Collaborative Versus Cooperative Learning

With this work I tried to make a synthesis of the most important aspects of collaborative and cooperative work. I thought that important because, as several authors refer, it's not easy to make distinction of those techniques. Moreover, due the directive characteristics of cooperative learning, sometimes this technique is applied in a very "directive" learning /teaching process that has a very different philosophy of the most modern online theories as for example those that preconize transparency.

"¨ Collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle
¨ Cooperation is a structure of interaction designed to facilitate the accomplishment of an end product or goal.
Many of the elements of cooperative learning may be used in collaborative situations. " :

Collaborative Versus Cooperative Learning

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Transparency in on line education is a concept:

Transparency in on line education is a concept:

"... that you and your doings are visible to fellow students and teachers within a learning environment. For instance, transparency could mean that students and teachers are made aware of and have access to each other’s interests, thoughts, concerns, ideas, writings, references, and assignments. "

"...The purpose of transparency is to enable students and teachers to see and follow the work of fellow students and teachers within a learning environment and in that sense to make participants available to each other as resources for their learning activities."

Dalsgaard,Christian, Paulsen, Morten Flate; Transparency in Cooperative Online Education http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267

"Transparency between students means that they have insight into each other’s work, thoughts, and productions. Not least within online education, transparency is not a given. Students might work at a distance and individually, and, thus, they are not necessarily aware of the activities of other students. In their individual work, however, students write notes, search for literature, find relevant websites, write assigements etc."

Dalsgaard, Christian, Social networking sites: Transparency in online
education

The sentences above illustrate the importance of transparent learning. Based on this spirit I've done this work that intents to give more information about Transparency in a online learning ambience.

Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality by Christopher Hill in Distance Learning

Anotated Bibliography

In this articles, the author argues about several principles that can be very useful and perahps shoud be considered in order to promote transparency in online education. however the article focus is courses design.

In his oppinion "One of the requirements for implementing Transparency by Design is the development of a new set of best practices for participating institutions"


These short texts, refer that one factor of major importance for the sucess in online education is also a well designed course with the right attitude of those who work there.


"The keys are disclosure, transparency, the ability to interact with students easily and the quality of the curriculum. So that we know what we’re trying to achieve and we regularly
measure it.”
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Hill, Christopher, Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality,October 20, 2009 in http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/principles-for-improving-online-transparency-quality/ viewed in 28/12/09

Hill, Christopher, More Principles for Improving Online Transparency, Quality,October 2, 2009 in http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/distance-learning/more-principles-for-improving-online-transparency-quality/ viewed in 28/12/09
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An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency in Online Education Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org

Annotated Bibliography

…finding, studying and sharing materials related to transparency in online education

In this interview and answering about what he meant when he argue that transparency improves quality in online education, Professor Paulsen tell us that transparency is important specially because of tree positive effects on quality:

• Preventive quality improvement - obtained essentially by the access to others works and from the others to our own;

• Constructive quality improvement - come from the learning from others when accessing to their work;

• Reactive quality improvement – obtained by the feedback that others give us when they access our work;

Another positive aspect is that with transparency the low quality of courses or the teachers work, do not have very much chances of survival.

Asked about his believes about the propriety of transparency on promoting cooperation in online education, Professor Paulsen explained that it is s much easier to cooperate when we know the work of others.

Furthermore, he thinks that transparency is also fundamental in social networking because “the starting point is the individual or personal which does not happens with discussion forums. Having a personal page and profile that can be modified and developed, one can always being an individual and a member of a community.“In other words, actions within a social networking site are transparent. This creates a kind of indirect or passive form of communication and sharing.”

Replying to the question “Have you publish other recent articles on transparency in on-line education?” Paulsen enumerate some of his last publications and referred some interesting experiences with students.

In order to be even more “transparent” about transparency, Paulsen underlines that “it’s not only information provided by instructors that could be transparent”

As an example he pointed the Universidade Aberta’s where: “all the students have public blogs where you can read the annotated bibliographies and see the learning objects they develop for the course”

In his opinion it’s precisely this “extreme transparency of work-in-progress allows that the students to get feedback not only from their classmates, but from everybody on the internet as a part of their learning experience.” Even in more elementary levels and mostly in the case of families that live abroad, transparency can also be very useful and give very good results.

Paulsen believes also that transparency could improve quality even in evaluation what is underlined when he sates that “ relevant information should be available to the various user groups so that they can learn from the results and understand that they are members of a larger learning community” .

