Cooptic is an initiative for innovation transfer funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci project. Four partners specializing in innovative teaching methods - Suprago Florac and Outils-Réseaux (Montpellier), the Cooperation School Aposta from Catalonia and the Regional Centre for Environmental Initiatives (CRIE Mouscron) from Wallonia – joined forces to work on adapting a training tool for collaborative project facilitators.
During the Cooptic project, fifteen people from three countries (Belgium, France and Spain) received training to become trainers of cooperative project and network facilitators, in their respective circles.
Cooptic today has 60 network facilitators forming a real pool in three European countries. This network developed over the course of three years:
Introducing the team of partners
The Cooptic programme linked four structures:
Supagro Florac: Agriculture and Environmental Education Institute has been providing training to facilitators of many themes and geographic networks on public agricultural education for many years, as well as providing technical support for them. Recognized nationally for its expertise in education sciences and its experimental teaching activities and for promoting innovative training tools, Supagro Florac shares its knowledge with its partners in this project. It also oversaw the creation and coordination of the whole project.
The ‘reference’ association in France for networking. Its main mission is to start and accompany cooperative networks and practices using methodological tools and the Internet. In 2010, Outils-Réseaux created the Animacoop training tool for facilitators and professionals working in the fields of cooperation and network facilitation. This Animacoop tool was a part of the European Cooptic project.
Catalan association: Cooperation school in charge of transfer in Catalonia.
Walloon association for environmental education in charge of transfer in Wallonia.
These partners brought together the skills of several institutions, universities, researchers, and local actors and groups engaging in participatory development who actively participated in drafting the e-book you have in your hands.
Introduction to the learning tool
The Cooptic learning tool is based on educational principles that aim to accompany trainees along the path to autonomy and building their capacity to carry out informed actions. Trainees are the main focus of the teaching tool. These principles lead to the choice of teaching methods and resources that are articulated around three ideas: the crosscutting nature of knowledge and collaborative skills to be learnt; a link to the professional projects of trainees; and the use of the possibilities offered by digital tools to innovate in teaching practices.
What can be learnt with the Cooptic training?
The training contents favour the development of operational skills linked to the facilitation of cooperative projects: managing information, co-producing resources, starting network dynamics, group facilitation…
These contents are structured around 12 key concepts and 12 crosscutting collaborative skills:
These collaborative skills are dealt with in parallel at three different levels:
at an individual level, training develops the engagement of a person in a collaborative project,
at a group level, training deals with understanding group dynamics, networks, groups and skills to manage a group,
a third level relating to the environment refers to openness factors and communication “outside” the network.
How is the learning done?
During a training period of 14 weeks, trainees work remotely and on-site following a progression in three parallel itineraries:
Individual itinerary:
On-line contents follow the stages in a network’s existence.
Creation of the network: the group is established, a “group of individuals” becomes aware that it is a learning group.
The network becomes informed: exchanges on the projects lead to a set of common experiences and problems.
The network is transformed: individual and collective events are created in small-group collaborative work.
Network outreach: spreading the outcomes of the cooperation works outside the community brings value to it.
Network consolidation: this allows for an assessment and a reflexion on how to maintain the dynamics alive and how to open up to others.
Collective trainee itinerary :
Trainees produce new contents collectively
Project itinerary :
The creation of a collaborative project by the trainee is a pre-requisite, and the activities refer to this project throughout the training. During the first week, trainees introduce the context and the object of their project, and then test the methods and tools on their project, explaining the whole experience relating to their own personal learning process. At each of the three meetings, an update is given on how the training has contributed so far to the project’s progress. Training actions speed up the project in its professional context and the lessons learnt from the training reciprocally become more “tangible” since they are implicit in the action.
A pedagogy impacted by new technologies
A training ecosystem:
A methodology to move from “network facilitators” to “trainers of network facilitators”
A combination of on-site and distance exchanges using Internet-based tools
Using collaborative tools and methods during the training process.
Moments to exchange practices
Individual work on the trainees’ collaborative projects
Co-generation of knowledge: pedagogical training plans.
The Cooptic ebook
The ebook that you are handling contains the resources used during the CoopTic training session. Some were written specifically for the ebook because the contents were presented orally during training. This book is a state of our knowledge in the field of cooperation and collaboration at the time of writing in late 2013. But this is an area that is just beginning to be studied and we continue to experiment, to imagine, to try, to dream ... To make it short, even if the publication of this ebook is the outcome of the European project Leonardo CoopTic, this is not the end but just the bases of our future projects: a resource center on collaboration? A MOOC? Or perhaps something that does not exist yet!
Enjoy your reading and your "small irreversible cooperation experiences" to come!
They took part in the adventure !
