On the Understanding Collaboration thread, Sarah explains her observations of Virtual High School archives, and gives examples showing that, "once a thread depth reached four, building was happening" (Sarah Haavind - Thursday, 30 March 2006, 06:53 AM [JST]). Not only does that answer my question about thread depth four being a threshold for apparently spontaneous "collaborative events" in online discussion, the entire thread may exemplify such depth.
I'm wondering, however, whether Edge's cooperative development scheme doesn't create a higher threshold of depth, perhaps thread depth nine (
flowchart_detail_A3_.pdf, attached). The writer, understander, and observer(s) all cooperate to draw out, if you will (rather than capture), the original writer's thoughts, intentions, plans, and commitments to further the writer's own development.
Granted, that depth of interaction is unlikely to occur frequently without suitable cultures, mediums, models, training, or practice. It certainly doesn't happen in the span of an hour, or overnight. Weeks or fortnights may be necessary to work through a single cycle - after forming relationships and assuming cooperative roles.
Other loci of collaboration folks have mentioned during this seminar include collaborative project work, and tangible by-products thereof. Bonnie's story and amplification suggest that explicit teaching of process may not be necessary, if a product is under co-construction. Sylvia's "bricks in a building" anecdote suggests that problem-solving may suffice to spark collaboration, perhaps better than a step-by-step approach - but what of learners' preferences?
Nevertheless, all these examples still leave open the question of assessing asynchronous learner collaboration. Sarah's findings indicate that students may jump, but only as high as you tell them they must to make the grade. Pragmatic students tasked to thread depth two or three achieve two or three. If you say four counts, you'll see them stretching, won't you?
Cannot the assessment of learner collaboration also involve collaboration among or with learners - whether your focus is authentic collaboration or work-products (Nancy), open story-telling (Chris), media production (Bonnie), or project proposals and plans (Paul)? Sylvia mentions class debriefing; Marsha shares course final student reflections....
If assessment, too, can be collaborative, how? Do post-participation, post-production assessments suffice? If not, why not?
Cheers, Paul