Introduction
My purpose for taking MDE 665 was to examine the theoretical and conceptual frameworks that underpin collaborative and mentoring relationships.
There were three main assignments: The first was to work in a group and lead a cracker barrel session on an assigned topic and then create an individual reflection about working as a group. The second assignment was to develop a presentation and moderate a Moodle forum while engaging with other groups' presentations, and once again, develop another reflective essay about the group work experience.
I am highlighting a few of the class assignments for this portfolio, drawing upon the two collaborative group assignments and readings from the course as part of my overall reflections as well as my experiences designing a community and as a mentor to instructional designers in my workplace.
Collaboration in the form of working with other students in small groups, was a regular component in the Athabasca program. It provided both challenging and rewarding learning experiences as I grappled with learning in social situations but also making sure to allow time for individual reflection.
On Collaborative Learning Experiences
Working in a large global company for the last 10 years, provides me with daily opportunities to work with colleagues across time zones and cultures. With these virtual collaborative experiences, and my own as a mentee and mentor, I was sure I would be able to easily identify the characteristics of successful collaborative and mentoring relationships and how to maintain them. However, as the course progressed, with readings, and many occasions to critically analyze my collaborative and mentoring relationships and assess their strengths and limitations, it was not quite so straightforward.
I was attending a face-to-face training workshop for a new job discipline, and observed the collaboration process in action from the angle of being a facilitator. The interactions over the two and half days in the classroom reminded me of the challenges that can occur when groups collaborate virtually. At first, I heard scepticism, wariness and disparate points of view expressed by the workshop participants. However, once the group found mutual learning goals, I also witnessed a quick shift towards respect, attentiveness, and an intent to actively listen and hear each other out.
Jay Cross, a thought leader on workplace and informal learning and often credited with inventing the term 'e-learning', had offered that 'conversations are the stem cells of learning' (Cross, 2013). As a facilitator in this recent exchange, there is no doubt that an environment and learning format that proactively encourages discussion is conducive to helping people learn effectively. The 'work' is to create an inclusive environment which requires the facilitator to be clear up front about expectations and intentions of the event; to keep discussions constructive and positive; and encourage participants to contribute to the larger and smaller groups that they are part of.
Meirink, Imants, Meijer, and Verloop (2010) identified that sharing during the learning and collaboration process had to do with two aspects: the content of the exchange -- ideas and experiences, and problems that were identified and solved as a group. The classroom format for the exchange experience that I have referenced was based on real-world problems and group discussion as to how to solve them. No one person had the 'answer' yet the participants together there were smarter than the smartest person in the room. For me, this is what good collaboration looks like, whether it happens face-to-face or virtually.
Mentoring: Artful Alliance Required
Mentoring can bring value to both the mentor and mentee; it is not a one-way flow of benefits to the mentee where the intent might have been to develop skills and grow expertise, develop a network, or learn new ideas and perspectives. For the mentor, there is reciprocity as well such as extending one's own network, enhancing leadership skills, learning new ideas and perspectives, and contributing to the future (Daresh, 2004).
I have experienced being both a mentor and mentee. I mentored instructional designers in our organization and initially, I felt overwhelmed about the commitment to share my expertise with others. My colleagues in their locations require either late evening or early morning calls to connect in real time. In the beginning of the mentoring relationship, calls were not structured enough. However, once we established a cadence in terms of meetings, and an agenda for our conversations where we used email a week ahead of the call to identify what the questions were, the relationship and the commitment, became much easier to manage. My role as a mentor also became much more than information sharing or advice giving, it became a way to more deeply know my colleagues and appreciate our cultural differences and experiences. In my mentoring relationship, as female mentees and female mentors, we shared mutual values around family and work/life balance, and this is consistent with Cohen and Light’s (2000) theory that successful mentoring relationships are often reported as those where mentees felt they shared their mentors’ personal values.
Ann Rolfe (2011) offered a description of mentoring as an 'alliance between two people' where reflection and action results in learning for those two people. Alliance is a good descriptor of mentoring where union for mutual benefit and learning is an outcome. I would also add that mentoring requires sensitivity and awareness of emotional content and attention to ethics in the mentor-mentee relationship which makes mentoring more art than science.
Learning Asset 1: Reflection on Collaborative Group Assignment
In this first assignment, we reviewed strategies for developing collaborative and mentoring relationships with colleagues, children and youth, community partners, allied professionals and other groups. Using five key dimensions (Thomson and Perry, 2006) of Governance, Administration, Autonomy, Mutuality, Trust and Reciprocity, and Coleman's rules for collaboration (2009), we evaluated effective collaboration in five community partnerships. This asset describes my reflections on the group work process.
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Download MDE 665_Assignment 1_Dana_West.pdf
MDE 665_Assignment 1_Dana_West.pdf Details
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Learning Asset 2: Self-Mentoring Group Assignment
The objective of this collaborative assignment was to create learning content on a topic of interest related to the subject matter and moderate a Moodle forum (see attached image). Our group selected self-mentoring and explored the connections between self-determined learning and heutagogy. Here is a link to the presentation: https://prezi.com/061ivqeys7ig/self-mentoring/
Learning Asset 3: Creating a Community
In addition to the course assignments, I created an online community of practice in my workplace to support and enable newly acquired employees to transition into the organization.
Learning Asset 4: Mentoring Colleagues
In my workplace I mentor colleagues to help them develop their instructional design expertise and attain their learning goals whether that is deepening client consulting skills, applying theory and practice, or project-based. I typically start with an activity call "What does instructional design mean to you?" and ask for them to create an image or concept map of the skills they think is required to be an instructional designer. The image that is included here is my example.