Coordination :
Hélène Laxenaire
Authors :
Gatien Bataille
Jean-Michel Cornu
Antoine Delarue
FNAMI LR
Mathilde Guiné
Claire Herrgott
Emilie Hullo
Corinne Lamarche
Hélène Laxenaire
Heather Marsh
Laurent Marseault
Daniel Mathieu
Outils-réseaux
Jordi Picart i Barrot
Manon Pierrel
Frédéric Renier
Violette Roche
Elzbieta Sanojca
SupAgro Florac
Vincent Tardieu
Laurent Tézenas
Françoise Viala
and the Animacoop trainees.
Drawings :
Eric Grelet
Conception of routes
Claire d'Hauteville
Hélène Laxenaire
Elzbieta Sanojca
Translation in French :
Collaborative translation by members of the group AnimFr (article about stimergy)
Translation in English :
Koinos
Suzy Lewis-Vialar
Abdel Guerdane
Translation in Catalan :
Koinos
Jordi Picart i Barrot
Proofreading (of the French part) :
Caroline Seguin
Standardization of texts :
Cathy Azema
Gatien Bataille
David Delon
Corinne Lamarche
Hélène Laxenaire
Christian Resche
Cécile Trédaniel
Development:
Florian Schmitt
Graphic standards :
Imago design
Settlement and monitoring of the Leonardo project
Guy Levêque
Cathy Azema
Martine Pedulla
Stéphanie Guinard
This work was achieved within the framework of a project of transfer of innovation (TOI) funded by the European Union through the Leonardo Da Vinci program.
All the contents (texts, images, videos) are under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 FR license. This means that you can freely distribute, modify and use them in a commercial context. You have two obligations: quote the original authors and the content that you create from ours should be shared in the same conditions under CC-BY-SA .
A change in posture for associations: embracing cooperation
Testimonies : Setting up a one-day training course on network facilitation for local associations.
Why CoopLoc ?
After the training course CoopTic, we were asked to explain to some fifteen facilitators what we had learnt, in what was called a "scaling-down phase". Inhabitants from Lozère, with a dense associative fabric, wanted us to share our experiences with the local associations. We often heard: we always find the same people attending the different associations, people don't participate,…so, how can we encourage participation? How can we provide paid people or volunteers with a tool to optimise the way they facilitate these association networks?
Formalising the project
At first we were wondering what the duration of the training should be, the number of participants, the content of the course: we wanted to deal with so many things we had heard and experiences in Cooptic.
At the Moustic Meeting, we signed up for a workshop on the Project accelerator method. After forty-five minutes at last we had found the answers to our questions: "Conceiving a 6-hour training tool for 15 people with three objectives: living an irreversible cooperation experience, discovering collaborative tools and formulating a change in posture to facilitate participation of a network or association's members".
Thanks to this method, around ten people cleared the way and opened action tips to us.
What tools for organisation tasks ?
The tools used depended on the tasks to be done:
a wiki: where we created a section called Organisation (pedagogical plan, questionnaire), a section on Training (a page for participants where everyone could introduce themselves, a page for the day's tempo, a picnic page to organise a collaborative picnic) a section on Resources (links to networks and facilitator training resources, sites, articles, tools and a bibliography)
a file shared on Google Drive: a form for the registration of participants, for the report sent one week later; a text file to write an email between two people to then send it to the participants; a text file to write the press review article after the training course where all participants could contribute;
a Pad: for collaborative writing during the day of training;
a freeplane: one for a summarised introduction to the session, with Internet links; and another one that was completed on-site, at the end of the session, to explain the remarks made by the trainees;
a Doodle: to organise a picnic, which was sent to each participant to foster a bit of sharing
a Dropbox: to save final documents (the final email on pdf, the freeplane, the attendance sheet, the chart for the barcamp).
Pooling resources on the platform CoopTic during our own training allowed us to recover some parts of the course, (especially the course by Jean-Michel Cornu on Cooperation in 28 keywords)
On site, we were asked to fill in an on-line chart with the associations everyone knew, giving an email address or a physical address to increase our outreach.
Using these tools allowed us to reduce the number of meetings, and we were able to work on on-line documents, at a distance, between several people (to improve their contents) and to get the trainees involved in the training right from the start, as well as along the way.
Showing the group's activity : summary, reformulation, historical background, showing what is happening in sub-groups, regular news : summaries (TST)
Strong incentive to develop habits : only put reports on the wiki, make mistakes in the spelling of people's names on purpose
« Professional » facilitators :
emerging jobs
separating organization from facilitation
know how to be rather than know how to do
being in permanent alert
Synthesizing, reformulating, gardening
At project level
Propose an historical background, an notebook of events
Minimize the needs at the beginning : putting on line unfinished productions
Control critical tasks : compromise between flexibility and continuity of the system, the project must content itself with a minimum contributions
Work rather with thoughtfulness than with intention : and projects emerge by listening to the group, pinpointing objectives instead of expected results
Risk analysis : will of success or fear of failure ?
