Integration and impact for collaboration in academic curriculum.

Collaboration Benefits Learning collaboration is utilized in adult education through “small groups of students who work together on ill-structured problems to both construct knowledge and share classroom authority” according to Bruffee (as cited by Smith, 2008). Bruffee states that this results in… increased learner motivation development of critical and problem-solving skills social atmosphere where learners can share, consider and challenge each other co-construction of new knowledge

Emotional Challenges  Epistemic challenge  Identity challenge

Epistemic Challenge  Old Paradigm: educator transmitting knowledge.  New Paradigm: students learning through confrontation and collaboration of real- world problems that utilizes resources and student experiences.  Educator uses Socratic methods as voluntary de-authorization while still guiding.

Identity Challenge  Fear loss of individuality or voice  Attempts to address group needs and individual need, resulting in complex emotions  Text communication (online) removes comfort of body language and creates more tension

Fusion and Alienation  Fear of fusion – losing individual identity to merge with group.  Fear of alienation – becoming isolated from the group. These extremes take turns depending on the situation and decline over time and experience.

Implications  The same aspects that create the emotional challenge also provide critical development.  Strategies must be implemented to provide self-awareness.  Logistical structure can be implemented to help students focus on the real issues and Metacognition.

Strategies  Provide essential knowledge Methods to being an effective group member Emphasis on the need for dialogue Identification of safe zones Creation of ground rules  Facilitator provide consistent feedback Probing questions Story sharing Critical reflection

Structure: Leankit Kanban  Communication flow  Trigger effect project management  Real time synchronous status regardless of synchronous or asynchronous environment  Effective for short term and long term team projects  Supports metacognitive perspective Metacognition affects motivation Visual representation (Kanban) is an organizing strategy to improve self-awareness.

Navigation Simplicity  Cards are made with one click  Cards can be dragged between columns  The image is of the person assigned the card  The due date for the card changes color based how close it’s due  The color of the card can be changed based on type of card represented for complex projects

Helpful Features  On-going discussion in the card for status for student communication and faculty monitoring  Card can be blocked to alert facilitator of an issue to address  Automatic data collection takes place for later analysis  WIP constraints can be enabled  Embedded instructions

Implications  Online Kanban allows online students to collaborate asynchronously yet in real time.  Online Kanban allows online students to see individual contributions that result in the group synthesis.  Online Kanban promotes self-awareness (Metacognition) as contributions are organized and quantified with a clear goal.  The card moving aspects are ‘visual control’ and is key for engaging spatial and kinesthetic learners.

Implementing Kanban  Each course that has team project(s) involved has a Kanban account assigned to it.  Each course has four boards; one for each team.  The facilitator is responsible for adding the students to the Kanban board and assigning them to the correct board.  The Kanban board complements the private discussion forum assigned to the team within the Learning Management System.

Push vs. Pull Learning  Push: the concept of transmitting knowledge or supplying information  Pull: taking the initiative and focusing on learning that has relevance based on previous experience and knowledge  Kanban pull implication: participants pull work as needed and available – participants feel trusted and cohesive

Academic Support Following this slide is my literature review of a well written article synthesizing the emotional issues and implications of group work for online adult learners.

Smith, R. (2008). Adult learning and the emotional self in virtual online contexts. In J. Dirkx (Ed.), Adult learning and the emotional self (pp ). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. This article explores in-depth the epistemic and identity challenges that adult online learners face emotionally. While not an academic research paper with a specific study methodology, it walks the reader through group and individual theory, online student emotional challenges, and methods for facilitators to address these challenges. The article presents how the older learning model focused on the teacher transmitting knowledge to the student, while now it focuses on students learning through relevant experiences through collaboration. However, there are clearly some emotional challenges inherent with the collaboration. Adult students often get frustrated when the facilitator plays only the Socratic role, and does not answer questions directly and succinctly, requiring the student to think critically and apply the question through personal experience and collaboration with others. Also, while often unconsciously, students fear losing their own identify and voice within the collaboration effort. The dichotomy of focusing on the good of the group and possibly losing the ability to address all personal needs results in emotional strain. Adding more difficulty to the emotional sense that adult learners have, online students should address both the issues of authority for collaboration and the intimacy of developmental needs simultaneously. Students often struggle with the fact that the learning experience is not clearly outlined and often includes poorly structured problems. However, this helps students become knowledge creators and see individual contributions, although this takes time and experience within collaboration. Once a group begins to connect, they sometimes experience the opposite effect of alienation. At one point students feared contributing; students may now fear that contributions are not acceptable or does not suffice. Again, this is a natural phenomena of group work and these fears will still occur, but eventually decline with more experience. A critical aspect of this article is that it clearly provides the theoretical groundwork for the emotional challenges for online adult learners followed by succinct and identifiable emotional fears students experience within the group collaboration context. The two specific challenges of losing traditional teaching and fear losing identity within a group lead into the group first experiencing fear of fusion (contributing) followed by fear of alienation (estranged). While maturity within the group evens these extremes out over time, the article goes further by providing strategies for the facilitator to help ensure these issues are not extremes that break a group. Strategies include effective group member tips, ice breaking techniques, ground rules, and solid feedback throughout the process. This material is very relevant for the study of emotional challenges and subsequent motivational concerns for online adult learners. While the strategy of group work is very important for adult learners, understanding the fears helps facilitators appropriately address the motivational concerns so the student gets the maximum benefits possible from the experience during the difficult adjustment process and helps the group reach the maturity stage quickly.