Let's Stop Confusing Cooperation and Teamwork with Collaboration
Jesse Lyn Stoner, Seapoint Center, May 20, 2014

Short article with clear useful definitions and which looks at the impact of distance on cooperation and collaboration. The impact on cooperation is clear, from this study: "virtual distance had significant influences on trust, goal clarity and OCB and indirectly influenced innovation and success." But simply moving people to the same place will not impact collaboration (contra Marissa Mayer). More...

Feature Article
temp upload of audio
Stephen Downes, May 23, 2014.

Enclosure: 2014_05_22_-_Collaboration_and_Cooperation.mp3

Ubiquitous Learning Project Using Life - logging Technology in Japan
Noriko Uosaki, Bin Hou, Mengmeng Li, Hiroaki Ogata, Kosuke Mouri, Songran Liu, Educational Technology & Society, May 22, 2014

You may not think that life-logging and online learning are linked, but if you think of online learning as a ubiquitous services that learns from your every move, you can see how tightly the two may be linked. This paper presents a system called SCROLL (System for Capturing and Reusing of Learning Log). More...

Workshop on Mass Collaboration - Day One
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, May 21, 2014
These are notes I took from Day One of a workshop on mass collaboration. It has been an interesting set of talks thus far; I present tomorrow, and there are some more talks Friday. No guarantee of more summaries, but the effort seems worthwhile. For those who are interested, I have also posted a set of photos from Tubingen, Germany, where the event is being held.

Collaboration vs Cooperation
@shiftctrlesc, Cloudhead, May 19, 2014

Here's a really nice clear account of the distinction between these two important terms. More...

What do you mean by 'collaborative learning'?
Pierre Dillenbourg, May 19, 2014

Pierre Dillenbourg: "In cooperation, partners split the work, solve sub-tasks individually and then assemble the partial results into the final output. In collaboration, partners do the work 'together'." I think this is only partially right; Dillenbourg would define an assembly line as 'cooperative' while to my mind it is a form of collaboration, because of the shared intent to produce a specific product. Dillenbourg P. (1999) In P. Dillenbourg (Ed) Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches. (pp.1-19). Oxford: Elsevier. More...

The Construction of Shared Knowledge in Collaborative Problem Solving
Stephanie D. Teasley, Jeremy Roschellel, The Conslruction of Shared Knowledge, May 19, 2014

"Collaboration is a coo rdinated, synchronous activity that is the result of a continued attempt to construct and maintain a shared conception of a problem... Cooperative work is accomplished by the division of labour among participants, as an activity where each person is responsible for a portion of the problem solving." What's important in collaboration is the creation of a shared model. More...

Towards Better Group Work: Seeing the Difference between Cooperation and Collaboration
Olga Kozar, English Teaching Forum, May 19, 2014

"Cooperation can be achieved if all participants do their assigned parts separately and bring their results to the table; collaboration, in contrast, implies direct interaction among individuals to produce a product and involves negotiations, discussions, and accommodating others’ perspectives." Olga Kozar, English Teaching Forum (2010). More...

The Evolution of Cooperation
Robert Axelrod, May 19, 2014

From the perspective of game theory, Robert Axelrod asks, "Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?" Cooperation can develop even among people with competing agendas (as in, for example, a war). "Cooperation can get started, evolve, and prove stable in situations which otherwise appear extraordinarily unpromising." Axelrod suggests (and I disagree) that cooperation requires conditions of reciprocity among people likely to meet again. More...

Conventional Online Higher Education Will Absorb MOOCs, 2 Reports Say
Steve Kolowich, The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog, May 16, 2014

I think that the most interesting thing about this headline is that it asserts that there is such a thing as 'conventional online higher education'. Even a few years ago the words would have choked in the Chronicle headline writer's pen. So the two reports are from Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, which released the Bellwether report, and Teachers College at Columbia University, which released a report cited here the other day. More...