Competencies Applied
Problem Solving, Analysis and Decision Making
- 1.4 Find and access information.
- 1.9 Present them to others.
Instructional Design and Development
- 2.5 Develop instructional products or learning objects in distance education.
- 2.7 Apply instructional design principles and models in distance education in your workplace or in other instructional contexts.
Communication Technologies and Networking
- 3.1 Use a variety of communication and document sharing tools to create, reflect, and communicate with others.
Communication and Interpersonal Skills
- 4.4 Support the learning of others when involved in teaching, mentoring, moderating, collaboration or demonstration activities.
- 4.5 Participate and contribute effectively in collaborative group activities.
- 4.7 Work cooperatively with diverse groups and individuals both within the university and in the workplace.
Research
- 5.4 Critically review literature both broadly and in-depth.
- 5.6 Summarize and synthesize information with a view to pursuing deeper understanding.
Critical Reflection
In developing the course assignments (see Learning Assets 1 and 2), I sourced case study summaries and research in collaboration and mentoring, and self-mentoring and its relationship with heutagogy (1.4). For both groups, I co-presented a session in Adobe Connect, and hosted and moderated a discussion group in Moodle with our findings (1.9 and 3.1) and later moderated the questions in the discussion forums about our group projects when asked by fellow students. (5.4 and 4.4).
In exploring the connection between self-directed learning, self-regulated learning and self-mentoring, many thought these concepts could indeed be seen as the same. Self-mentoring calls for the need for specific goals and strategies to stay on task (Carr, 2011) as does being a self-directed learner or self-determined learner, and all three concepts have in common the same audience: mature adult learners. We introduced heutagogy into the mix as it takes advantage of key affordances like the internet and relies on learner autonomy and self-directedness (Blaschke, 2012). Many agreed that self-mentoring and self-determined learning share the same element of learner control and responsibility - whether one is assigned a mentor or one selects one (5.4 and 5.6).
In comparing the two group work experiences (see Learning Assets 1 and 2), they were both positive but relations felt more harmonious in the second group. I attribute that to a few things. First, while both groups self-selected or formed their own groups, work group 1 was one of the last groups to form, which suggested a less than keen interest in the topic and a need to complete an assignment. The time frame to work together was less than the time for the second group to coalesce. As a result, it felt like a sincere effort by all to focus on the task in terms of planning and complete the work, which translated into equal work effort and shared accountability. While I and others worked effectively in both groups (4.5), there is a difference between working in a group and working as a group. Instead of working independently and then coming together to 'assemble' our work as we did in work group 1, the second work group I was in, chose to work together collaboratively to complete our deliverables.
Learning Asset 3 is a community that I created for educating existing employees how to onboard new employees that enter into our organization as part of an acquisition. This audience often misses the opportunity to attend the orientation program like other mainstream new hires and needs a customized support and learning (2.5). For this community, I created content on skills to be a good mentor and an assessment how to improve those skills. I applied strategies from the course to make collaboration easier to do for example, by embedding a video player to record and view introductions, and capturing interviews and stories to promote knowledge sharing (2.7).
I noted a lot of conceptual confusion that surrounds mentoring from the course readings (see Learning Asset 4). Like mentoring, coaching, apprenticeship, training are also offered as alternative pathways to learning and professional development. While mentoring is conceptualized and enacted in a variety of ways, I came to see mentoring as an interactive, participatory process where curiosity needs to be encouraged and learning should be reciprocal between the mentor and mentee.
An important lesson I have learned about being a mentor is that there must be clarity around the roles and responsibilities of mentor and mentee but also clarity as to the intended outcome, i.e., to know why you are mentoring. When I enter into a mentoring relationship with an instructional design colleague in my organization, we first work on understanding common ground and then establish their goals. After that, we talk come to an agreement about our responsibilities and cadence on when we will meet. As many of my co-workers I mentor and work with, and the audiences that I design learning include those from different cultures, business units, generations, time zones, and organizations (4.4 and 4.7); I have found that it is vital to establish a common understanding of what must be accomplished and how the work will get done.
Competencies applied are indicated in parentheses.
Lessons Learned
This course in particular gave me an opportunity to reflect on the frustrating and rewarding aspects of collaboration and mentoring and remind me to:
- Let go of expectations about what ‘successful’ collaboration looks like. One might be able to control one's contribution to the group but the overall result of group work is beyond one's influence. Kurt Lewin (as cited in Smith, 2008) refers to this as 'interdependence of fate.' This is something I experienced in the first collaborative assignment when hosting our live virtual session and with managing the Moodle forum on self-mentoring.
- Embrace informal mentoring or self-mentoring rather than finding the 'one' with 'the answer.' Self-mentoring, where one takes responsibility for one's growth and success, is another option. However, the effectiveness of self-mentoring depends on motivation, having access to resources, and being able to assess and evaluate one's skills, and identify the needed competencies to progress.
What I gained from this learning was the opportunity to ... be surprised. As outlined in Artefact 3, I view learning as essentially an internal cognitive process regulated and steered by the individual but shaped by other influences, such as a mentor, group or society. By the end of my coursework, I came to appreciate the group work, perhaps as a result of practice in planning, monitoring and evaluating our work as groups. This made me shift my position along the adult education theory continuum to also consider regulation of learning not just as an individual process but as a group-level process.