Definition of purposes and running (SAGACE matrix)
Clear objectives , charter
Productions : Free Licenses to turn them into common properties
The 9 laws of cooperation
Reduce participation risks
Lower the threshold of acting out
Non consumables goods and environment of abundance
Communities which last converge on cooperation
Evaluation by esteem
Minimizing needs at the beginning
Minimizing failure risks by controlling critical tasks
Time for opportunities
Never forget any of the rules !
Lowering the threshold of acting out
Acting out with human beings tallies with a rude fall
Free software :
Giving, before any other action, an a priori authorization for use and modification thanks to a license rather than imposing an authorization request is another example of elements which ease the acting out. (Jean-Michel Cornu)
Tela Botanica :
Registration is easy, licence and charge free.
Use of Forum and Wiki
Incentive to participation with simple exercises :
Make a mistake on purpose in the spelling of a person's name to have her react and encourage her to correct it by herself
Non consumables goods and environment of abundance
Tela Botanica : the Flora of Metropolitan France project
Stemming from the work of one person : work of naming and taxonomy on 75 000 names.
55 599 files modified by members of the community
Adding of 46 794 vernacular names (several languages)
Communities which last converge on cooperation
Joining very much upstream to avoid competition downstream.
GNU/Linux
GNU and Free Software Foundation : 1985
Linux : 1991
the Flora of Metropolitan France project : 2001
Evaluation by esteem
Tela : Project of compiling botanical articles (25674 articles)
De Boissieu Henri - Un acer hybride nouveau pour la flore française. - 1912 - dendrologie, plante hybride, acer x bormulleri, localité, p. 77-78 - Société Botanique de France, Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France, Bull. Soc. Bot. Fr. (1904), Tome 59 - Fascicule 1 - Saisie : Jean TIMBAL -Art. n°13807.
Delahaye Thierry, Henze Gaston, Lequay Arthur - Les orchidées de Monthoux - 1996 - Savoie, Avant-pays, Acéracées, acer monspessulanum, Fabacées, Argyrolobium zanonii, p. 15-19 - Départ./Région : 73 - Société Mycologique et Botanique de Chambéry, Bull. de la sté Myco et Bota de la Région Chambérienne, N°1 - Saisie : Sylvie SERVE - Art. n°479.
Delahaye Thierry, Lequay Arthur, Prunier Patrice - Les découvertes botaniques de nos sociétaires en 1996 - 1997 - Savoie, violacées, Viola collina, loranthacées, Viscum album, acéracées, acer monspessulanum, joncacées, Juncus arcticus, liliacées, Erythronium dens-canis, p. 31-32 - Départ./Région : 73 - Société Mycologique et Botanique de Chambéry, Bull. de la sté Myco et Bota de la Région Chambérienne, N°2 - Saisie : Sylvie SERVE - Art. n°495.
Minimizing needs at the beginning
Linus started by re-using codes and ideas of Minixa (the whole of Minix code has been given up or completly re-wrote since)
The "Cathédrale et Bazar " example : Fetchmail based on popclient and Fetchpop
Tela :
Recovery of a synonymy work by M. Kerguelen on 75 000 names
recovery of numerous data bases constituted by amateurs.
Putting online unfinished documents because they can be improved by contributors. If the putting-online needs the completion of the document, the group's dynamics won't get under way.
Minimizing failure risks by controlling critical tasks
Brooks Law : "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later " : complexity increases as well as the number of exchanges and therefore as the square number of persons.
Tela Botanica :
The association contracts partnerships and et takes responsibility for the consequences
Employees are on duty and provide tools and services
Members of the community carry out plans and give sense to the network
The piloting committee operates coordination and validates decisions
Risk analysis
The fear of failure leads to a minimum risk-taking. One is then tempted to protect everything, and this is typical of today : everything is tagged, locked (in particular legally saying). For example, within administrations, there is a lack of opening which reflects a rigid mental functioning.
On the contrary, willing to succeed implies the implementation of means to reach the appointed aim. This approach refers to a mental model much open and dynamic.
Auteurs : Association Outils-Réseaux et tous ses stagiaires
Crédits illustrations sous licence Creative Commons : CC-By Outils-Réseaux - CC-By Ell Brown - CC-By Cea - CC-By Marc Smith
Why use a collaborative writing tool for the meetings?
As a member of the accommodation's office, I would receive several emails to prepare the meeting agenda and at the end I never knew which was the right one. Also, the minutes would be sent fifteen days after the meeting, announcing an event that had happened three days before. Since I didn't attend the meeting, the information was outdated. There was another issue that was a problem: I blamed it on not being physically there at the meeting and not being able to participate in the meeting.