This can be confirmed in the work of NKI where writtings that: Students could see a report showing qualitative statistics of interest to students in their course." underlines that "Teachers could see the same report as the students with additional teacher information from certain parts of the questionnaire or from data related to other courses." and also assigning some importance to the presence of the administrative staff he says that they could see comparative reports showing responses from all user groups and questionnaires. This could also for example be used to identify teachers who receive excellent evaluations or courses that receive worrying evaluations. ”

Pausen nevertheless refers one weekness in these evaluation systems dispite the “NKI quality barometer” when he wrights that “they are not meant for continuous evaluation”, meaning that these types of evaluation should be used only scarcely.

In a kind of conclusion Paulsen remember that an ethical and moral challenge is present to find the right balance between transparency and privacy.

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References:

[1] Michael F. Shaughnessy Senior Columnist EdNews.org; An Interview with Morten Flate Paulsen: Transparency in Online Education; in http://www.moodle.univ-ab.pt/moodle/course/view.php?id=4098#Scene_1 Visited in 26/12/09

Transparency in Cooperative Online Education by Chritian Dalsgaard and Morten Flate Paulsen

Activity 1 - Annotated Bibliography

Analysis of an article

The abstract of this article shows clearly the subject, starting that

“ The purpose of this article is to discuss the following question: What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education? ”

One is also clarified by the authors that they are going to demonstrate their argument “that transparency is a unique feature of social networking services. ”

The text argues that transparency and social networks can be used in cooperative online education in a certain way. In fact the authors believe that social networks and transparency are fundamental to increase ability among students.

The problem identified by the authors is to find in what measure the increasing of the ability can be done and how social networks can support cooperative online learning and how can they be used to innovate and also to increase student motivation. Web2.0 tools i.e. Weblogs, social networking sites, micro-blogging, and social presence tools) can provide the means to do the work and most of all they can stimulate the creativity of the student. Moreover, one of the network characteristics is that people share, ask, give teach and exchange as the authors state.

“People can cooperate only if they know about each other and have access to some common information and services ”

Being very skilled in network (social or not) collaboration and cooperation can perfectly be used as an added value to online (cooperative) education. But foremost transparency is the biggest added value brought to online education as the authors underline “central characteristic of social networking is the potential to facilitate transparency between students. The basic assumption is that transparency is important to cooperative online education. ”

Transparency – what’s that?

“Transparency means that you and your doings are visible to fellow students and teachers within a learning environment. ”

Following the work of the other students and even that of the teachers doesn’t mean appropriation or steeling. It is under the other way around: in online education it can mean specially a big help and a stimulus for innovation and “an idea for new ideas” as the authors suggest. As put it “The purpose of transparency is to enable students and teachers to see and follow the work of fellow students and teachers within a learning environment and in that sense to make participants available to each other as resources for their learning activities.”

Besides, for those that dislike “group work” that don’t allow individual performances and feel the need of exchanging ideas, cooperative learning is the best way to learn specially in distance education.“A central aspect of cooperative learning is to enable students to make use of each other while at the same time maintaining individual freedom ”


Social Networking and Cooperative Learning

Since we live a communication Age it’s natural that networks become quite a must in people’s life and also for students. But communication is not necessarily collaboration and the authors of this article consider mandatory to define what and in what measure social networks are important to cooperative learning and how and in what can they be used as pedagogical tools “ Networks are loosely organized structures (Dron & Anderson 2007) in which people do not necessarily collaborate or communicate directly. However, the question is what role networks play in relation to learning (….) more questions arises: What kind of relations supports learning, and, specifically, how do networks support learning? ”

Morevover “ it is necessary to clarify how different kinds of social relations support learning. Thus, it is necessary to make a connection between learning and types of social relations”.

