Topic three (3) wait for me!


Collaboration, is it really that hard?

Sometimes it is hard to change our habits, but anyway sometimes it is really worth trying. That is the thing with collaboration. Almost no one knows what it is about, or people have a foggy vision of collaboration. They rather think of cooperation (when saying “of course we collaborate” in noble words), divide the tasks among people and then stick the pieces into one coherent/incoherent whole. And collaboration is more than that, it is “…an essential part of how we need to operate to be successful in today’s world” (1). The world evolves, so should we.

From one of the articles - “when cooperating, people perform together (co-operate) while working on selfish yet common goals” (2), while during collaboration people should forget about their own goals and work on the single shared goal and should share the same values. And here each voice matters, meaning that when someone would leave the group, the balance would change. The group would be an incomplete body without some of the voices. The real meaningful collaboration needs different thinkers, different opinions, respect, discussion, willingness to work together (yep, the positive attitude is a must be), trust, …………………………… (dots – place for your answers, maybe you could put them in the comments?) (3). Yes, indeed trust is a very important issue. We have to trust our colleagues (here personal connections and emotions play a huge role) and also have trust in ourselves. We have to have a sufficiently high self-esteem to trust our skills. For sure a safe respectful group would help to spread our wings and fly 😉

Lately, I have tried synchronous online collaboration (the real one 😉 ), and I must say it worked. Firstly, it was fun (meaning the conditions were somehow hilarious). The next advantage was time – we devoted much less time for the task than we would while working separately. The ideas just came by themselves, and we did not have to wait for our peers response. What is also important, we did not fear to express our opinions (we trust each other) – meaningful discussion took place. And …….. the outcome was ours. Not solely mines, not solely X’s or Y’s.

So, it is just my opinion :) And how about you?


[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-power/collaboration-vs-cooperat_b_10324418.html
[2] http://cloudhead.headmine.net/post/3279118157/cooperation-vs-collaboration
[3] http://www.spencerauthor.com/can-you-force-collaboration/


Komentarze

  1. Alastair Creelman30 listopada 2017 22:59

    And how can this be applied in other contexts, such as project work and course development?

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  2. Unknown3 grudnia 2017 06:06

    Your blog make me feel that I was not the only one who was confused at that stage of the course. I think this confusion played an important role in motivating all of us to find the clarity and meet the objectives of this course.

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  3. Unknown3 grudnia 2017 06:07

    Ten komentarz został usunięty przez autora.

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  4. Unknown4 grudnia 2017 08:56

    This blog post reminds me of John Nash (played by Russel Crowe) in the bar trying to convince his friends on how the group works better when everyone works towards their own goals, while keeping in mind the ultimate goal of the group. Love it!

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  5. Unknown27 grudnia 2017 08:16

    I absolutely agree about your thought: if the group members forget about their own goals, if they all trust each other and have common goal - they achieve amazing things. This is what I experience with my students again and again, when we have different group projects.

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