PPEL, Unit 1, Task 1

Find, study and share materials related to cooperative freedom and organizing it together with ideas and thoughts.

Having taken a long time to find, select and read material related to "cooperative freedom", I was confronted with the fact that the best material has already been cited by my colleagues in their annotated bibliography.
I tried other search engines other than Google, but in vain.
So I decided to refer to the articles I found most interesting, though none will be presented for the first time.

The article that most caught my attention was that of Ted Panitz (1996), A Definition of Collaborative vs Cooperative Learning http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/deliberations/collaborative-learning/panitz-paper.cfm Retrieved March 2010

Another article which I also found interesting was Thirteen Ed Online Team (2004) What are cooperative and collaborative learning? http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/coopcollab/index.html Retrieved March 2010

Finally, I will also mention the article of Stephen Balkcom (1992), Cooperative Learning http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/cooplear.htmlRetrieved March 2010

From these articles we can learn some tips that can help us answer the questions raised by this Unit:
1. How much freedom should online students have?
2. Is online collaboration really worth or just a waste of time?
3. How can we facilitate cooperation in paced and unpaced learning environments?

However, I used the articles of prof. Morten Paulsen "Cooperative Freedom: An Online Education Theory" and "Cooperative online education" to search for clues that allowed us to seek answers to these questions.

The first step was to understand the Theory of Cooperative Freedom and the difficulty in reconciling individual independence, flexibility and freedom with group collaboration, the necessity to contribute in a learning community, and social unity.

Also the definitions of individual, collaborative and cooperative learning were important for me to understand this theory. Quoting Prof. Paulsen in his interview by Michael F. Shaughnessy and Susan M. Fulgham:

"Individual learning provides superior individual flexibility, but very limited affinity to a learning community.
It has a strong position in online education delivered by institutions with a tradition in distance education.
Individual learning is conducted alone.

Collaborative learning requires participation in a learning community, but limits individual flexibility.
One may say that collaborative learning requires that students sink or swim together.
Collaborative learning is common in online education offered by traditional face-to-face institutions.
Collaborative learning depends on groups.

Cooperative learning focuses on opportunities to encourage both individual flexibility and affinity to a learning community. Cooperative learning seeks to foster some benefits from individual freedom and other benefits from cooperation in online learning communities.
It thrives in virtual learning environments that emphasize individual freedom within online learning communities.
Cooperative learning takes place in networks."

Finally, another concept that was essential for me to know was the set of facets of special importance to distance education: time, space, pace, medium, access and content.

I think that in this course we will need all of them, individual, collaborative and cooperative learning, giving preference to the cooperative learning, since we are in an online learning community.

The fact that we know that all our freedoms spelled out in the hexagon of cooperative freedom will be respected is the best way to ensure our dedication and commitment, empowering and rewarding our efforts.
For so, thanks Professor Paulsen.