Languages from a Distance

OK, perhaps I was seeing the glass half empty in my last post. In fact, I see it half full most days. I know that we are moving in the right direction. Though success can be elusive, sound goals are in place. It’s worth the continued effort.

In regards to the grouping of the students for collaborative work (on wikis for example), the idea just needs to be tweaked I think to make it work in an environment like ours where students and schools are on different schedules. For example, one could …

• put schools and learners into groups whose participants have similar start dates. They then could work together on certain assignments. (I did this at the beginning of this school year actually. I called the groups Staffeln –squads or teams. It was a promising idea that I think would work with a little closer attention. Again, just need to tweak…)

• have projects that are ongoing and that would require layers of student involvement. Students would be graded not only directly for their work on a particular layer but also on how well they communicated with the students who worked on the project before them and as well as the ones who would come after them. Sure, it would take some time to design such a project….but I think that it would be a great learning experience towards developing skills in collaboration.

Because that’s what it is about after all: allowing students to develop collaboration skills. In order for that to happen of course, they MUST have the opportunity to work together.

Actually, I’ve always looked at collaboration primarily as a means of achieving something else: community—-a very important concern for distance learning. See my C+C=C hypothesis here. But I am beginning to see collaboration more and more as an important end goal in itself. Especially when I read articles like Ruth Reynard’s Web 2.0 Tools and K-12 Challenges in which she cites evidence that today’s employers …

usually comment on their need for employees who have more highly developed “employable skills,” rather than having only content knowledge about specific academic areas.

But what are those skills anyway? Reynard describes them this way:
Students with collaborative skills…

know how to evaluate a problem or situation; assess what information and resources are needed and what others have and can contribute to the challenges; maximize all of the resources and build on what is available to meet and address; and, hopefully, solve the problem or challenge posed.

So, in other words, our students need to be able to do the following when working with others:

Evaluate problem
Assess what is needed
Assess what others have and can contribute
Coordinate and maximize resources
Act! (Meet and address)
Solve Problem.

Wow. That’s what I want for my students. Practice with real-life skills. That’s relevance.

So, ahem, I guess my work is cut out for me. I’ve got to do the following to ensure that my students will have have the opportunity to develop such all-important collaborative skills:

1) Find ways to allow students on different academic schedules to work together on projects.
2) Design projects around real-world problems that will foster student collaboration.

Back to forging a new battle plan…