We are social animals, and - especially when young - we learn by watching others. Collaboration then is an opportunity to learn from others. We can see how someone else approaches the same task and maybe discover a more efficient method, or we become satisfied that our way is the best way. In the true spirit of collaboration, perhaps we meld the two approaches to create the most efficient process. In this way, collaboration is like an act of building, taking disparate ideas from different individuals and bringing them together to create one thing.
But how does this help us to understand? Having the opportunity to see things from someone else's perspective provides us with a more balanced understanding of a problem and its potential solution. Being exposed to others’ points of view expands our own understanding of a problem to where we can begin to see more than one side to an argument rather than just our own. It forces us to explain ourselves, our position, our reasoning, thereby cementing what we know and understand in the telling. If we are wrong, then we have our collaborators to correct us.
Rich, I like your thought about how we have our collaborators, be they fellow students or experts like instructors, to call us on possible holes in our understandings. The defense of our understanding is a way ensure that transference has occurred and not necessarily just mimicking or regurgitation of the information/knowledge/skill.
ReplyDeleteGeri's post to Rich's blog, 5/7/11
ReplyDeleteThis blog post from "In the library with a lead pipe" says it all... http://tinyurl.com/3fv8z2d
Academic librarians who collaborate with faculty not only secure their place in an academic setting, but serve the higher purpose of supporting the information needs of faculty and students.
I just came back from a poster presentation I did with two of our nursing faculty and we all came away from the conference with new ideas to embed health literacy instruction that we will be implementing throughout the program.
The conference plenary and break-out sessions cemented what I have been trying to say in meetings over the last two years. The faculty saw first-hand the importance of health literacy as it relates to patient care and safety. In short, I now have total buy-in from key faculty to further develop courses by integrating health literacy throughout the curriculum because they now truly understand how it applies to their instruction and student learning.
Rich and Thom, your comments made me think about one of the potential pitfalls of collaborative learning. I totally agree that an important component of collaboration is gaining deeper or clearer understandings with the help of our colleagues. But do you think that sometimes people are hesitant to collaborate with others because this process of ideas being challenged or holes in their learning being pointed out is intimidating? How can we as educators scaffold this aspect of the collaborative process?
ReplyDeleteRebecca, I know I am a reluctant collaborator for just that reason.
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