That is why I suggested created an on-line space for collaborative writing, using framapad or piratepad.
Before the meeting
Ten days before the meeting, I sent the address for the pad by email with an initial draft agenda asking the office members to complete it. Everyone could mark on it whether they would attend the meeting or not, instead of sending emails to everyone saying if they would attend or not. People would complete the agenda and sometimes discussions would start before the meeting, or some issues were discussed beforehand, reducing the actual duration of the meetings.
During the meeting
Locked at home, the day of the meeting I could participate from home. I would read the discussion thread, typed by two people who were at the meeting, and I could intervene by asking questions, or asking for clarifications by adding them to the discussion thread. I really appreciated being able to participate despite my own personal constraints, and feeling as if I were there thanks to the chat and the engagement of those who were attending the meeting. This made me feel reassured since even if I was not physically at the meeting I could still find out what was going on and follow the discussions from home. The guilt I felt disappeared and my desire to participate was partly covered.
After the meeting
The day after the meeting I would export the notes taken on-line to a word document and saved it in my "CR Foyer rural" file. The facilitator did not need to send me the minutes by email.
Testimonies : Stéphan Barron set up a collaborative space for his art students. This space is a wiki. He is a teacher and researcher at the Paul-Valéry University, Montpellier III.
Why do this?
for a space to submit papers and homework,
for a space to find information, create, and share documents ...
for collective creation of contents
for a space for information on pedagogy, professional careers, exhibitions…
How can we conceive the courses?
This is the logical continuation to my teaching methods, which have always been open and participatory. It is a way of teaching that is half-way between the one used in fine-arts and the one used at universities. I hate traditional teaching methods at universities; I find them absurd and grotesque: doctors who have written a thesis on a highly-specialised topic, as an extension to their studies, under the umbrella of such or such professors, force their students to learn words that are set in stone and to repeat them like wise apes. What I am interested in is learning to learn, discovering, knowing and improving…that is the real sense of teaching for me. There is a text on this in the wiki below http://archive-driver.ru/
Of course there is a different relationship that is less hierarchical and frontal, more distributed. Even classrooms must be different: forming a circle and not a pyramid. I am with the students and I am there to share and learn also. I do not have the absolute truth, knowledge changes constantly and everyone knows something they can contribute to the group and to me. It's not demagogy, it's true. Each generation of students know something new (techniques, or books). An example of this is the video-art wiki: we talk all together and if a student has something new and interesting to share, it is posted on the wiki…
The difficulties and barriers to avoid
There are technical difficulties. Sometimes students delete key functions, like a student who placed his file in the page for research and blocked this function for a whole year until we finally understood what had happened. Some student profiles were blocked on the tool, but it's a broader problem all together. Others simply just don't understand why we are using it and are simply not motivated and lazy. They prefer sitting at their desk and listen to words, just because they're lazy
A taste of OpenStreetMap, technical skills and a lot of patience for a citizen mapping and the valuing of scrubland heritage
Card's author : Manon Pierrel - Association Collectif des Garrigues
Card's type of licence :
Creative Commons BY-SA
Testimonies : Members of the Collectif des Garrigues managed to converge two of their projects which, at first sight, seemed far apart. One project was on participatory mapping, requiring some technical skills, internet tools…and a project to learn about and value the scrubland heritage lead by people who are passionate about history, books and the scrublands…These two "groups" met within the Collectif des Garrigues to set up a lovely collective project, rich in knowledge and innovative! The main goal of this project is to contribute to the dynamics of the network between the actors in the scrublands by co-drawing interactive maps (with collective contributions) as a support to show the rich heritage in the area, to share knowledge and to bring value into the scrubland territory.
Collective areas developed by the network members
The members of the Collectif des Garrigues (350 people) started a common project in several "areas". The goal was to create, bring value to and transmit common goods (knowledge, photographs, written documents and thoughts) on the scrubland territory.
Since 2010, several works have been developed, such as:
preparing a Scrubland Atlas (a co-written book for the public at large including all areas of knowledge relating to the territory – to be published in the autumn of 2013),
creating a shared photo gallery,
and also more "themed" work on:
harvesting in scrublands, and a compilation of local recipes,
scrubland heritage, dry stone and dry stone cabins (Capitelles), coal furnaces and inventories,
or even works on the discovery of tools, such as the sound media or participatory mapping.
