Trends in Collaborative Education/Learning

Thanks to Ferina Santos - @ferinasantos - for sharing this excellent article on trends in Education. I think it is a wonderful overview of what the future of education is going to be like. No prizes for guessing that the emphasis is on collective and collaborative learning techniques and mechanisms! 

Read the full article here: The author is: Miriam Clifford - @miriamoclifford on Twitter

http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/facilitating-collaborative-learning-20-things-you-need-to-know-from-the-pros/ 

Here are some excerpts that appealed to my mind:

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Groups tend to learn through “discussion, clarification of ideas, and evaluation of other’s ideas”.  Perhaps information that is discussed is retained in long term memory.  Research by Webb suggests that students who worked collaboratively on math computational problems earned significantly higher scores than those who worked alone.  Plus, students who demonstrated lower levels of achievement improved when working in diverse groups. 

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Many studies such as those by Robert Slavin at Johns Hopkins have considered how cooperative learning helps children develop social and interpersonal skills.  Experts have argued that the social and psychological effect on self-esteem and personal development are just as important as the learning itself. 

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The quality of discussions is a predictor of the achievement of the group.  Instructors should provide a model of how a successful group functions.  Shared leadership is best.  Students should work together on the task and maintenance functions of a group.  Roles are important in group development. Task functions include:

• Initiating Discussions
• Clarifying points
• Summarizing
• Challenging assumptions/devil’s advocate
• Providing or researching information
• Reaching a consensus.

Maintenance involves the harmony and emotional well-being of a group.  Maintenance includes roles such as:

• Sensing group feelings
• Harmonizing
• Compromising and encouraging
• Time-keeping
• Relieving tension
• Bringing people into discussion

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Focus on enhancing problem-solving and critical thinking skills.  Design assignments that allow room for varied interpretations.  Different types of problems might focus on categorizing, planning, taking multiple perspectives, or forming solutions

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The article winds up by reminding us about the criticisms of collaboration (it may not allow for individual thinking) and asks us to beware of group-think (groups may end up going by the views of a few confident and dominant people and may not really reach a consensus) 

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I am passionate about how we can reinvent education and learning methods so children are more engaged, excited and enthusiastic to be life-long learners. Of course, the other dimension is that they must be able to apply what they learn in their lives and, furthermore, use it to determine what their lives must be like (find their passion and gift and share it with the world.) I hope we are on the verge of a revolution! :-)

Tidbits

There is surely a STRONG link between childhood memories & happiness as an adult. Re-experiencing things that once gave you comfort perhaps reconnects the nodes in your brain to bring you deja vu Happiness.

(Think of that nice song you heard plenty of times as a kid. The walk you had with Grandma in your village. The movie you watched with cousins and laughed your head off. I am sure this is the case even with the not-so-nice memories. Childhood experiences are so so critical.)

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We must invent a body sensor+audio device that'll boom out a context-sensitive quote or two when one begins to get angry. :-)

Imagine: You are about to scream at someone because they are slow on the uptake and this device immediately says in a deep and strong voice "Be kind to everyone - Dalai Lama" or something to that effect.

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What fills the huge gap between education and attitude or behavior? The gap that we rarely fill......! Inspiration, introspection, insight AND extreme effort! Sigh. E.x.t.r.e.m.e E.f.f.o.r.t indeed.

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Life sometimes delivers gifts that seem wonderful until you spot the hidden price tag that it has forgotten to remove......and your attention shifts elsewhere. ;-) 

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Simplicity is not how easy it is for the TECHIES to IMPLEMENT the solution! It is how easy it is for the USER to understand and USE the solution! A TV may have a million circuits embedded inside it, but at the end of the day, the knobs outside must be just enough and easy to operate. 

Learning

Collective Learning

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to change the way children learn into a more collaborative experience. At the end of the decade, for them to grow up and be good members of the society and achieve something meaningful, they must learn to listen deeply, appreciate others' views and let each person express himself while still arriving at independent conclusions. Eventually, though, it is about posing the right questions as a collective, putting everything together and filtering the noise. 


Update: So, why do you think this is funny? :-P Because it sounds contradictory and paradoxical? However, I do think I have not articulated what's in my head well enough.... 

I am not saying we must not think independently. Just saying we must learn the art of arriving at independent conclusions and at the same time learn to appreciate that others may have different views due to their own perceptions, experiences and background. We need to be able to see why they think the way they think! 

If we can then put various ideas together and filter out what the collective thinks is noise, it may lead to a good decision in corporate environments. Lone artists or innovators can still go ahead and do their own thing without checking with anyone ;-)

Individual Destiny

The world is full of wonder. There are endless opportunities. There is a lot more we can do if only we don't focus so much on financial safety (or is it mostly greed?) all the time. Parents & teachers must try hard not to narrow their child's vision and lead him/her to where *they* think the treasure is. There's so much yet to be discovered. There's so much yet to be done. There are so many new and unexplored ideas and paths. 


Why create an unnecessarily competitive world that focuses on what everybody else wants to focus on, loses track of true humanity, chases something blindly and knows not what meaning there is to life? Why can't we each choose our own niche areas and complement and collaborate with each other to build a rich, meaningful, creative, cooperative, happy and sustainable world? 


