Module 3 Posting - Collaboration

As Rheingold (2005) stated, humans and other critters do interact and work as groups.  I think this happens when these groups share common goals, but not in every instance.  Society faces many challenges such as poverty in which certain groups work together to provide solutions.  When disasters hit countries like Haiti or Japan, those with the financial or human resources to help, provide these resources. An interesting aspect of this charity is that countries provide it even if the affected country does not play by the rules when times are good.  As humans we do have a sense of helping others, especially when times are bad.

Rheingold (2005) also mentioned the idea of altruistic punishment in financial games.  Although the world does extend a hand when needed to those in need, it is also very adept at doling out punishments when countries do not play fair.  Countries use sanctions, tariffs, and blockades to change the behavior of the offending country.  Sometimes these punishments stop the “cheating” that occurs, while sometimes these punishments push the affected country towards more sinister action.  Countries test the waters to see what types of punishments work and how much pressure they can put on a neighbor to get results and not cause even more harm to themselves.

As individuals we also work together when solving individual problems.  Before Wikipedia internet users faced challenges when trying to find reliable sources of information on the internet.  Academic journals were only accessible to those who subscribed, search engines led to bad information, and there just was no repository where almost all of the world’s knowledge was stored.  Wikipedia took the instinct of humans to share and created a portal where anyone could contribute to a topic on which they had information.  I know absolutely nothing about the book or movie “The Hunger Games.”  But, with the power of Wikipedia and the contributions of the fans of the book and movie, I can get all of the information I would ever need.  Individuals shared their passion of this series by providing their knowledge from which others can draw.  One of the underlying expectations of Wikipedia is that after getting this information, I would share my knowledge about items on which I am an expert.

All of that said, we have not reached a point in our societal evolution where we all collaborate on all aspects of our lives.  Unlike Star Trek where the accumulation of material wealth was shunned (except by the Ferengi), we still live in a society where monetary wealth is important and often an individual affair.  We still fight about individuals paying their fair share of the resources they use and giving all members within a society affordable health care.  What I think I see is that when society deals with resources of limited monetary value, say knowledge, we freely share this because we often seek out this resource as well.  However, when we work with material that could potentially generate income, we are less willing to share this information freely.  This might play into Maslow’s hierarchy where we try to meet our needs (e.g. money to pay our bills), before we move on to morality or creativity.

With collaborative tools such as Wikis, Google Docs, and Elluminate chat rooms, students have new avenues for collaboration.   No longer do they have to meet in the library for hours to generate a product; they can do so on line.  This social activity continues with constructivism’s idea that making connections with others is important for learning.  Also, through the use of these tools, learners work with language to communicate ideas to their peers.  The use of this language is another essential element of constructivism.  Finally, while working in these groups, learners work with contextual information.  These tools require learners to take what they know about topics to generate a final product.  They are not learning rote facts, but working with knowledge within disciplines they have knowledge in the context they would use them.

With applications like Google Docs, students can share their work with others and get feedback before final submission.  As our group did this week, students could also all work on the same document simultaneously to generate the final product.  When students work together using these collaborative tools, the idea of ownership (see material wealth discussion above) declines because multiple people shared the workload.  I would hypothesize though, that groups are still leery about sharing with others, until the work is graded, because they do not want others taking their ideas and “profiting” off of them. 

Blau and Caspi (2009) studied the effects of Google Docs on this idea of ownership on academic work of 180 Israeli students enrolled in the Open University of Israel.  They found that when individuals worked collaboratively, the idea of ownership declined while the perception of the quality of the document improved.  Simply put, when individuals work together, they think their work is better.  If you would like to read more about this study, here is the link: http://telem-pub.openu.ac.il/users/chais/2009/noon/1_1.pdf

References

Blau, I., & Caspi, A. (2009). What type of collaboration helps? Psychological ownership, perceived learning and outcome quality of collaboration using Google Docs. Proceedings of the Chais conference on instructional technologies research 2009: Learning in the technological era, 48-54. Retrieved from http://telem-pub.openu.ac.il/users/chais/2009/noon/1_1.pdf

TED. (Producer). (2005, February). Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration [Video podcast]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html