The collaborative online learning environment created by myself, Judy and Christy I feel, overall, was successful.
Our process began with the initial teething problems: working from two different Google Docs – one that Christy had already done some work on that she shared with us via email and another one that Judy had started. The email trail proved challenging for myself and Christy so I suggested moving across to Microsoft Teams. The advantage of Teams was that all our messages were streamed on one screen and you could see replies to various threads.
The newest piece of software that I was unfamiliar with was Zoom. It timed out well however, as the move to online learning happened around the time we started collaboration and I had heard that this was a good tool to use as an alternate to Adobe Connect which I was more familiar with.
I found the online meetings most helpful. This would be a “norm” for collaborative learning that I believe should be present in a digital learning environment. Locke (2007) talks about the various spaces that are user-centred and have various functions and behaviours that are present in that space such as “group” and “participation” spaces.
In the case of our group project, it provided an opportunity to get to know each other personally and to discuss the ideas we had all had individually about how we wanted to approach the project. It was an opportunity to ask questions and get clarification on understanding which I felt was important if we wanted to create a cohesive module. This was particularly important as at one key point in the process there were differences in understanding as to who our audience would be and how evaluation using the Quality Teaching Framework was going to be embedded into the modules. To combat this Christy adapted the template that Julie had provided for us as a Google doc to help get clarification and streamline what each of us was doing which I felt was a good strategy.
In terms of the school environment, online meetings would be vital in building relationships to ensure that students can feel as though they can be open and learn from one another as “co-learners” safely and responsibly (Rheingold, 2016, para 1). This is fundamental in a face to face context so developing those parameters online would also be important.
Building the online collaborative learning into a school environment would also need to be collectively designed by the school community – executive, teachers, students and community to ensure there is some consistency across the digital learning environments, a fluidity between formal and informal learning spaces and enough room for personalisation both for the teacher and student.
Individuals are always going to have a preference as to what they like to use in terms of digital tools and the ways in which they prefer to collaborate (just like learning styles) so it may be difficult to make everyone happy all of the time. As evidenced by our recent move to online learning, the diversity of tools and the variety of styles we have used should, hopefully, in the long term, make our students (and teachers) more versatile in their online collaborations and therefore better able to learn from each other within a digital world as long as collaborative discussion is embedded within this practice.
References
Locke, M. (2007, August 10). Six spaces of social media. http://test.org.uk/2007/08/10/six-spaces-of-social-media/
Rheingold, H. (2016, December 13). Practicing the principles of connected learning. http://educatorinnovator.org/practicing-the-principles-of-connected-learning/
