I was a pICT fellow in 2005, and I worked on incorporating blogs into my course on critical/cultural research methods. I really enjoyed the weeklong workshop, but found that after that experience I was mostly on my own in terms of trouble-shooting, implementation, and assessment. There were folks for me to seek out and resources available, but on the whole it was a solitary experience for me.
When the call for the 2007 fellowship was released, I approached two of my colleagues about working together as fellows as a way of improving our large lecture class on public speaking. This is not my class, but it is so large that I figure more heads are better than one. I have enjoyed the experience of working with others far more than I enjoyed working alone. (And I am kind of a loner, so this was a surprise to me.) I think there is something about the initial difficulties of working with new technologies and the learning curve required in mastering some of the programs that we have been working with that are just better handled by a team than solo. The meetings we have with our consultant also create this kind of team mentality. I think one of the reasons that this experience has been positive for me, is that I feel like I am not only part of a cohort but also that I am part of a learning team. I would highly recommend future fellows pairing or grouping up in this way, too.
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I am too a loner type, I mean I naturally just get things going and doing them on my own. I too though find that with new information/knowledge domains, I have to work with others. I literally “think with others” and consider it indispensable in this field. We are all working on rather complex problems. Comm 103 is a great example, in fact all of the courses Fellows are working on are becoming more complex and require teams of people with different skill sets working together.
Thanks!
We live in an era that the top-down message from administrators and leaders of higher education emphasize collaborative work, yet provide few incentives to invest time and effort into such activities. Just trying to find an open “hour” time slot among any 3 faculty members is itself a task that requires a degree in higher mathematics. Trying to find projects that can provide collective rationale for collective action is more complex still.
I have enjoyed the process of collaborating with Val and Kurt (and Patricia on another project), but ultimately, I don’t think we have benefited greatly from the “collective” resources we bring to the table nearly as much as we might have. Part of the problem is that one of us is far more “invested” in the course in question than the others, and this produces disproportionate motivation and effort. A second problem is finding time for meetings and production given that we have dozens of other blips on our academic radar screens, and most of them are coming fast and furious at any given time. Building these projects into our schedules in advance helps, but like chapters you promise to do in the future, it always seems to arrive at an inconvenient time.
Having expressed my concerns, however, let me also say that almost never do I get to meet with my colleagues that I am not refreshed by the vibrant creativity, industriousness, and student-orientation I encounter. Thus, we have had to recalibrate our schedule, and our projected projects, but we have narrowed and refocused, and I believe we are now working on a workable deliverable, and one that will be helpful to students (at least, until the next edition of PowerPoint comes out).
Brian
Hoo! Brian (that’s Second Life lingo for horray). We don’t have a Common Planning Time, like they do in K-12, so coming together for anything takes extraordinary effort on an individual’s part. I don’t we talk enough at all (with students or each other ) about what it means to “work together.” What’s the binding element that allows it to work? Everyone is invested differently even in the collaborating I do. I’d sometimes rather not collaborate as a result. Other times, I have no choice. I simply can’t do it alone.
I wonder if this we’d be talking about our collaboration differently if we were working together solely online? Brian mentioned making time to meet, and Val and Suzanne mentioned being “loners.” Both assume a physical co-presence (which is, in fact, how we are meeting and working together for the most part).
Of course, using technology takes time. But the time we make could be on our own terms instead of a schedule that accounts for each team member being in the room at the same time.
That said, I don’t think I’d want to work in a team that way, at least not for the majority of the meetings. As with my post on my own CDI blog addressing the embodied nature of the ritual of classroom work, I believe the embodied nature of collaboration loses something in the transfer to online interaction: nonverbal communication, synchronous communication, and the degree to which we can manage ambiguity in messages is something I value in FtF collaboration.
[...] Comm 103 which Kurt teaches. We all had some insightful things to share. Join our conversation here. They’ll be presenting their redesign at our April 30th Learning Stories [...]
So if there’s a need (such as convenience) that technology can fill, should we be open to it? I collaborate with folks across the CSU on a project. We email, have regular phone conferences; there are webinars and we meet f2f, for the very reasons you mention Kurt. The project would not have been conceived of without the availability of these communication channels.
I also think there are benefits of non f2f exchanges which can be overlooked. We already know for example that non-native speakers of English can benefit from an asynchronous text channel. I for one am often fiddling, doodling (multitasking) in meetings and find some f2f situations mildly unbearable. Are these personality, learning and work styles? And what about the various (dis)abilities folks bring to interaction, not to mention the complexities when we consider race, age and gender?
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