Because of that it is also necessary to clarify the difference between the concepts of “cooperative” and “collaborative” “We make a distinction between „collaborative‟ versus „cooperative‟ problem solving. Cooperative work is accomplished by the division of labour among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving. We focus on collaboration as the mutual engagement of participants in a coordinated effort to solve the problem together. (Roschelle & Teasley, 1995, p. 70) ”

To collaborate means in general that there is a participation in a learning community and that there are limits for individual flexibility. The Cooperative approach put the emphasis in the encouragement of both individual flexibility and affinity to a learning community: “Another way to distinguish between the three terms is to claim that individual learning is conducted alone, collaborative learning depends on groups, and cooperative learning takes place in networks. ”

In fact, learning is considered as an active process and social relations are central to learning in a socio-cultural approach. But an individual doesn’t have to “disappear” in the community work that must be constituted as a “group of individuals” “The objective is not community-building or collaboration but increased awareness. ”


Transparency and Cooperative Learning

“We will argue that transparency is a dominant feature of social networking”

Philosophy of cooperative learning is directly related with one of the most important aspect of social networks in wish “the starting point is the individual or personal”. In opposition to the discussion forums, an individual always own is only personal page. So Individuality is always present. And it is as an individual that one share. “In a discussion forum you are represented by your posts only, whereas you are always “present” in a social network through your personal page. ”

“Transparency is particularly relevant within cooperative learning, where students are working on related projects or assignments but are not collaborating. Within cooperative online learning a central challenge is to enable students to follow the work of their colleagues. If students are unaware of the activities of fellow students, they might not make use of each other. This problem is reinforced within online education, where students do not meet face-to-face (Paulsen, 2008). ”

Furthermore, like in a network community, collaboration and cooperation are voluntary. Requiring transparency and using social networks as an attractive pedagogical tool, in cooperative learning student share and use community and individual awareness. “Cooperation will benefit when general and personal information related to the learning and the learners is available directly or indirectly to the learning community.”

Through transparency, quality is promoted because one is always seeking for better performances and “seeing and being seen it is much more easy and stimulating”.

Transparency implies that users to a certain extent can see and be seen, but it is important to find a suitable transparency level. Transparency is also an important driver for improved quality. It has the following three positive effects on quality

• Preventive quality improvement -We are prone to provide better quality when we know that others have access to the information and contributions we provide.

• Constructive quality improvement - We may learn from others when we have access to their data and contributions.

• Reactive quality improvement - We may receive feedback from others when they have access to our data and contributions. ”

Web2.0 social software alows to increase performances on online education. Blogs, wikis, social networking sites, RSS, and social bookmarking become compelling tools in online education. In fact, now “users produce, share, and refine information of mutual interest and benefit for all community members”. Based in the “visibility “and “accessibility” all the productions are transparent and so shared and “cooperative”. And this cooperation can have the size that one can find appropriate. The same happens for evaluation “In cooperative learning environments, the findings and results should be reasonably transparent, and relevant information should be available to the appropriate user groups so that they can learn from the results and understand that they are members of a larger learning community. ”



Transparency: Potential for Online Education


One of the most related problems of Distance Education is the isolation of the student with all the consequences that are inherent to that.

Cooperative learning permits a conjugation of some ideal factors: A student does not have to abandon his individuality to belong, share and participate in a learning community. “This kind of sharing can provide students with insights into the workings of other students, and, thus, give them an increased consciousness and awareness of the activities of other students.”

Despite not being “new learning management systems”, Web 2.0 tools and social networks have become a pedagogical added value to on line learning. For the authors of this article, lying in “transparency and the ability to create awareness among students (…) social networking should be considered as a supplement to other tools”

In a sort of conclusion one can say these authors consider that the pedagogical potential of transparency lies within developing social networks in which students’ activities are visible to other students without denying them their individuality. “Cooperative learning and a socio-cultural approach provide a strong motive for support of transparency between student

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References:

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• Christian Dalsgaard ,Morten Flate Paulsen; Transparency in Cooperative Online Education; International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning; Volume 10, Number 3; ISSN: 1492-3831 In http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/671/1267 Visited in 26/12/09

• Christian Dalsgaard, Social networking sites: Transparency in online education; Institute of Information and Media Studies, University of Aarhus, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N,Denmark,http://eunis.dk/papers/p41.pdf%20%20 visited in 26/12/2009

• Morten F. Paulsen; Profiling Online Students in EDEN President’s Blog, Weblog of Alan W. Tait President of EDEN in collaboration with the Executive Committee http://www.eden-online.org/blog/2008/10/01/profiling-online-students/ visited in 26/12/2009

Pedagogical Techniques for Computer Mediated Comunication

Online teaching techniques - anotated bibliography

Digimind; Le Web 2.0 pour la veille et la recherche d’information; Exploitez les ressources ; http://www.digimind.com; viewed in 17/11/2009

• This is a document made for the enterprise (Digimind) workers. It is however very interesting because it pretends to be a document that allows to everyone that is interested to know what really is the web 2.0.
• The document give us a definition of the web2.0 and its principles, explain the technologies, has a glossary, tell us in what and for what it is useful and before telling us the conclusions, it give us a panoramic of web 2.0. limitations.
  

