Collaboration is what we do nowadays: get over it

Stephen Downes pointed out an article in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning by Neus Capdeferro and Margarida Romero entitled Are online learners frustrated with collaborative learning experiences? This caught my attention because I'm a great believer in and keen user of this approach. My experience has been extremely positive and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Anyway, the authors claim:

Despite the pedagogical advantages of collaborative learning, online learners can perceive collaborative learning activities as frustrating experiences.

The study was carried out with 40 students on a Masters course in E-Learning at the University of Catolunya. In spite of the title of the report the degree of frustration was not that great:

Overall, respondents occasionally felt frustrated.

This is obviously a concern although it did not spoil the course as a whole:

Scores for frustration with regard to the perception of participating in an appropriate and satisfying training program showed that the majority of respondents felt little effect. None of the participants responded that they felt very effected.

So, not a deal-breaker then, but what were the causes of frustration for some? Well, the major items were:

• imbalance in the level of commitment, responsibility, and effort
• unshared goals and difficulties in organization
• difficulties in communication/dialogue in terms of frequency
• problems with negotiation skills
• imbalance in quality of individual contributions
• excess of time spent and workload
• conflict and problems in reaching consensus

Sound familiar? Yes, because this is what happens in one way or another every time we interact with other human beings to get a job done. I'm not sure if humans have an instinct to collaborate, but our ability to work together has certainly contributed greatly to our success as a species. Unfortunately we have contradictory tendencies - selfishness, laziness, competitiveness for starters - which tend to get in the way of collaboration, but by and large we get by.

Being able to collaborate is an essential life skill, particularly in the era of Wikipedia and open source projects. Those who don't do their bit will find themselves low down the list when collaborators are chosen and at a disadvantage in such a networked world.

So, I'm not remotely put off the die of collaborative learning activities. I say collaboration is what we do nowadays, so get over it.

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