The network members who participate in all these work areas have spaces on the Internet (wikis) to work on and produce content together and at a distance. They have discussion lists, co-writing tools (Etherpad) and "software" that allows them to organise their work (face-to-face for logistics or the distribution of work) and tools to disseminate their work. Many of these work areas perform very well, make rapid progress, and some are even at the stage of completion (especially the Atlas) while new projects are created almost every month. The network members develop the work areas themselves and facilitate participation in the different work pillars. Once the first productions are ready, works are assessed and disseminated at large, especially though their monthly newsletter and the website of the Collectivité des Garrigues, wikigarrigue.info. This way of working makes members want to continue working together to develop some projects in greater depth...and this creates an even greater convergence of work areas and the establishment of new ones. The proof is in the pudding!
The network members have decided to cross two of their collective work areas
Two work areas, one on the scrubland heritage and one on participatory mapping of a territory, were developed in parallel first in 2011 and then in 2012 with a first conviviality meeting to get to know each other and exchange ideas, the Rendez-vous des Garrigues (Scrubland Excursions) are organised every month, and remote group work sending and receiving emails and co-writing collective summaries. Both these work areas followed their own organization and work method. Gradually, they found an interesting area to explore and converge around, leading to the project of participatory mapping of the heritage to bring the inhabitants of the area onboard to hear of the knowledge and management of the territory where they live.
How did the members of the Collectif des Garrigues work to get these two work areas to progress independently? How were they linked further on?
The project to bring value to local knowledge and know-how
This project to gather the knowledge and know-how of the scrublands is, in fact, the story of the scrubland project! Since 2004, the goal of the Collectif des Garrigues has been to discuss the future of the territory, to share the knowledge acquired and dotted around the scrublands to learn to know more about it and to manage it better.
The theme knowledge on "heritage" gained momentum in 2011 with the organising of the Rendez-vous des Garrigues (Scrubland Excursions) on this theme. Dry-stone heritage is particularly an identity feature of the scrublands and the structures (associations or groups) in charge of bringing value to and restoring this heritage on a local level often face the same problems in all scrubland territories. That is why they needed to meet and take some time to think collectively so they could advance collectively in some projects.
After this Scrubland Excursion, some concrete actions were put in place:
discovering the different heritage sites in the scrublands of Gard and Hérault together. (This was done in the autumn of 2012 with a heritage-themed Scrubland Excursion in Poussan (34)).
making a directory of associations specialising on the territory to enrich the experiences and exchanges within the group.
pooling the documents drafted by heritage actors (presentation leaflets for the sites, studies and inventories).
For these projects to succeed, network members used document sharing tools (Google Drive for excel spreadsheets), and exchanged many emails (using the discussion list created especially for heritage).
In the autumn of 2012, with all the exchanges on the list, a second Scrubland Excursion was organised on this theme. That is when the idea emerged of creating a directory of directories of all the dry-stone cabins in the scrubland territories to end up with a map of the areas with these constructions (400,000 Ha.)
One of the members of the heritage group decided to be in charge of the project.
The first work was done there and then, during the Scrubland Excursion, with around twenty participants, with the aim of drawing on large paper maps of the territory all those areas with dry-stone cabins.
next, a large part of the work involved sending and receiving emails. There was quite a large mobilisation to have a directory of directories of the territory; this was done by the associations and structures interested in doing so.
then there was a significant part of summarising to feed the excel spreadsheet: Determining the areas rich in dry-stone cabins and huts: Gard-Hérault.
The following information was collected by department and large landscape area: if a location study (or inventory) existed, the name of the author, structure, number of dry-stone cabins (estimated or known) and the number of them in good state of conservation, if they had been mapped or not, and some general remarks.
at the same time we were able to gather and computerise the studies we had received to publish them on the Internet platform of the Collectif des Garrigues,
in two months, the map was done. It will serve to illustrate one of the articles in the Scrubland Atlas.
A second work area, the dynamics of free citizen mapping to bring life to a territory
For this work area, the associations Outils-Réseaux, and Tiriad pushed us and encouraged us to discover OpenStreetMap and all that goes with it…They came to us with a one-day training session on OSM followed by a Scrubland Excursion focusing on this tool so we could see what to expect from this approach of free mapping of a territory. This excursion was slightly more technical but it was still able to attract around fifteen people to it. Foregoing members of the network (!) who perceived the interest in this kind of initiatives to bring value to their knowledge on the territory.
This training session took place in Gignac (34) in April 2012, and was followed by a carto-party on site to continue attracting people. The idea for each of these stages was to learn about the data collected and how to put them on-line to gradually specialise in mapping elements that were of our interest (especially heritage). At each carto-party we were able to attract new people.
Since the spring of 2012 a healthy group of around forty have continued with the project "cartogarrigue". They have a simple discussion list to exchange and work together which is extremely active and reactive, and convivial with the help of the Collectif des Garrigues network that helps with the organisation and logistics.
