Collaboration

Collaboration is the ability to share ideas and thoughts openly alongside another person and to come up with a combined answer, response or solution for a particular topic or issue. It is the ability to combine different notions, beliefs and theories into one concrete explanation and/or solution that is reflective of the diversity of the group itself.

            Collaboration is increasingly mentioned as an important educational outcome and most models of 21st century education include collaboration as a key skill. The value of collaboration has been assumed for many years, and over the past two decades we have seen leading businesses and organizations move to facilitate team building and team-based work. The ability to work effectively with others has become a critically important skill for career and life success.

Students were more interested in doing well on tests than in getting along with their friends.  Singapore and the United States are not the only nations grappling with the need to develop collaboration skills in their teachers and students. Worldwide, educational systems are struggling with teaching their students communication and collaboration skills.  People have always worked together for common goals, but why have collaboration skills become so much more important today?

·         As our society has become more complex and global, more collaboration is needed in the workplace. 
A hundred years ago, a person might live his whole life collaborating with only a few hundred people that he knew and developed relationships with over a lifetime. Today, through technology, we come in contact with hundreds of people from around the globe every day.  Fifty years ago, most jobs required you to get along with your boss, a few coworkers, some clients or customers that you met personally, and maybe a vendor or two.  Because of the complexity of modern organizations today, customers, clients, vendors and suppliers may be scattered across the globe. Most jobs require individuals to work closely with dozens of teams that span geographic, cultural, linguistic, professional, and political boundaries and that each do specialized work that must coalesce through collaboration into a finished product or completed service.

·         Collaboration promotes deep learning that is needed to identify and solve complex problems. 
 Learning has always been a collaborative effort between teachers and students based on a strong human relationship. From the moment parents model speech to their newborn, we connect our relationships with our learning. Working with others to share ideas, take a point of view, defend a position, give and accept feedback, achieve consensus, and apply knowledge to a common goal lead to intellectual growth. In an age when critical thinking, problem-solving, and innovation are so important, students must have the opportunity to develop these skills in challenging collaborative environments.

·         Collaboration is necessary for a functioning democracy. 
The skills of civil collaboration are advocating for a position, listening to others’ points of view, taking others’ perspectives, compromise, resilience, humility and forgiveness are vital if we can expect democracy to thrive. Schools, where students may first encounter others whose perspective is widely different from their own, must provide a forum for these skills to be modeled and practiced. As our world becomes increasingly mobile and diverse, it is more important than ever for citizens to learn how to collaborate with others to impact policies.

·         Collaboration brings joy. 
Working with others (whether online or face to face) can enhance creativity, improve reflection, increase respect for others, promote team celebration, and open our eyes to new talents and skills we did not know we possessed.