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"You are not alone!"
Collaborative Teaching for Collaborative Learning?
"Collaborative Teaching" is,
perhaps, the most significant
change - desirable, needed, difficult [e.g.,
MIT EECS "Cadre" model]. And "Collaborative
Learning" - including team-based learning - isn't so easy
to initiate and sustain either! See also:
Context for hope: collaboration for
professional development
"You are not alone!"
Academic Organization, Conferences and
[New?] Proceedings
Steven W. Gilbert, President, The TLT Group, October 14, 2002
“You are not alone!” My daughter’s soccer coach calls out to the
players on the field: “You are not alone!” This is neither
purely supportive nor an existential assertion. This coach is trying to get the player with the ball
to remember that she has teammates who can help.
In
higher education many of us are often pressed to make important
decisions and complete significant work alone -- without the benefit of
counsel or collaborators. Without anyone to share the burden of
confusion, the challenge of difficult choices. Students, faculty
members, and administrators need to believe they are not alone, and act
accordingly. They need opportunities to connect with peers and make
real friends whom they can rely on in difficult times.
Many
people return repeatedly to professional conferences not only for the
new information and relevant gossip, but also for “connectedness” – for
links with peers and colleagues who become friends.
Many return because for a few hours or a few days they can feel less
alone. Presenting a paper, participating on a panel or a committee, may
contribute to the profession, but these are also the tickets to renewing
the ties that really mean something.
Conferences that offer and sustain deeper connections have a special
challenge when trying to be inclusive and welcoming to newcomers. One
of the loneliest experiences of all is to arrive at an event for the
first time and watch others laughing, and embracing. Each new person
may feel that everyone _else_ knows everyone else. How can we help
newcomers recognize that they are not alone? That they are not the only
ones without great friends eagerly awaiting their return to this event?
How
can we provide a clear, comfortable path to becoming a contributing
member of a particular event community? To developing more meaningful
relations and deeper connections? How can we provide everyone with more
realistic expectations and perceptions? With a clear understanding of
the rewards for patience and persistence?
A
new version of conference proceedings may offer one possibility for
extending further the usual variety of visible role options for
constructive, continuing participation. We could consider structuring
each conference to provide opportunities for ALL participants to
collaborate on some projects – many of which cross usual institutional
or disciplinary boundaries. New computing and telecommunications
technologies offer the possibility of launching these collaborative
projects before the annual conference, continuing work on them during
the event, and finishing up in subsequent weeks or months. The final
“products” could be publishable papers or works in other media suitable
for sharing via the Web.
I
realize that the events that I will return to year after year are the
ones where I feel most welcome, most comfortable, most understood;
where I can be with people I like and admire; where I can help and
contribute and feel valued; where I can be stimulated and challenged
and soothed; where my mind can be changed, and I can change others;
where I can often find commitment and compassion -- and occasionally
wisdom and truth.
I
want to find and return to those places where many of us can say
something like: “This is the place where I can be the way I’d like to
be all the time.”
For
additional related information and background, please see:
The
“FireCircle Website” at:
http://www.tltgroup.org/firecircles/activepage.htm
Anonymous counselor at Quaker camp FireCircle, ca. 1999.
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