In a first stage, the group "cartogarrigue" took some time to learn to use the tool and to build a common discourse. Then it started to train in real life with the organisation of carto-parties in the territories. The idea of mapping the heritage elements was suggested quite quickly, especially because the group members established many links between their work and that of the heritage group, working in parallel…Invitations were sent and there is room for everyone to contribute their knowledge and experiences in each of the two work areas. This group movement, and the overlapping interest lead to the creation of a OSM glossary adapted to the scrublands with vocabulary specific to the territory. (Olive yards, limestone kilns, dry-stone houses and huts…) and tags associated to them.
Today, the convergence of these two projects offers nice perspectives for partnerships, common projects and common financing opportunities
These two convergent dynamics have lead to a common response to a tender called by the metropolitan area of Nimes in its framework of sustainable development policies for 2013. Participatory heritage mapping to engage citizens in knowing and managing the land in which they live.
The submitted project consists in organising a session to give information and exchange experiences on collaborative mapping. To prepare this project and introduce the experiences of territories that participate in these dynamics, the special glossary on scrublands was made, preparing a carto-party programme for the year collectively. The idea is to work in close partnership with all participants in both these work areas, OSM contributors, the leaders of these two areas and associations or groups interested in heritage…
Other partners joined in later:
collaboration with the SILAT masters' degree: Localised Information System for Land Use Planning (in French). The team of professors would like to have a themed approach on mapping, to map heritage more than a city or town…
a similar collaboration with the school " SupAgro" in Montpellier.
Also, the group cartogarrigue will be mobilised to explain its experience in organising a carto-party with the Carré d'Art in the city of Nimes…
For each of its partners, the Collectif des Garrigues is the reference source for organising scrubland heritage mappings.
The work areas also continue to work independently...
For the project on free mapping on the territory, the Collectif des Garrigues would like to develop a mapping web interface to disseminate the themed maps or the knowledge maps on the scrublands (geology, water resources, bushfire risks…) on the site of the Live Scrubland Encyclopaedia. With a second section and placing a particular emphasis on establishing a participatory tool to make a directory of all the different information and data that are relevant to the future land use in the scrublands (displacements, proximity services, agriculture).
For the heritage project, it would seem interesting to continue with the discussions and to contribute knowledge in the form of collaborative work areas. Especially through co-writing articles and themes to discuss such as the type of buildings, dry-stone huts in literature or these huts in relation to land ownership…for example.
<div class=well style=text-align:justify>
The Collectif des Garrigues, a network of actors at the service of the scrubland territories in Gard and Hérault
Scrublands have a rich diversity of endemic wildlife and plants, a history and an ancient culture that is strongly linked to the origins of human activities (shepherds and coal producers, dry-stone huts and other dry-stone buildings); scrublands also have a rich diversity of landscapes. Until now, they have not been paid much attention and have often been considered as "the underbelly between the Cévennes and the Languedoc Coast" and have never had a structuring project; the scrublands of Gard and Hérault let themselves be discovered and become organised to state their own identity.
Therefore, actors on the territory (researchers, elected members, managers, inhabitants and users) came together to broaden their knowledge, their experiences with the aim of gaining a better understanding a better grasp on and a better management of these scrublands. The Collectif des Garrigues is born! It aims to bring together and bring value to the experiences and knowledge on the scrublands. To contribute to bring actors closer to the territory. Finally, it aims to start a reflection process on the future of the scrublands, preserving and developing the specificities of these lands, respecting the livelihoods of its inhabitants.
</div> <!-- fin well -->
A wiki at the service of a facilitation work group
Card's author : Gatien Bataille
Card's type of licence :
Creative Commons BY-SA
Testimonies : Since 2012, a work group (WG) on "outside" facilitation is organised in the French-speaking Belgium.
This WG targets environmental education professionals, teachers, volunteers and supporters...
It aims to create the adequate conditions for collective work to promote nature walks in Wallonia, for adults and children alike.
After some "traditional" management by the WG (exchanging emails) the network facilitator decided to create a wiki (yeswiki) together with a mailing list.
This step forward allowed creating a more participatory and decentralised dynamic within the WG.
Initially, the wiki was created and customised by one member of the network with the technical skills.
The wiki pages had been conceived so that "everyone could modify them", the network facilitator had control over the whole content on the wiki and didn't depend on anyone to modify the wiki and bring life to it. To reduce the barriers to participation even further (some network members were not at all keen on using ICT tools and the wiki, even if it is easy to do) "pads" (spaces to write directly without needing an account or technical skills) were included in some of the wiki pages (drafting agendas, minutes of the meeting…).
Testimonies : The EEDD73 network was created on the 27th November 2012.
Creating a platform for participatory exchange was one of the desires of the Steering Committee of the EEDD73 Network. My knowledge and skills for these tools were therefore interesting for the whole project.
