Collaboration

Overview

Collaboration is a concept that makes sense from virtually any perspective - business, education, technology, personal life. Businesses have been experimenting with enlarging the network of collaboration to include vendor and even competitors - harnessing shared experiences and processes to improve efficiency and quality.

Within education, collaboration is critical. Online, many students lack the contact of a face-to-face classroom. Activities that require collaborative work can put students in touch with each other, eliminating the sense of isolation that is common for elearners.

At it's simplest level, collaboration may be simply sharing information with another person, department, or organization...at it's most advanced level, collaboration involves unifying communication processes and content and establishing forums for accessing resources and building content and value together. An effective collaborative project that is sustained may involve into more complex relationships and purposes - best described as a community.

Resources

Collaborative Elearning
"Ready to cede control to learners and let them drive the learning experience? Scary as it sounds, empowering learners in a collaborative e-learning setting fosters interactivity, responsibility for learning, and measurable learning outcomes."

Framework for Collaborative Learning
"Starting from some central issues of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in learning and of collaborative learning, this paper postulates a composite framework for evaluating learning environments. Using the framework, one scenario is described and analysed. The framework identifies where ICT in learning (e-learning) may be enhanced and where ICT may be difficult for students. Some conclusions are made relevant to the design of ICT learning environments. Areas for future research are suggested."

Sociability of Collaborative Learning
"There is much positive research on computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments in asynchronous distributed learning groups (DLGs). There is also research that shows that contemporary CSCL environments do not completely fulfil expectations on supporting interactive group learning, shared understanding, social construction of knowledge, and acquisition of competencies."

Online Collaborative Learning
Lists resources, articles, links, glossary, etc. Very useful site.

Building Communities--Strategies for Collaborative Learning
"In a recent survey by the Masie Center, nearly 2000 learning professionals ranked online communities as one of the top three most important components of e-learning portals. But the term community remains ambiguous, and CLOs are unsure how to start building and integrating them into their organizations. Here's a model that describes a number of practical applications for including community as part of a learning plan and specific strategies for building learning-focused communities."

Groove
I've used Groove extensively - with students and with colleagues...I love it. Excellent collaborative tool. Preview version is available.

Software Evaluation - U of Athabasca
Excellent resource for evaluations of various collaborative tools.

Collaboration and KM Resource Center
"One of the industry's most comprehensive indexes and directory sites for collaborative tools, knowledge management software, books, discussion groups and online articles."
Excellent

CommunityZero
Good platform...I've used it for several communities. Free.

Advanced Reality
" Presence-AR is the first, real-time collaborative platform to deliver digital collaborative experiences spanning participants, applications, devices, and platforms. Far beyond screen or file sharing, Presence-AR enables existing and new applications to support multiple people working on one or more files or applications synchronously."

MayeticVillage
"Our first goal at mayeticVillage is to offer all professional communities a true collaborative work tool. This tool should be ready to use, easy to operate, powerful and accessible through a simple internet connection, from any point on the globe ." Free

Intraspect
"Intraspect combines the best of enterprise collaboration and knowledge management, enabling organizations to support their existing business processes..."

Ikimbo
"Ikimbo is a software company focused on building applications that enable the real-time enterprise. By leveraging the innovations of instant messaging and presence detection, and integrating those capabilities into the information pipeline that underlies today’s e-business environment, we provide any-to-any real-time communication that brings together the extended supply chain in an accelerated communication network."

Tomoye
"Tomoye is helping leaders in knowledge intensive organizations worldwide make the most of their collective know-how by building better Communities of Practice."

courseforum
"CourseForum lets you and your students host discussions and share knowledge, adding interaction to your online or face-to-face courses. Create, share, and talk about ideas, Q&A, research, student portfolios, project work, and more. CourseForum delivers the ease of use, flexibility, and accountability needed for today's courses."

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