Bryan Alexander; Web 2.0 A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Viewed in 17/11/2009

Through these sentences we can see what Bryan Alexander has to tell us about web 2.0 and its possibilities:

• Social software has emerged as a major component of the Web 2.0 movement

• Rather than following the notion of the Web as book, they are predicated on microcontent

• Social bookmarking is one of the signature Web 2.0 categories, one that did not exist a few years ago and that is now represented by dozens of projects.

• Researchers at all levels (students,faculty, staff) can quickly set up a social bookmarking page for their personal and/or professional inquiries

• Users can also subscribe to tags and receive a list of URLs tagged with a certain word on their del.icio.us page.
• Each annotated tag is dated, editable, and organized in reverse chronological order, blog-style.

• Web services have evolved, projects have emerged that act as social writing platforms.
• After e-mail lists, discussion forums, groupware, documents edited and exchanged between individuals, and blogs, perhaps the writing application most thoroughly grounded in social interaction is the wiki. Wiki pages allow users to quickly edit their content from within the browser window. At a smaller level, other Web 2.0 services are aimed at somewhat more constrained yet still easily collaborative writing.

• social writing platforms support people creating and editing each other’s content, a different group of Web 2.0 services explores that content from the outside, as it were. Blogging has become, in many ways, the signature item of social software, being a form of digital writing that has grown rapidly into an influential force in many venues, both on- and offline.

• Many of these services allow users to save their searches as RSS feeds to be returned to and examined in an RSS reader, such as Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) or NetNewsWire (http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/).

• Social writing platforms appear to be logistically useful tools for a variety of campus needs, from student group learning to faculty department work to staff collaborations.

• Web 2.0 therefore supports queries for information and reflections on current events of all sorts. Given bloggers’ propensity for linking, not to mention some services’ ability to search links, blogs and other platforms readily lead the searcher to further sources. Students can search the blogosphere for political
• Commentary, current cultural items, public developments in science, business news, and so on.
• The rich search possibilities opened up by these tools can further enhance the pedagogy of current events
• The extensive growth of Web 2.0 projects has even more recently given rise to tools that make use of multiple services simultaneously.

• Web 2.0’s lowered barrier to entry may influence a variety of cultural forms with powerful implications for education, from storytelling to classroom teaching to individual learning.

Simon Heid, Thomas Fischer and Walter F. Kugemann; Good Practices for Learning 2.0:Promoting Innovation

• “This report is part of the research project “Learning 2.0 – the Impact of Web 2.0 Innovations on Education and Training in Europe”,1 launched by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) in collaboration with the European Commission Directorate General Education and Culture (DG EAC) at the beginning of 2008. The project aims to gather evidence on the take up of social computing by European Education and Training (E&T) institutions, in order to understand the impact of this phenomenon on innovations in educational practice and its potential for a more inclusive European knowledge society. The project also sets out to identify challenges and bottlenecks so as to devise policy options for European decision makers.”

• “This report presents the results of the in-depth study of 8 initiatives employing social computing tools in innovative ways in predominantly formal learning settings. The case assessment examines impacts and outcomes, factors for failure and success, as well as obstacles and barriers, in order to assess good practice and the impact of Learning 2.0 on innovation.”
• “The results of this study have been presented at the validation workshop and will feed into the final report of the Learning 2.0 project. They also contribute to continuing previous work conducted in the IS Unit at IPTS,7 in particular the recently concluded IPTS “Exploratory Research on Social Computing” (ERoSC) and the IPTS vision on future “Learning Spaces”, models for future learning in the Knowledge Society, where technologies mediate new participative and flexible opportunities for learning.”

Tom Franklin; Mark van Harmelen; Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education viewed in 17/11/09

• “This report is the result of a study into the use of Web 2.0 technologies for content creation for learning and teaching in Higher Education, funded by the JISC, and carried out between March and May 2007. It draws on existing studies, interviews with staff at universities who have implemented Web 2.0 technologies for learning and teaching, and a week-long web based seminar (webinar) with expert contributions, both from speakers and the audience. The report builds on the briefing documents that were written especially for the webinar and the results of the webinar discussions, many of which can be found in the Moodle site that was used to support the conference.”