In order to create this Wiki, I carried out structure interviews using this platform to get a clear idea on the procedures (REEMA, Outils-réseaux ...).
Having some basic knowledge on how to use this tool, I read through literature and carried out practice "tests".
Meetings in the territory
The space "Meetings in the territory", is a space for information and organisation, as well as a space of participation for all the actors of these events, with the aim of uniting all the actors in Environmental and Sustainable Development Education (EEDD in French) to complete the charter.
We started with some very simple facts: email inboxes were being "flooded" with information and people were unable to process all this information. Therefore, setting up an active process of searching for information seemed interesting to us.
This space is used as a platform for direct exchanges between the people concerned, without going through the network facilitator directly.
An introduction to collaborative tools...
As part of this move, we organised a training course on on-line collaborative tools, with a whole section on how to use the Wiki.
So the information was conveyed in relation to the creation of this participatory site.
A platform like this allowed us to:
centralise all data
gain time
integrate all actors in the project so as to create together and use their expectations as a starting point (organising car-sharing, practical modes, shared meals)
Strengths
People who registered had access to this information and could read this information.
Greater referral to the information
Low participation but from people who received the introductory training
Weaknesses
Low direct participation in the pads and the Wiki
Not much openness to others
Things to avoid?
Going too fast!
Prioritising human contact at the start and then incorporating on-line collaborative tools
Tips
Take some time to ask people's opinions so they can really integrate this tool
Introduce future users of this tool beforehand (the importance of physical contact before distance collaboration)
Simple to use for numerous apps: insertion of pictures, editing, opening of several blogs with the same access code, publishing of text, etc.
Great capacity to personalize the design of your blog.
Drawbacks :
It is required to configure everything yourself.
Licence :
Proprietary software, Free
Using :
Easy
Setting up :
No setting up
Collaboration in companies: from Coopetition to Collaboration
Card's author : Hélène Laxenaire - SupAgro Florac
Card's type of licence :
Creative Commons BY-SA
Ideas developped by the author in the field of cooperation within the book or conference :
Long live the co-revolution: for a collaborative society by Anne-Sophie Novel and Stéphane Riot
Introduction: this is not a full review of this work, but a summary of the chapter on Radical collaboration
In their book Long live co-revolution: for a collaborative society, Anne-Sophie Novel and Stéphane Riot describe collaboration between enterprises differentiating coopetition (a portmanteau word : competition+cooperation) from radical collaboration. For two years, they promoted Radical collaboration within the network Entrepreneurs of the future
The interest for enterprises to cooperate
The term competition comes from the Latin word competere which means to search together, to make efforts together ; thus, originally, there was no notion of adversity or aggressiveness as is the case today when one talks of competition between companies. The idea is not to suppress this, since it is also a vector of innovation and emulation, but rather to reduce the burden caused by an overly aggressive competition and to reduce it specifically in those cases when competition is useless or even dangerous. In this line, the authors note that the first advantage of companies cooperating is the reduction in costs linked to inter-company conflicts, something that should be an interest for all company CEOs! These costs have been estimated to amount to 50 billion Euros in France each year, according to the American researcher John W. Henke, based on projecting the situation of the American car industry.
The evolution of cooperation between companies
Adam Smith's theories on the interest of competition and those of Joseph Schumpeter on creative destruction have taken root in the economic sphere. But since the 1980s' some companies realised that networking and setting up strategic alliances brought relational advantages and allowed accessing more resources. Then, in the 1990s', faced with the increase in research and development costs, in parallel to the obsolescence of objects while the convergence of technologies allowed for scale economies, some companies decided to collaborate in developing products with a longer lifespan using components that could be reused by several companies/
Collaboration allows solving common problems
Especially goals linked to the environment and sustainable development. These goals can stem from companies sharing convictions or from legal requirements imposed from outside. Fighting against a bigger common enemy: this is how Google participated in developing the browser Firefox within the Mozilla foundation, when it is actually competing against its own browser Google Chrome; all this to destabilize Microsoft Internet Explorer, the market's giant.
Coopetition
The term coopetition was created by Ray Noorda, the founder of Novell, and became popular in the work by Nalebuff, B. and Branderburger, A. Co-opetition, a revolutionary way of competing and cooperating, Village Mondial, 1996. This is the alliance between cooperation and the market: we cooperate for certain things and compete for others. For the authors, cooperation between a company, its providers and its customers lead to products and services that are similar and therefore to potentially increasing the market share. In addition, this alliance can allow penetrating into new markets by joining forces. The conditions for coopetition require a study on inter-dependencies between companies, defining a concrete goal and an agreement to share the effort and the gains.
