The collaborative experience

Interesting to compare the collaborative wiki on the OLL course and the RM course. Like all comparisons, there are some variables which reduce the poignancy of any potential conclusions …but, the OLL has a very clear task, deadline and we have together (sort of) forged our individual responsibilities. The RM wiki was a useful forum for editing a list of interview / survey questions, but there was so much politeness that it took ages to get anywhere. There were too many verbose comments (including mine) to wade through. We failed as a group to identify individual responsibilities and – for me – motivation waned.

On the downside of wikis generally, they still feel cumbersome to edit and use. Perhaps this simply improves with practice. There not beautiful creatures, though…

stakeholder theory and collaboration

I have been noticing common themes in the work of Mary Parker Follett (Schilling M 2000, Decades ahead of her time: advancing stakeholder theory through the ideas of Mary Parker Follett, Journal of Management History) and in collaborative learning / knowledge. Both decentralise authority / power / decision-making away from a few key stakeholders.

On a personal level, I like the levelling out, the sort of egalitarianism of all this. For learning, it provides opportunities for increased social learning in e-Learning, and can potentialy be used effectively in role-play.

Wikis – competition vs collaboration

This overlaps with the Research Methods course. The idea of designing a role-play that utilises a competitive wiki still appeals. It might be a good way of facilitating language learning. It might need to be complemented with synchronous meetings.

The Research Methods bit – I was thinking of comparing Japanese learners’ participation in such an exercise / project with a face-to-face role-play along similar lines – faltered because there are just so many variables that it seems impossible to draw any conclusions whatsoever, no matter what the outcome.

Instead, there is now the idea of comparing an online collaborative role-play – like the Loch Ness exercise – with an online collaborative / competitive one. Thus the research is purely exploratory, and there isn’t so much pressure to come up with explanatory data. It might show, if used with several groups, some pattern of participation. Are learners more involved when in competition – particularly if set up as a kind of points-acquiring game.

Data can reasonably simply be drawn from observing the history of changes in the wiki and how many entries are made.

Very important: set-up of the exercise needs to be extremely clear to ensure learners understand the (possibly) motivating factors.

Maybe…