I think it’s safe to say that, following the events of the last few years, we’ve all become acutely aware of the importance of working as a team. Post-pandemic, the importance of collaboration is more apparent than ever before. With the rise of remote learning, students have been forced to work together in new and innovative ways, relying on technology to facilitate their collaboration. However, effective collaboration is not just about using the right tools – it also requires a deep understanding of the rhetoric and science behind successful partnerships. And for the students to have those tools and understanding, we have to have them ourselves first.
The chapter “The Rhetoric, Science, and Technology of 21st Century Collaboration” provides valuable insights into how we can foster effective collaboration among students. The authors focus on the importance of understanding the theoretical frameworks of collaboration. They express the need for communicators to adapt and be flexible. In the post-pandemic world, this is more important than ever. The authors are speaking to us from 2019, before we knew that students (and everyone else) may be working remotely while facing unexpected challenges in their personal lives. By being open to new ideas and approaches, such as the frameworks presented by Duin, Tham, and Pedersen, we can help students navigate these challenges and continue to work effectively with their partners.
The authors had no way of knowing that they would soon be faced with exactly the kind of collaboration challenges that they explored in their chapter. What we’ve learned as educators in 2023 is that extended periods of online learning have actually hindered the ability of students to effectively collaborate, in person or virtually. We’ve all experienced the dead eyed looks of students who are used to logging on, turning off their cameras halfway through class, and pretend listening while they do whatever else they want off screen.
(Pictured: every student’s pleasantly vacant ‘I’m paying attention’ face)
We’ve also been those students, some of us, although I will deny this till I am in my grave. I think any educator working right now would agree that the style of online collaboration that students have learned through the pandemic is not the kind of collaboration that the authors of this chapter had in mind. And that’s because collaboration is not about simply teamwork – it’s about building a team vision and fostering the sense of investment in the team to execute that vision.
This semester, I got COVID. It was my second time, I didn’t feel too badly, I still wanted to teach… so I had several lessons online via Zoom instead of in person (naturally). I used multiple high-tech collaboration tools to try to foster engagement. I used slide decks with embedded videos, online live polling, live message boards, I even shared my ipad screen and asked the students to walk me through the drawing of a bicycle (an exercise in audience analysis and adaptation strategies). None of the lessons with these newfangled tools I used were as popular with the students, or as effective in generating lively engagement (and collaboration!) as good, old-fashioned, small group peer review via breakout rooms. Collaboration, even when aided by the powerful tools technology has to offer, is still a social enterprise.
The authors of this chapter emphasize technology as an essential component of collaboration in the 21st century. But clearly, they should not be relied upon exclusively. We have all see how technology can hinder collaboration when the efficient use of tech is seen as the goal in and of itself. We know that the real goal is not efficiency or smooth videoconferences – it’s the building of a community that does good work, constructs common meanings, and builds a shared fantasy together. Instead of relying on tech to do the collaboration for them, students should focus on building strong interpersonal skills and using technology as a supplement to their theoretical and pedagogical understandings of collaboration efforts.