Week Six Discussion

Collaborative Learning is Highly Effective

From ... http://www.co-operation.org/pages/overviewpaper.html

Where do we see Collaborative Learning being applied?

• Franchise Forum - "One of the secrets of a successful franchise is to communicate, inform, and build a collaborative environment with their franchisees."
• "Contracting staff needs information and they don't have time to go looking for it. They've already asked about some form of blog or Wiki."
• Executive report that needs to be available to senior level management only and they all need quick access to add their edits/comments.

All of these are a hybrid between Learning and Work.

• "even my non-technical friends are beginning to venture into this world that has been introduced to me recently and are in fact using them."

The experience was supposed to be that you had an "aha" that these tools were easy to use, especially in a Software as a Service (SaaS) model.

Challenges

• "Difficult to get busy professionals to sign up for the different tools, and then get them to actively participate in any type of collaborative experience."
• "I do not think our company is ready to venture into online tools that require so much individual effort to be effective."
• "I am especially not sold on the use of virtual teaming. From my experience, the majority of instructional teams simply divide up the work. This allows people spend minimal effort and still get a good grade for a completed project. But, they don’t gain the added learning that the team and collaboration are supposed to provide. In my view, they are an educational (grade focused) exercise that does not translate well into the professional (performance focused) world."