Module 3 - How Important is Collaborating?

People have an amazing capacity to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate. Although these skills are not unique to humans –- ants cooperate by adopting different jobs to support the colony, birds sound an alarm when danger is near, and whales collaborate in order to round up dinner (watch it below) –- unlike the animal kingdom, we no longer have to collaborate in order to survive. Our advanced weapons mean that we no longer must hunt in packs; our cultivators, tractors, and combines have increased food production and reduced the number cooperative farmers; and we no longer need thousands of workers to build a pyramid.

Or, do we? Perhaps collaboration is fundamental to our survival. Perhaps we will lose part of what if means to be human if we cease to effectively communicate, cooperate, and collaborate.

A recent study from PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that emotions outlast the memories that made them. (You can find the story here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125869707)
It was determined that feelings linger for people who no longer have the capacity to retain memories. For example, an Alzheimer’s patient will not remember a visit from a family member, but they will retain the sense of joy long after the visit is over. This study implies that the value of life does not solely reside in our cognition, but instead, the quality of life is dependent on human contact.

All of this seems to have deep implications for the future of collaborations and learning theory. Rheingold (2005) proposed that an innate attribute of the human condition is interaction and cooperation. He stated that collaboration is vital to economics, to who we are, and to how we think. When this is related to learning theory, behaviorism, concerned with changing observable behaviors through a stimulus and response mechanism, ignores the affective domain. Cognitivism, concerned with the nature of knowledge at different stages of development, represents an active approach to learning, but is deeply concerned with memory, not emotions. Constructivism, however, promotes a problem-based learning approach to include collaborative activities. Learning is not purely objective, it is also socially constructed through interactions with the environment and other learners. It addresses the cognitive domain, but it also touches the affective domain, so vital to the human condition. Through constructivism, the learner employs all tools necessary to build understanding. Technology is arguably the most powerful tool at a student’s disposal. Technology plows fields, engineers structures, empowers learners, and provides the connection across generations and across cultures, to insure our very survival.

You may view Rheingold’s video here: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html

You may also wish to read the following blog by Isabel Gabalda. She posts a professional forum about constructivist psychology to include peer-reviewed articles: http://jconstructpsych.blogspot.com/

Resource:

Rheingold, H. (2005). Howard Rheingold on collaboration. Retrieved April 7, 2010 from http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/howard_rheingold_on_collaboration.html