Is collaboration becoming a term like innovation, organic, and feminism in that it's come to mean everything and (potentially) nothing? In this workshop we'll tackle the conundrum of collaboration: everybody thinks it's valuable and worthwhile, yet authentically doing it is hard and time-consuming work, a reality that can lead to ambivalence about it (if we're being honest). Further, are we even clear about what it is?
While collaboration won't ever be easy, we'll aim to make it easier as we first nail down what it is (and what it isn't) and then look at what makes it hard to do as well as varied ways of helping people do it, whether in online settings or campus-based classrooms or a dynamic combination of the two. And, after all, it’s a requisite 21st-century skill, right? (Some of us were actually doing it in the 20th century...just sayin’.)
The ideal outcomes for participants in the workshop (aka if all goes as planned what you'll take away from the workshop):
- an enhanced or even a new understanding of collaboration rooted in competencies and outcomes: the skills needed to collaborate and measurable outcomes of such work
- an obstacles overview and strategies for hurdling them
- ideas for building a connected, communal classroom, an essential foundation for collaboration
- what successful student collaboration looks like and ways to market this opportunity to students
