Collaboration
Learning Outcomes:​
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Identify three ways social media plays a part in online collaboration
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Describe how to participate on social media
General Overview
Due to the global pandemic, many people work remotely and some companies made the switch to long-term remote work (Courtney, 2020). With this transition, online collaboration is becoming the new norm.
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col·lab·o·ra·tion (noun)
the action of working with someone to produce or create something (Google definition)
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As a graduate student in the LTEC Department, you may be familiar with online collaboration tools such as Google Suite to work with your colleagues and instructors. Within classroom learning environments, LTEC students are discovering other educational tools to encourage student engagement, participation and motivation. These may include:
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Live polls, quizzes, wordclouds (PollEverywhere, Socrative, Kahoot!, Mentimeter.com)
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Interactive whiteboards (Miro, Lucidchart)
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Video conferencing tools (Zoom, GoToMeeting)
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In this section, we will explore collaboration through social media and the importance of being an active participant online.
Social Media and Collaboration
Here is a quick clip of Mark Carrgian explaining why it is important to use social media in academics:
In academia, collaboration between scholars work relatively slow and dissemination of research through publications take long periods of time. However, you can harness the power of social media by utilizing your professional community and network to collaborate on projects, ideas, and research.
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By utilizing your social media-based PLN, you also have the ability to collaborate and discuss with people outside your field, expertise, and job. It provides a different perspective and promotes cross-professional collaboration. In an example in ​Social Media for Academics, Second Edition (Carrigan, 2020), he describes a story about a colleague who used Twitter to engage with practitioners and policy makers. He states,
"Twitter allowed her to...connect with the artists who had typically been absent from the policy conversations about cultural value that she was participating in. A number of projects developed from theses connections, as well as collaborative funding bids" (p. 100).
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Other ways social media impacts external collaboration is by:
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Diversifying perspectives, experiences, practices and contributions
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Empowering cross-subject, cross-departmental learning
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Encouraging public engagement and coordination
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In other areas of the learning design and development fields, internal online collaboration may use social medias such as Slack and Discord as a tool for team and project communication. These two platforms make it easy to direct message individual people or chat with a group of people through "channels" created through hashtags.
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Furthermore, social media provides a platform for students to learn how to collaborate with people across geographic locations which helps scaffold learning. Below is a 6-minute video of Dr. Margit Misangyi Watts, a professor in the LTEC Department explaining the implication of social media in collaboration in the classroom, which can apply to professional development for LTEC students.
Social Media and Active Participation
Understandably, one concern about using social media is the time. However, many people should note that participating online doesn't require much time at all. If you took the time and watched both videos of Dr. Bert and Dr. Watt, they both describe participation as repost or liking something. As Dr. Bert explains, reposting and liking adds to the social media algorithm which presents you more information and resources related to what you had previously participated in. Carrigan (2020) explains, "doing this carefully, thinking about the people you follow and the sources you routinely keep track of, helps counteract algorithmic filters" (p. 84).
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Furthermore, the more you actively participate as a thought leader on social media or maintain a blog or website, the more opportunities can arise such as "paid speaking invitations, opportunities for media collaboration, requests for endorsement, extensive publication opportunities, paid reviewing work, invitations to join working groups, etc." (Carrigan, 2020).
"The point is not to pin you hopes on a particular tool or platform but rather familiarize yourself with the array of techniques through which it is possible to explore the vast worlds of content that social media has encouraged and opened up."
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