The possibilities to use different technological solutions for online collaboration are endless. New tools pop up every week. I am currently involved in different communities where they use Teams, Dropbox, GoogleDrive, Box, common hard drive, BlackBoard and more. It is confusing and time-consuming to know where information is placed depending on which project I am want to look into. I have to first remember which platform is used for that specific project and then find the information I was looking for. What do I want to say with this? Well, working in communities are somewhat exhausting.
It not only exhausting to be part of the collaborative learning community/network, it is also exhausting to facilitate. I had a class of 150 students the other day. Trying to make it more interactive and fun I had prepared a Miro-board so that we all could add information and edit. Well, that didn’t work out at all. With such a large group of students it was uncontrollable. Some students deleted text, others added irrelevant text, and other started to draw on our common board. What a great learning opportunity for me. Preparation is everything.
One thing that I came to think of connected to this course was that I don’t think the group that I facilitated felt like a community, or even a network. They were divided in subgroups in order to come up with a shared goal, but they didn’t even have a personal goal yet being first year students. The students were from different disciplines and with that said, I suspect their academic identity wasn’t established. With limited identity in conjunction with being put into a group of people with the same feeling of being lost in the academic world, made it difficult to collaborate and keep focus.
Lena's reflections on ONL202 
This is very interesting to me – and I must try out Miro – I have a class of 90 students come January 2021 and I’m thinking how to include aspects of collaborative learning for the students, but to do so in a way that they feel that their collaboration can be observed and recognised.
LikeLike
Thinking about your experience with 150 students online (what a horror!): Yes, learning by trial and error… This is what has happened a lot during the last 8 to 9 months. We try out different way for students to connect but often we aim for the large group instead of students divided into smaller groups. I think ONL202 illustrates this well – the PBL-group versus the larger community of participants in the course. The small sized PBL group has grown into a safe space where we are not so afraid of exposing ourselves. If you are dealing with fairly new students I think they may need some time in the small group to feel comfortable with one another so that they can collaborate. Did you find any good advice in the references for this topic?
LikeLike
Thank you for sharing an experience where collaborative learning did not go so well, and for stating what the cause of that might be. I think we learn a lot from such experiences, if we take the time to reflect upon what the solution could be, or how to improve our teaching so the same situation won’t present itself again. I will definitely take this into account the next time something in my teaching needs improving!
LikeLike