful way of recording interactions. Do desktops need to be shared or can a document management system do a better job? When would you need to use both? When would telepresence really make sense? When would a virtual meeting through applications like webex be useful? As these tools proliferate, then teams have to select the most appropriate tools fit for purpose and be clear about how these tools will work be used to work together to make the collaboration seamless and meaningful. It is also important to remember there are times when working on your own is also important. This is time for consolidating your ideas and thoughts and your discussions with others, so blogs, mindmaps and journals are also an important part of the collaboration toolkit. 

Social learning is set to grow. Formal education needs to take grasp of it; not to appropriate it to do things in the same old way, but to move to a situation in which the boundaries between learning inside and outside school are blurred. In so doing perhaps school will no longer be seen by students as a necessary (or unnecessary) evil that has to be endured, but as an experience that has real relevance and value.