Nicholas Bowskill

Hi Sylvia,
I think the 5 points you raised were really useful. I'd just like to try and build on that if I can by saying that there is a real need in collaboration to recognise that the group is a resource as much as a process for learning. In addition, the diversity that exists in most groups is the driver for learning together. Walter Stroup at University of Austin, Texas puts it better when he says that the diversity is the 'engine' for learning.


Best wishes,
Nick


Nicholas Bowskill,
Faculty of Education
University of Glasgow,

Creator of Shared Thinking
http://www.sharedthinking.info

Emma, I've been following these discussions in the background and I felt your point hit the nail on the head. It's not really about one tool over another is it? It's about what we really mean about the term collaboration exactly as you say. Excellent point!

Can I offer a couple of examples that might serve to illustrate? One online and the other on campus.

I worked as an online tutor team half in the UK and half in China. We tutored on an online course together as a highly distributed tutoring team. We each had a group to care for and to try and maintain some sort of cohesion as we went through a very strange but exciting experience, I started a blog in the tutor-space. I kept the blog throughout and the other tutors annotated it according to aspects they agreed or disagreed with. So we worked inside this one diary as a way of checking our understanding over time. That for me was collaboration (apart from designing the course together as well).

Currently I'm using voting technology on campus to get students working as a group reflecting together. It's a process of cooperative inquiry using a snowball/pyramid discussion technique to generate a whole-class view before voting. That always feels like very close collaboration (see http://www.sharedthinking.info for more on this).

So for me its not tools because you can do something collaborative with almost anything. For me it's about being genuinely collaborative. Thanks for the prompt to participate Emma. I'm always enjoying these discussions.

Nicholas Bowskill
Faculty of Education
University of Glasgow
Scotland

http://www.sharedthinking.info

Please excuse me. I gave the wrong web address for Shared Thinking. It should have been http://www.sharedthinking.info


My apologies.

Nick


Nicholas Bowskill
Faculty of Education
University of Glasgow
Scotland, UK

Creator of Shared Thinking
http://www.sharedthinking.info

As always I'm following these discussions with great interest. One thing that prompted me to jump in here was that much has been made of a network of contacts and the value of diverse perspectives. What hasn't been voiced quite as much is the issue of obtaining a view of the community-level perspective. Maybe we can think about the community is what it shares collectively as much as individually?

By this I mean the ability to participate in and view the concerns of your own sub-community and then that of the wider community. Roy Pea calls this the importance of seeing what you build together; David McConnell refers to this as making learning public; and the Project Zero team at Harvard refer to it in a schools-based context as Making Learning Visible.

What I am struggling to suggest is that it is important and valuable for identity and learning to get the collective view of those with whom you are learning. I believe this is part of supporting a learning network for students but also part of visualising that peer-network/community.

I came up with the concept of Shared Thinking as my contribution to supporting and developing this idea through the use of voting technology and interactive whiteboards. This is not for teaching (as they are commonly used) but for collaborative reflection. The outcome of Shared Thinking is a view of the concerns of the whole group quantified in relation to each other. This is a valuable resource for a community and an individual that may make the call upon a personal network more operable, efficient and effective. For anyone interested, more available at http://sharedthinking.info

Best wishes and thanks for a great discussion here

Nick


Nicholas Bowskill
Faculty of Education
University of Glasgow
Scotland, UK

Creator of Shared Thinking
http://sharedthinking.info

What a wonderful discussion! And I've listened with interest - sometimes shouting agreement and at other times arguing out loud. Now work is over for another week I thought it was an opportunity to finally participate.

The thrust of the conversation appears to centre upon the aim of 'capturing' ' assessing' ' credentialing' etc. It all seems hostile to informality.

Then I thought about evaluation by who? And according to who's criteria might my informal projects and conversations be evaluated? Who's agenda is being addressed etc.

Then I thought about the social context that seems to be missed in the conversation so far. Most of my informal learning involves others as facilitators or participants. Shouldn't evaluation reflect that social dimension much more?

Then I thought about the social-cultural aspect. Here we all are informally gathered together from at least different points of the western world but even within this we have huge diversity. Evaluation may be a critical approach to work and experience that may suit some more than others. Being 'critical' is an alien concept to many in the East and West.

So my current summary is that this is a big issue. And perhaps I should stop there.

Have a good weekend wherever you are.


Nick Bowskill
University of Glasgow
Scotland