Enough of the 'mass production' of individuals who think and work alike and chase the same things without believing in it. We need to preserve the uniqueness in each of us and celebrate that for life. We need to seek what fits us as individuals and learn to ignore many of the things that the world, for some strange reason, thinks is essential to lead a good life. 


Is the urban man who eats exotic and exquisite food once a week and commutes in an expensive car necessarily happier than the rural man who eats a simple meal of rice and vegetable all through the year and spends time relaxing in the natural breeze from the magnificent trees he has planted? Aren't they both happy as long as they leverage on their skills and ideas, identify and pursue a cause and vision that is important and meaningful to them and continuously expand their capacity to think, learn and act?

Ken Robinson on Education & Creativity

Learning and The Dangers of Expertise

This talk provides good food for thought. Do watch it if you're interested in KM, Collaboration or Learning. The speaker warns us about the dangers of blindly believing so-called experts and not questioning them enough and about societies having to feel more comfortable about managing dissent. 


Someone from the audience asks a very valid question - About the impact that this might have on how we teach children. Here's what methinks:


Maybe this points to a clear need for collective learning amongst children? Rather than a teacher standing up in front of the class and preaching? And of course, the need for education to accommodate questions from students, Montessori style.


And, finally, consider this post in juxtaposition with the previous C&H strip. See the joke? :-)

Vivekananda Jayathi

“Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success, that is way great spiritual giants are produced.” - Swami Vivekananda


Not only spiritual giants, I might add! 


"We want that education, by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded and by which one can stand on one's own feet" - Swami Vivekananda 

Happy National Youth Day! Swami Vivekananda (12 Jan 1863 - 4 July 1902)

Sir Ken Robinson - One More Wonderful Talk

Sir Ken Robinson in his inimitable style and on his pet topic - The need for reforming education. Points to ponder: A three-year-old is not half a six-year-old. Life is organic, not linear. Education needs to adopt the principles of agriculture and not that of industrial production. Education is not fast food...

A KM Project, Employee Engagement, MBA in KM, Collaboration Skills

I feel like I've been neglecting myself. Not a single blog post since April 23rd! Gasp! I am almost sure this has not happened before. I've earlier remained silent for a week +/- a few days, but this time the silence has lasted more than 20 days!! Though, I am aware that the silence is totally explainable and justified. I've been absorbed in the development and implementation of a new KM & Collaboration application that I conceived 6 months back. Yet again, it becomes crystal clear to me that...

And also....one must be lucky to have a great team if not a perfect team. If the team isn't world class, then it's only passion and perseverance that keeps it going.

Aside: So, my blog posts are beginning to look different now, I realize. Mostly made up of sporadic twitter moments later connected and weaved together in a clumsy manner. Uh? ;-)


Anyway, getting back to the project, I am hoping I will have an opportunity to present it at an appropriate conference and see what the rest of the KM crowd thinks. I have positioned the tool as a personal knowledge management and cognitive networking application within the org. The tool automatically bubbles up knowledge assets relevant to the employee from various sources within the organization and also allows them to connect with and view their colleagues' knowledge profiles. 


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Once we were through with the first release, I immediately jumped into phase 2 of the project plan but, as expected, some other entities do not want to keep running at the same speed. So, I'm trying to relax and slow down a bit for a while. But all said and done, I truly believe that....

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Last week, I came across this interesting consulting organization called Engage for Change. (Thanks to my Twitter circle) Their values and approaches resonate with me and intrigue me. It would be wonderful to watch them go about one of their projects, help organizations engage with their employees and implement the concepts of 'Distributed Leadership'. Such projects are enormously more complex and satisfying than a business strategy formulation project.

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In other news, I think this will fit into one of the top slots in my list of regrets - My missing Nanyang's MBA in KM - though there is absolutely nothing I could have done about it because this course did not exist when I graduated. 

I was looking up the current MBA curriculum in various B-Schools when I bumped into Nanyang's MBA in KM. Slurp. But doing this now would be absurd. Too late. Had I seen this after 2-3 years of corporate experience, it may have been a good idea to pursue it. After all, my entry into KM was an overnight incident and was influenced by my need to find a worthwhile job rather than any specific desire to get into KM. It was destiny that brought me into KM and, luckily, I just happened to get fascinated by the subject once I was introduced to it.

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HT to @DavidGurteen

Finally, check out this wonderful video on the importance of prototyping and quick collaboration skills for a team's success. Collaboration skills are increasingly important in today's global environment and I think KM initiatives need to be well supported by training programs on collaboration and team-work. 

Learning to Learn

I'd recently written about education and learning in the context of "being yourself". Yesterday, I discovered a related post by John and found it to be passionate and inspiring. He proposes some interesting ideas and strategies on how education and learning can be reformed. He also backs it up with some well-researched material and links on the Internet. Makes for thought-provoking reading and motivates me to join the conversation and co-create some concrete stuff that can be implemented. Overall, it's a wonderful place to start if one is serious about contributing to the re-engineering of education/learning strategies. Any of you passionate about learning and education and willing to join this conversation?