The comparative vantage of nations is built upon the intellectual capability of it is people. In an organisational context, learning provides the catalyst and the intellectual resource to formulate sustainable competitory advantage.

As Jack Welsh, former Chairman of General Electric said in 2001, “The desire, and the ability, of an establishment to continuously learn from any source, anyplace – and to speedily convert this learning into action – is it is extreme competitory advantage.”

A new model of learning which integrates online collaborative engineering science and process-centric learning is tardily emergent in response to the need for bettered critical thinking in education and the workplace. If it succeeds, the new model will modify ‘bricks and mortar’ learning to a multimodal model where learning occurs in physical and virtual spaces, collaboratively and individually, with real-time input from teachers supported by peer-to-peer collaboration; anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

In the traditionalisti instructor-directed learning model, a person’s capability increments as a result of the individual’s own intelligence and application. Learners with high IQ do well in this environment. An substitute learning model emphasises the use of online collaborative engineering and process-centric learning. The learner’s capability increments as a result of the surroundings in which the learning takes place. Learning becomes veritably learner-centred as apposed to instructor-directed. The extreme success of the learning routine is measured by how well the learner may convert what they recognise into what that may do. The same holds unfeigned in organisatioins.

The Role of Collaboration

Advocates of collaborative learning assert that the active interchange of ideas within little groups not only increments interest amongst the players but also promotes critical thinking. There is persuasive proof that cooperative teams achieve at higher levels of thought and retain data longer than students who work quietly as persons (Johnson and Johnson 1986). The shared learning gives students an probability to engage in discussion, take obligation for their own learning, and thence become critical thinkers (Totten, Sills, Digby, & Russ, 1991).

However, a collaborative group does not mechanically improve the development of higher order cognitive attainments and complex cognition structures. In order to increase the possiblenesses for mutual understanding and task-related social interaction, fundamental interaction tools and process-centric learning structures are necessitated that know the new conceptions to be learned and the former experience and noesis of the learners.

The Role of Process-centric Learning

• Process-centric learning may be specified as: ·
• The collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination, and utilization of psychological result of perception learning and reasoning ·
• The full utilization of data and data, coupled with the potential of people’s skills, competencies, ideas, intuitions, commitments, and motivations

Process-centric learning is aligned with the constructivist theory of learning according to which learning is sensed as a procedure of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. Using the method, learners build on what they already recognise and become actively involved in learning, using a potpourri of roots and media. In contrast to other learning theories, the constructivist theory promotes learning as a routine of originative thinking, problem solving, exploration attainments and higher-level thinking that ordinarily results in behavioural changes, and produces new accomplishments and knowledge.

The constructivist approach to learning emphasizes authentic, challenging projects that include students, teachers and experts in the learning community, be it in the execution of education or a business process. Its goal is to construct learning communities that are more almost affiliated to the collaborative exercise of the real world. In an authentic environment, learners assume the responsibilities for their own learning. They have to manufacture meta-cognitive abilities to monitor and direct their own learning and performance. When people work collaboratively in an authentic activity, they fetch their own framework and perspectives to the activity. They may see a problem from dissimilar perspectives, and are competent to negotiate and generate significances and solution through shared understanding. Under the theory of constructivism, instructors focus on making connections among facts, and fostering new understanding in learners. Teaching systems are tailored to student responses and give hope or courage to analysis, interpretation, and prediction. Process thinking may be as rudimentary as asking a group to work collaboratively to answer a structured sequence of questions in regards to a subject and providing reference materials, quizzes or thoughtful provocations to jump-start originative thinking.

The Role of Online Collaborative Technology

Online collaborative engineering science has grown out of wider exploration into computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and collaborative learning. It is specified as a computer-based network system that supports group work in a mutual task and provides a shared interface for groups to work with (either face-to-face or remotely or a combining of both modes). It is based on the premise that computer-mediated systems may help and facilitate group procedure and group dynamics in ways that are not accomplishable by using established learning.

Online collaborative systems aid a wide range of activities, such as group problem solving and planning, quizzes, surveys, psychological result of perception learning and reasoning sharing, group editing, debating, negotiating, kinship development, software application sharing, polling and projects and curriculum learning.

