Discussion Questions for Feb 9
I first read Curtis and Lawson and was stopped in my tracks when they mention the “distinction between cooperative and collaborative learning.” These are terms that have always been relatively interchangeable for me. As I continued to read the assignments for the week, I kept coming back to this statement.
1) First of all, I come back to the class discussion we had about collaborative dissertations. If I recall correctly, the conversation we had (at least semantically as described in this article) was actually a cooperative effort, rather than collaborative. For example, many mentioned sentiments along the lines of ‘if you could prove to me who did which part so I could make sure it was an equal contribution, I would consider it.’ My question is—if a small group of students can to you and said, ‘can we do a cooperative dissertation?’ do you think your response would vary?
2) We have many mixed terms with (p22) Curtis and Lawson alluding to the difference between cooperation and collaboration. And then we have Johnson and Johnson (p5) talking about group processing in cooperative learning (reflection, description, decisions) as critical thinking which collides with Soller et. als (p2) saying that collaborative interaction “means supporting group member’ metacognitive activities related to their interaction.” The question becomes, then, is there a true definition (at least based on these three articles) of two different types of learning, or is this merely a semantic issue?
Bonus question: Johnson and Johnson talk about social skills as vital to cooperative work…however, it is difficult to assume everyone has them…how then, in an online environment can we assume these will be carried out when Curtis and Lawson find that only 5% of “utterances” are social in nature?
