Reading 5
Elizabeth Melendez Reading 5 Ch. 14 & 16
Collaborative learning environments offer instructional designers many unique opportunities to produce effective products and learning experiences. Technology, group size, goals and interpersonal dynamics are all considerations that affect the outcome of the learning. In some cases, such as profound mismatches within group proficiencies or over commitment in common goals, problems arise affecting productivity and interdependence for which no amount of training or ID finesse can remedy. However, in most cases, typical group dynamics and goals can create an environment for learning in which successful outcomes can be expected.
Technology has done much in recent years to create the virtual social environments many instructors use for online collaborative delivery. Programs like ours are an example of how technology provides not only the virtual social work and learning spaces we use, but also the culture beyond the learning the promotes and normalizes online social interactions found in social media. My previous degree program focused heavily on operating in digital spaces and the transfer of traditional interactions and work spaces to digital environments. For example, our classes used Twitter as a class work space. Our grammar studies included the transformative semantics involved in the evolution of digital text. The changing world was the foundation upon which the entirety of that degree program was so thoughtfully designed, so my experience with technology in collaborative learning environments is significant. This provides excellent insights to my learning design decisions concerning collaborative learning.
A drawback of technology in collaborative learning for team project work is the appeal of some tech products to the tendency of micromanagement. Tools like Trello, while seemingly useful on paper as an organizational project management tool, ultimately become a nuisance to everyone on the team who does not have an affinity or affection for micromanagement. As a creative person, micromanagement is a profound irritation and hindrance in my work environment. Receiving 20 extra automated emails a day belaboring the minutia of every daily team activity overloads my cognitive load for meaningful group engagement, ultimately requiring me to shut down all communications which are non-essential to the team’s ultimate objectives. I am sure micromanagers will disagree. However, producers, when encumbered by the counterproductive proclivities of project managers or team leaders, become less productive, which does not help the team and does not enhance the learning. Every creative producer I have spoken with agrees on this point. So, the technology designed into a collaborative learning experience should make mindful use of tech tools and software and avoid the tendency to adopt every seemingly exciting program that may actually hurt the effectiveness of the product.
The configuration and organization of group brainstorming exercises is a challenge for developing better “thinking skills.” How designers and teams develop better ideas and solutions is not a process or procedural situation for which a universal exercise or tool can be developed. However, mindful application and provision in the interest of more organic ideation can help a manager, a team and a designer make a space for better thinking opportunities for problem solving and decision making. Creative, critical and metacognitive competencies all can play a role in the tools a designer creates. As our text points out, specific concepts delivered in context in a dialogic environment can aid the development of thinking skills.
