RSA #4 Facilitating Collaboration in Online Learning

RSA #4  Facilitating Collaboration in Online Learning

 http://sloanconsortium.org/jaln/v10n1/facilitating-collaboration-online-learning

“Facilitating Collaboration in Online Learning” is a fantastic article by Caroline Haythornthwaite.  She examines why collaboration is important and what outcomes we expect.  She also discusses how online communication is different that face-to-face learning and the challenges that it poses. 

One of the most important parts of online collaboration is figuring out how people will communicate with each other.  The group should have common goals and communication practices.  Haythornthwaite makes a distinction between collaboration and coordination.  When people coordinate online, they may be working independently and then creating an end product together by piecing it together. (p. 12)  This reminded me of the challenge of writing common assessments as a department.  Oftentimes, we are just trying to coordinate but not actually collaborate.  But common assessments are a prime example of when collaboration is really necessary. 

There are challenges to collaboration though.  Haythornthwaite says “…peer-to-peer exchange depends on time, effort, and trust among peers. Sharing may not occur when there is competition for scarce resources, where knowledge is power, or where time is so short that engagement with peers is outside the bounds of possibility” (p. 11). 

Online communication can be fraught with barriers to building a community. Although people can sometimes express themselves more freely; they miss out on the social cues that come from face-to-face communication.  (Haythornthwaite, p. 15)

        I think this piece does a great job exploring some of the benefits to online collaboration but also some of the pitfalls.  When planning a professional learning community, it is important to figure out what the goals are before you commit to one model or resource.  For example, Edmodo may work well in some cases because teachers will be passing along their completed lessons, websites or assessments.  However, if a PLC is designed for more in-depth collaboration online, a format like Google Docs would be better so that members could work together on something without having to be in the same place.  

Haythornthwaite, C.  (Feb 2006).  Facilitating Collaboration in Online Learning. The Sloan Consortium, volume 10.   Retrieved June 23rd from http://sloanconsortium.org/jaln/v10n1/facilitating-collaboration-online-learning