Research into the use of online collaborative learning in classrooms highlights has developed galore interesting findings:

· The results of ACOT’s two years (1986-87) study of seven classrooms that represented a cross section of America’s K-12 schools were promising. Teachers were competent to translate established text-based instructional approaches to the new electronic medium. Student deportment and attendance bettered all over all sites, their attitude towards self and learning showed betterment as well. In terms of test scores, at the very least, students were doing as well as they might without all of the technology and a great deal of are distinctly performing better (Apple Research Labs Publications).

· Scardamalia (1994) showed that the group becomes a self-reflective and self-organizing system that each fellow member contributes her own expertness to, and, in turn, learns new attainments and extends the group noesis based.

· Another study showed that the more the skilled teacher participates with the technology, the more positive complex mental states they have developed toward engineering science (Zhao & Campbell, 1995).

· There is significant proof that students working in groups master science and mathematics materials better than students working alone (Slavin, 1989).

· King (1989) observed verbal fundamental interaction and problem solving behaviour of little collaborative peer groups working on CAI tasks. He finds successful groups involved in more task-talks than social- talks. They ask more task affiliated questions, spend more time on systems use, and obtain higher elaboration scores than did not successful groups.

· Weir (1992) suggests that both teachers and researchers find that students who work together on “real world troubles show increased motivation, deeper understanding of the conception and an increased willingness to tackle difficult questions that they can not answer alone.” This focus on authenticity and experiential learning is reiterated in numerous articles.

In the organisational context, online collaborative technologies, such as email, group calendars, electronic meetings and web conferencing became available through the 1990′s and are used in organisations as tools to improve productivity and accelerate decision-making and learning.

A Sloan Management Review Study conducted by Gallupe and Cooper (1992) showed that groups using electronic brainstorming gained productivity improvements ranging from 25-50% for four person groups and up to 200% for 12 person groups (Figure 2). More ideas were generated and big groups could be effective. Importantly, there was a dandier likelihood of developing more high quality ideas than conventional brainstorming with flipcharts. Parallel entry of ideas and a record of ideas generated were likewise positive features.

While there have been some advances in these forms of collaborative technologies, they fundamentally stay “task-centric” tools. However, collaboration systems are shifting from a focus on tools to a focus on bettering routine performance. Improving work exercises within business requires collaboration around (processes) and context, while tapping into communities of interest as roots of best exercises and innovation. In this new environment, collaboration becomes embedded in instructional and business processes, delivered by way of online collaborative technology. There is now an overpowering preference amongst senior management for collaboration systems that evolve from a focus on personal productivity and innovation.

New Model

The integration of process-centric courseware delivered by online collaborative technology, emphasises the development and use of critical thinking skills, and offers the potential of bettered capability amongst laborers and learners.

In this new model, classroom learning becomes multimodal, occurring in the classroom, remotely and compoundings of both classroom and remote, in real-time and asynchronously, with real-time input from teachers supported by peer-to-peer collaboration. The current distinctions amidst physical and virtual learning spaces become blurred as learning occurs anywhere, anytime, anyhow.

In an organisational context, the new learning model will enable teams undertaking any of the myriad of business routine methodologies to be more procreative and improve in capability and decision making. A consequence is that the routine itself will carry out at a higher level. Success will be measured by betterment in procedure outcomes and more sustained levels of innovation resulting from insight.

Models of online, process-centric collaboration, embedding the learning processes within the technology are only beginning to emerge. The new processes will be tested broadly in organisations and in education through industry sponsors, universities and schools.

Australian company Grouputer Solutions Pty. Ltd is pioneering the new approach initially through business processes such as the business betterment methodology Six Sigma, and through a new initiative to trial the new model within the education community.

Anne Hudson is CEO of Grouputer Solutions Pty. Ltd. Enquiries: anne.hudson@grouputer.com

REFERENCES

Johnson, R. T., & Johnson, D. W. (1986). Action research: Cooperative learning in the science classroom. Science and Children, 24, 31-32.

Mike Gotta, Meta Group, April 2004

Slavin, R. E. (1989). Research on cooperative learning: An international perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 33(4), 231-243.

Totten, S., Sills, T., Digby, A., & Russ, P. (1991). Cooperative learning: A guide to research. New York: Garland.

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