Monday, April 28, 2008

Get them collaborating intelligently in the classroom

In professional writing classes, we often have students collaborate on group projects. As I've written elsewhere, I think we need to step up the game -- including more collaboration software and providing a project management framework for strategically organizing and executing group projects. (See my presentation on the topic.)

Along these lines, Shiv Singh at The App Gap runs through the latest collaboration stats from Businessweek. He points out that according to the survey, "82% of white-collar workers partner with co-workers. That number appears low." And he asks:

Here’s my question - which of these segments are most likely to use online tools to collaborate? And how frequently does that group collaborate? My sense is that those that are motivated by learning use the online tools and collaborate the most and they probably also get ahead by collaborating more without realizing it .

Right, and those collaborative online tools are increasing opportunities for cross-organizational, contractor-subcontractor and provider-client collaboration as well. At the higher ed level, we need to account for those changes and provide more of a structural template for supporting and modeling collaboration.

The AppGap » White-collar workers collaborate more than ever: News, views, and reviews of Work 2.0 tools, apps and practices
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