In this document we can find:

• How Web 2.0 will affect how universities go about the business of education, from learning, teaching and assessment, through contact with school communities, widening participation, interfacing with industry, and maintaining contact with alumni.
• the possible realms of learning to be opened up by the catalytic effects of Web 2.0 technologies are attractive, allowing greater student independence and autonomy, greater collaboration, and increased pedagogic efficiency
• That Because Web 2.0 is a relatively ‘young’ technology, there are many unresolved problems and issues in its use in universities
• Most importantly, because the use of Web 2.0 in various areas of application (learning, teaching, administration, management) is still in an early stage, we recommend that institutions take a light-weight approach use of regulations that might constrain experimentation with the technologies and allied pedagogies.

• Recommendations about.

Cooperative and collaborative learning - What benefits?

Cooperative freedom theory - Anotated bibliography

This anotated bibliography was created to better understand the cooperative freedom theory and whith the knowledge brought, create a critical work about.








Kemczinski, Avanilde; Marek, Joel; da Silva Hounsell, Marcelo; Gasparini, Isabela–COLABORAÇÃO E COOPERAÇÃO – PERTINÊNCIA,CONCORRÊNCIA OU COMPLEMENTARIDADE - Brasil www.producao online.ufsc.

In this article the authors argue about “the relevancy, competition and/or complementarity of the processes of the collaboration and cooperation front different points-of-view".One of the first focuses goes to the difference between “cooperative” and “colaborative”. For the authors the fundamental problem is to know in what way that matters in a e-learning ambiance. in literature the opinion between authors is not consensual. Being so, the autors of this article give us a brief explanation of each point of view so as the fondamentation.They conclude that all of the point of view are relevant, and that cooperative and colaborative are complementary concepts.

Dr. Morrison; Behavioral Strategy Abstract: Self-Pacing Versus Instructor-Pacing Jennifer Maddrell Old Dominion University IDT 873 Advanced Instructional Design Techniques September 8, 2008

The purpose of this study is to compare achievement, student satisfaction, and retention between self-paced and instructor-paced personalized systems of instruction The researchers set out to extend prior research by focusing on the effect of pacing on these measures”
“Unfortunately, the authors offer the results as a demonstration of learning achievement, but it is unclear from the results what precisely was learned”

The main objective of research, was to establish whether and under what circumstances collaborative learning was more effective than learning alone. The authors present some of the major developments over recent years in this field, and then considers the implications of such changes for tools and methods with which to observe andanalyse interactions between learners.or them “a social structure in which two or more people interact with each other and, in some circumstances, some types of interaction.
The conclusion of this chapter could therefore be that we should stop using the word 'collaboration' in general and start referring only to precise categories of interactions. The work of Webb, reported above, showed that even categories such as 'explanation' are too large to be related to learning outcomes. We have to study and understand the The fundamental question in this article is: “What is the potential of social networking within cooperative online education?”
For these authors, transparency and cooperation are the supports of quality. As conclusion they say that the “pedagogical potential of social networking lies within transparency and the ability to create awareness among students”

That’s why they believe that:

“Transparency is important for cooperative online education. People can only cooperate if they know about each other and have access to some common information and services. Cooperation will benefit when general and personal information related to the learning and the learners is available directly or indirectly to the learning community. This transparent information may include personal information about the users and statistics related to the users’ deployment of the online tools. It may further include work students and teachers provide in online notebooks, blogs, and discussion forums as well as results from quizzes, surveys, and assignments.”Pedagogical potential that can be viewed in social networks is obviously related with the “special kind of communication and interaction afforded by social networking sites”. It will be very useful to consider social networking as a supplement to other tools.

Paulsen, Morten (2003); “Cooperative Freedom: An Online Education Theory”. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from http://www.studymentor.com/cooperative_freedom.pdf

It’s referring the three theoretical positions on distance education, identified by Keegan (Theories of autonomy and independence; Theories of industrialization, and Theories of interaction and communication) that Paulsen begin to expose his Theory of Cooperative freedom.

To Paulsen one of the targets in a distance education course “it’s to achieve the high level of freedom for the students”, and the better way to arrive there is using the hexagon of the theory: Time, Space, Pace, Medium, Access and Content.

But the conclusion shows us some difficulties:

Future adult students will seek individual flexibility and freedom. At the same time, many need or prefer group collaboration and social unity. These aims are difficult to combine, but online education, when integrated with other media, can be the means of joining individual freedom and collective unity into truly flexible, cooperative distance David D. Curtis education programs.