Collaboration (EdTech)

Collaboration technologies are those that enable people to interact with each other to construct documents and media and to communicate with each other tasks that people are working on together.

Definition

Collaboration is the act of people working together toward solving a common problem or working on a task. Collaboration technologies are those that promote people's ability to work on tasks together. Most typically, collaboration technologies enable people to access project documents, interact with one another to share ideas and provide feedback, discuss the project and its solutions, and make suggestions for changes.

Additional Information

Collaboration is an essential part of the 21st century knowledge economy. Much of the work performed in education and the workforce is done in teams of individuals, each requiring the coordination of their efforts and joint idea generation, sharing, goalsetting, and shared responsibility of getting projects done or problems solved. Thus, it is argued by many policymakers and scholars that collaboration should be a central context of work within educational settings and should be the focus of learning outcomes that aim to prepare people to do real-world tasks.

Since their emergence in the 1990s, web-based communications technologies have substantially enabled teams to collaborate in their work across all industries. Tools like telephone, email, social media, video conferencing, and chat/instant messenger have enabled teams to communicate rapidly and across distances both synchronously and asynchronously. This type of digital collaboration was especially prevalent during the COVID-19 global health pandemic with teams working remotely across the globe. However, communications technologies alone do not always facilitate collaboration on projects and problem solving, as they are not always connected to the tools and technologies that people use to create documents and media and do their work.

Collaboration technologies are those that specifically enable people to work on projects, documents, and products while simultaneously sharing, soliciting feedback, and enabling group editing of products. In most modern collaboration technologies, everybody in a team can simultaneously participate in creating, annotating, editing, and publishing documents and media generated with the collaboration app.

The goals of a collaboration technology are to enable teams to (1) simultaneously work on a project together, usually in an internet space; (2) comment, annotate, and provide feedback on projects, usually in separate spaces; (3) be notified of any changes and people's work on the project; and (4) save and share access to the actual files of the project so that all team members may access it via the internet wherever they are.

Common collaboration technologies include:

Team access and file sharing for documents with reading and editing functions, including internet-based storage and group access
Communications and sharing functions, including message forums, chat functions, tagging of people in posts, breakout rooms, and the ability to share the project via email or social media
Simultaneous access and editing, in that people can work on a document or project simultaneously in real-time (often giving a feeling of increased social presence)
Commenting and annotation on documents for people to share their thoughts and ideas and have a record of these contributions
Version control and track changes, which keeps a record of who changes what within a project
Scheduling, time management, and task assignment for teams for project management
Real-time brainstorming tools to help teams generate new ideas and work on projects (such as virtual whiteboards and mind/concept mapping)
Notifications of team activity within a project

Any communications technology can also be deemed as a collaboration technology, as it enables people to work together on a project or solve a problem. However, communications technologies that simply enable communication are distinct from technologies that specialize in collaborative work. Collaboration technologies feature the ability to perform collaborative work while working on creating media and solving problems: the technologies for communication and sharing are built into the technology in which work is done.

Tips and Tricks

Consider the types of social interactions that your learners have in your product. Do the learners work as teams to produce ideas or work on projects? If they generate any kind of document or work product together, it may be useful to think about the kinds of collaboration technologies that you could use to help support their work (especially if interactions occur online and teams are distributed by location or timing)
Brainstorm what kinds of documents and media are created by your learners. Do they write anything or are they expected to produce any reports, documents, or assignments? Do they complete any problem-solving exercises where they need to share their solutions to the problem? If so, how do they receive feedback on these items? Collaboration technologies like those discussed in this article can be used to allow the person's peers in the learning exercise and the instructor to provide timely, constructive feedback.

Collaboration (EdTech)

From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase

Contents

Definition

Additional Information

Tips and Tricks

Related Concepts

Examples

External Resources