Simon Grant

What will we need to learn, and have evidence for?

What this talk is about

• attempting to look which way the wind is blowing

• point out where a new direction might be productive

• think about the issues involved in this new direction

• we should be developing exercises and games that supplement the meagre amount of collaboration that is offered in today's world of education, training and work

Characteristics of the expected world

• collaboration

• sharing

• sustainability

• resilience

• co-creation

• the knowledge commons

• does this tally with your view – anything missed?

Some old -V- new comparisons

(to get the idea of how new this new world is)

…

Nature of work

• labour sold to employers for wages

-V-

• working collaboratively for the common good– (and making a living while doing that, of course)

Controllers of work

• corporate HR, or entrepreneur employer

-V-

• consensus of individual and community

Communications about work

• portfolios displaying abilities to employers

-V-

• (a) telling others what work satisfies and fulfils you

• (b) pointing out what you see as good work

How has shaping of identity changed?

• “destiny” – context and society around us shapes us– (traditional communities; shades of Goffman, 1959)

• what identity? we are just human resources– alienated HR view (Taylor; Ford; ...)

• self-authorship – (Baxter Magolda and others, 1990s on)

• personal ethical development across contexts – (Grant & Grant, ePortfolio 2006, Oxford)

• identity emergent from self-chosen interactions– (co-created, echoes of Simondon)

How have new ventures arisen?

• the most traditional societies: no new ventures

• then: sole entrepreneur; gentleman scientist; DIY

• sole architect – team of people realising the one vision– (perhaps age of great individuals ended mid 20th C• what great individuals are still active today?)

• pairs of founders recently common in late 20th C, but:– how can there be larger groups of initial founders?

– how can a company be run with shared leadership?

Signs of the times

• the world is too complex for any individual to grasp sufficiently to act usefully

• aspects of a good vision, confidence, and realisation often start in separate people

• take a classic modern entrepreneur, Tesla's Elon Musk– http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

– reversing established practice on intellectual property

What needs to happen

• people need to collaborate, so that issues can be tackled– open knowledge

– open source software

– open hardware

– etc.

• can't be achieved simply by exhortation

• there needs to be sustainable culture of collaboration and consensus

• culture of open

What people need to be competent at

• sharing

• collaboration

• consensus

• being open in some essential way, open to:– different approaches

– different conceptual frameworks

– different points of view

• these are more than just knowledge and skills

• but we can think about how they contribute

What people need to learn about

• resulting in knowledge and understanding, e.g.– about collaboration and consensus

– about themselves and their own motives and needs• and how they work in different contexts

– about how they come across to other people

– about other people and their needs

– about appropriate transparency

– about when apparent co-operation is deceptive

What people need to learn to do

• resulting in skill or practical ability, e.g.– how to communicate openly

– how to be open about their own ideas

– how to be open to new ideas

– how to behave collaboratively

– how to promote collaborative behaviour

– how to model and lead collaboration

– how to facilitate collaborative activities

– how to participate in consensus decision making

– how to lead consensus decision making

– how to detect non-collaborative behaviour

Where is the evidence for these?

• evidence of knowledge is fairly easy to assess– except when it comes to knowledge about oneself

• how do we assess the skills or practical abilities that are the outcome of the learning?

• even harder, how do we assess these competences?

Possible evidence

• (obviously) peer report and reputation– social networks not very helpful yet (not even LinkedIn)

• portfolios, if composed collectively

• products of analysis– of material written by individuals

– about individual and collective values

• metrics of actions taken, e.g. on wiki site?– that's something you could look at on e.g. Wikipedia

– the “big data” approach

Possible assessment

• assess most knowledge in the normal ways

• portfolio assessment is possible for some abilities

• generally, peer assessment may be plausible

• but...– what about knowledge of self and others?

– what about the subtleties of social abilities?• e.g. detection of insincere collaboration?

Assessment by practice

• as part of real live work– in apprenticeship / internship / traineeship

– but easier to see this for traditional work than for collaboration

• live adventure-based exercises

• games – what might work?– e.g. Co-opoly ?

• development exercises, together with learning?

• and, how much does any practice involve enculturation?– real life leaves marks on people – ethics of this?

Re-co-venturing idea

• newly discovered example of a collaborative development process

• provides stimulus and space to explore

• opens up thinking along multiple avenues, not just one

• designed for collaborative development, not assessment

• could be developed into a rich source of evidence for “co-formative” assessment– formative both of personal direction and new ideas

– formative for both parties in the conversation

• http://www.simongrant.org/rcvi/

Re-co-venturing process

• reflect on your abilities (classic development practice)

• reflect on the situations where you shine (occasional)

• think about the ventures you value (new)

• craft two “briefs” and bring them to meeting (new)– personal brief about what you want to offer

– venture brief about what you want to see happen

• series of conversations in which each venture brief meets each personal brief

• find a best-fitting role from each conversation

• take it forward from there in any way

Provisional conclusions

• we will need to (re)learn how to collaborate and share

• “re-co-venturing” is just a first small pointer to a greatly challenging area of collaborative exercise

• collaborative practice, undertaken for its own sake, results in learning, and can provide evidence of learning what is necessary for effective collaboration

• existing collaborative practices can be extended to include exercises and games, either of which can also produce evidence, as well as formatively pointing people in a good future direction

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This presentation “What will we need to learn, and have evidence for?”

by Simon Grant (asimong (gmail etc.); @asimong)

of Cetis http://www.cetis.ac.uk/ is licensed under the

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