#BYOD4L Day 4 Collaborating or Cooperating?

Continuing the daily BYOD4L themes, day 4 was collaborating. One definition of collaboration is 'united labour'. Others include 'to work, one with with another', 'work jointly on an activity or project' or 'to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something'. 

The first question raised during the BYOD4L tweetchat led by Neil Withnell and Alex Spiers was:

Q1In your understanding what does ‘collaborating’ entail, how is it different from ‘co-operate’ or ‘co-create #BYOD4Lchat

— BYOD4L (@BYOD4L) January 14, 2016

This got us all thinking and also inspired me to look again at the differentiation between these two words after the tweetchat. I've often seen them used interchangeably, which is understandable as there are overlaps.  

Definitions for cooperation include 'work jointly towards the same end', 'to ​act or ​work together for a ​particular ​purpose, or to be ​helpful by doing what someone ​asks you to do', 'act together or in compliance', 'to associate with another or others for mutual benefit'. An example given in use is 'staff need to cooperate with each other'.

So whilst there are similarities we might consider 

• to cooperate as the process of working together to the same end
• to collaborate as working jointly on an activity to produce or create something 

Within the word cooperate we see co and operate, which indicates a process, whereas within collaborate we see co and labor, which indicates working together. Cooperation may therefore be considered as simply splitting up the work and getting it done. Collaboration however is when individuals consider the process and together go on brainstorm how they might achieve a desired outcome. This might be to create something or to collectively share possible solutions to a problem. 

Ashkenas takes this further looking at how collaboration can break down in the work place. 

"Everyone seems to agree that collaboration across functions is critical for major projects and initiatives. The reality, however, is that meshing the skills and resources of different departments, each focused on its own distinct targets, to achieve a larger organizational goal is much easier said than done. In fact, it takes much more than people being willing to get together, share information, and cooperate. It more importantly involves making tough decisions and trade-offs about what and what not to do, in order to adjust workloads across areas with different priorities and bosses. And despite all the well-meaning cooperative behaviors, this is often where interdepartmental collaboration breaks down." (Ashkenas 2015)

The second part of the question was how co-create differs from collaborate and co-operate. Going back to the dictionary it is defined as 'creating jointly'. An article in Technology Innovation Management Review offers this

"Co-creation is a very broad term with a broad range of applications. We define co-creation as any act of collective creativity that is experienced jointly by two or more people. How is co-creation different from collaboration? It is a special case of collaboration where the intent is to create something that is not known in advance. The concept of co-design is directly related to co-creation. By co-design we refer to collective creativity as it is applied across the whole span of a design process. By these definitions, co-design is a specific instance of co-creation." (Sanders and Simons 2009)

Collaborative Tools

Coming back to collaboration, during the tweetchat there were a number of tools shared that can be used for collaborative working. These included:

• Blackboard Collaborate
• Google Apps: Google Docs, Slides, Hangouts
• Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts
• Slack
• Trello
• Worklife

Further reading 

There’s a Difference Between Cooperation and Collaboration. Ron Ashkenas, Harvard Business Review

A Social Vision for Value Co-creation in Design. Liz Sanders and George Simons, Technology Innovation Management Review

Day 4: BYOD for Learning and Collaborating #BYOD4L

Today's topic for BYOD4L is collaborating. What does this mean to me? Well it is through collaborating with Chrissi Nerantzi that we got the idea off the ground. It is through collaborating and pooling of expertise and ideas with our amazing facilitators that we been able to run this open online course.


Collaborating

To get a job done, it very often is done more quickly and more effectively if we work together as a team. "Two heads are better than one" my Mum frequently said when trying to solve a problem. Now whilst this confused me as a young child with visions of having to grow another head, I do of course now see the value of pooling ideas and working together.

Image source: AliceBartlett

How have my approaches changed?

Collaborating in relation to my work or learning often meant meeting up with another person or group. We discussed ideas and then shared out the tasks we needed each to do. Further meetings were required to share progress, interspersed with emails and links to new iterations of word documents as well as questions that sometimes lost context if not connected to a 'reply all' email trail.

In recent years however I have been introduced to new ways of approaching such tasks. A good example would be when I was invited to collaborate with some colleagues I had met at a conference in the US to work on a proposal to present the following year at the same event. I live in the UK and the individuals involved were scattered across the United States 100s of miles apart. Face to face meetings were therefore not one of our options. This is when I was re-introduced to Google Docs and Google Hangouts had just been released. We planned and wrote our proposal using these two tools. What this meant was that we had one live document we could all contribute to and through the comments box raise questions. Due to the time differences there were often times we worked asynchronously but other time slots we could meet up online. Using Google Hangouts meant we could talk to each other AND work on the document at the same time. I have to say it was the most fun I have ever has writing a proposal!

Chrissi and I have also used these tools to plan and develop the BYOD4L course. Communicating with our team of facilitators we also introduced a Facebook Group; an informal space we could use to chat and get to know each other.

What I have found is that Twitter and LinkedIn have provided a forum for initial ideas and discussions. Collaborations have emerged because a seed of an idea has been shared and developed. Further exploration of such idea are often taken further now by a Skype of Hangout in preference to email. Online conversations using these tools helps to replicate the value we get when meeting face to face. They are in my experience quicker and more focussed. No longer are we tied to a PC and complex conferencing tools; we can use our mobile devices to have these conversations. 

I'd love to hear how you collaborate online. Below are a collection of tools that can be used for collaborating. Is there anything you would add?


My Edshelf collection of tools for COLLABORATING