Coming from the business world one of my concerns is very much that our employees are prepared for the tasks in hand. One of the crucial skills necessary in the workforce is teamwork and collaboration. Many organizations have moved to team structures where one relies heavily on your team to get the job accomplished. Training departments spend time and money training individuals to become part of a team and how to function in a team. Therefore, with this thought in mind I was most interested in the aspects of the new technologies that relate to developing teams and team work.
I truly believe that you need basic competencies but you also need to learn, share and grow from the people around you so this is a very important component to develop. Levy (2000) as cited in Jenkins, (2006) defines “collective intelligence” as the way to explore network communications by gathering online to embrace common enterprises (p. 39). This concept has a lot of offer the business environment. The concept is that it pools individual talent to accomplish a task. One of the keys of success in an organization is to know the pool of talent you have and can tap as well as external resources. One organization I worked for enlisted active managers, team leaders etc. to help educate new employees. Instead of just using training staff we enlisted the help of seasoned managers to give their perspective and participate in training sessions. It was beneficial to all but similar to a “collective intelligence” of an organization.
From what I understand both in medical and law school the work load is tremendous so students devise plans whereby they work in teams to learn the material. These teams develop because of member needs. Often our education systems want “individualized” work stating it must be all your own work; however many business environments do not function in this manner, so one of the skills that seems to be evolving from the participatory cultures is that of collaboration and collective intelligence. Jenkins (2006) shares an example of Hurricane Katrina where collectively it was possible to develop an overlay of “Google maps” to allow victims to find out information about specific locations (p. 41).
However, Jenkins (2006) stated, “most contemporary education focuses on training autonomous problem solvers and is not well suited to equip students with these skills” (p. 41). There are some practices that have embraced this technology. For example, the MIT Sea Grant College Program offers students in different schools to learn to cultivate eelgrass and share data. We need to be able to create teams in schools internally and externally whereby we allow individual talents or strengths to cultivate and develop. What seems to happen as Jenkins (2006) describes we seek to develop “generalists” (p. 42). Whereas, giving students an opportunity to problem solve in teams with a wider community will prepare them for the 21st century workplace. Specialists that cross standard boundaries will find jobs in the next century.
Considering Green’s model of literacy I’m really not sure how this fits into team work since it seems to pertain to texts other than perhaps the cultural dimension Lankshear and Knobel (2011) mention where the text and information is in relation to “real life practices” (p. 175).
References:
Jenkins H.J. (2006)., Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st Century Retrieved on 9/26/2013 from:
http://digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/cf/%7B7E45C7E0-A3E0-4B89-AC9C-E807E1B0AE4E%7D/JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDFLankshear, C. & Knobel, M. (2011) Literacies: social, cultural, and historical perspectives. Peter Lang
Publishing Inc., New York, NY
Hi Lydia,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading Jenkins article, I managed to think of a very similar connection/analogy to the one you made about medical/law school students. Two of my friends are currently in law school now and we recently had a discussion about the amount of work that it entails. I made a joke about how they always work and/or study in groups and they explained to me that because the material is so much, many of their instructors actually assemble the students in each class into groups in which they are directed to work collaboratively in. I loved how you incorporated the example Hurricane Katrina Jenkins (2006) provided in relation to this concept! His example helped me to connect this concept to the real world more clearly.
Lydia and Jamie
ReplyDeleteAs our funding and constructed learning environments grow to be more closely 'scrutinized' for funding and regulation the application of learning and processes which apply in the real world are KEY to education moving forward. Nice comments, both of you!
Jamie and Prof. Forbes,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments. Jamie, it's interesting to learn that the groups are established by the professors and collaborative learning is encouraged. Down the road these doctors will be peers in practice and the bonds established will be invaluable for their success as each delves deeper into their area of practice.
Practical application seems to be more and more the wave of education. From a student's point of view major consideration is now given to whether there is a job at the end of a degree and this thought process is creating certain choices for individuals.
Lydia
Lydia,
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jenkins quote as well, “most contemporary education focuses on training autonomous problem solvers and is not well suited to equip students with these skills”. However thinking about the corporate world in which we share. I believe there has to be a balance of autonomous problem solving, cirtical thinkers and team-based problem solving and/or critical thinkers. As anything in life, balance is key!