Examples of coopetition
In 2009, the Prufock Café in London created an “unloyalty card”. Customers had to go for a coffee at cafés from the competition and show their card to get it stamped. Once the card was full, customers could go back to the Prufock Café where they were given a free coffee. The goal was to retain customers of the Prufock Café by showing them that they served the best coffee, but also to force the managers of other cafés to guarantee the quality of their coffee, since they know they face competition. This also allowed bringing a stream of new customers. Ultimately, however, the main goal shared by all was to find a creative answer to the expansion of Starbucks cafés.
Fiat and PSA created a joint subsidiary that manufactured commercial vehicles of both brands, allowing scale savings by using the same components.
Radical collaboration
The term radical collaboration appeared in the United States in 2009. Three CEOs of competing companies in the field of green technologies (genGreen, 3rdWhale and Creative Citizen) decided to establish a “radical collaboration” scheme that was facilitated by the fact that they shared the same values and the same conviction on ecological emergency.
The difference between coopetition and radical collaboration is measured by evaluating the competition advantages and shared elements of “intimate” intellectual property. In radical collaboration what is shared is a highly differentiated added value (production secrecy, R&D); in coopetition the benefit is scale savings. Participants in the “unloyalty” card do not share their recipes or their knowledge on coffee.
Radical collaboration favours open innovation approaches, it is not about collaborating together to create a predefined product or service, but about developing an ecosystem to share knowledge and skills that will allow innovation to emerge. This innovation is not necessarily technological, it can also be social. And it emerges both from company collaborators and their customers.
Examples of radical cooperation
The field of the environment is very often convergent. For example, collaboration between the NASA and the ESA (in a context of strong competition) regarding environmental issues: managing space waste, the life cycle of satellites and the impact that launching spacecrafts has on biodiversity. This cooperation takes the shape of exchanges between specialists and a joint creation of new materials that are more environmentally friendly (to replace those that were going to be banned since they were too harmful)
Green X Change is a platform created by Nike, Creative Commons and Best Buy to share research. Anyone who is interested can put their innovations on this platform by choosing a licence that draws inspiration from free software and that allows other companies to benefit from the invention. This licence allows the owner of an innovation to choose who can have the rights. The idea behind this is to allow companies in different industries that do not compete against each other to share the fruits of their R&D. This platform is finding it difficult to expand outside its founding companies, but its authors see in it a huge potential driver of extending radical cooperation.
Recommendations by the authors for a Radical collaboration
Explain the concept, beyond the representations given in French to the terms “collaboration” and “radical”, which have a different connotation in English
Changing one's reflexes and one's vision on competition, open up to new opportunities.
The four pillars of a relationship: goodwill, reciprocity (also having goodwill with oneself), clarity and freedom to innovate (elements mentioned by the authors of the work: Juliette Tournand, La stratégie de la bienveillance, Inter Editions, 2007).
Being sure of the long-term; collaboration requires time to get installed and only shows an effect in the long-term
Creating a context that allows participants to be free and to engage spontaneously in reaching a negotiated and consensual solution together. Not distributing tasks between companies, like one would do in a collaborative process
Sharing skills and knowledge
Ensuring that contributions are complementary: linking the individual interest to the collective interest
Anticipating everyone's responsibilities: responsibility for the success or failure, financial setbacks, intellectual property
Transparency in the exchanges during the project and communication to all members
The simpler the process, the greater the chance of completion
Short introduction of the book's author :
Anne-Sophie Novel: doctor in economy, journalist specializing in sustainable development, founder of the collective blog Ecolo-Info, member of the network Entrepreneurs d'avenir.
Stéphane Riot: founder of Nove Terra, expert in sustainable development and accompanying the human factor in organizations, a member of a research group and prospection groups for new economies and organizations (bio-imitation, neurosciences, psychopedagogy, management…)
Literature references : NOVEL, Anne-Sophie and RIOT, Stéphane. Vive la corévolution !: pour une société collaborative. Paris, France : Alternatives, 2012. Manifestô (Paris), ISSN 2258-9325. ISBN 978-2-86227-711-0.
Description :Conceived as a support for building collective knowledge, Web 2.0 has lead to a deep change in the way information is thought of. By freeing writing from the closed universe of printed supports, it has unfolded a whole change in this field. It is now possible for several people to work on a same document at the same time! The enormous success of the Wikipedia, one of the most visited websites in the World, has opened the door to new ways of writing. Defined as a “project for a collectively written free encyclopaedia”, it has proved to what extent collaboration can contribute quality and make a written document so much richer. Richer for the community who benefits from finding different points of view on a same topic. Also richer for the person participating in a project that will lead them to elaborate new writing strategies and to feed on new ideas.
Co-writing, a difficult process
Collaborative writing is the result of a process that is often considered complex and difficult. The authors explain this difficulty by the fact that to the task of writing individually (based on planning, translation and reviewing, according to the authors), collaborative writing brings in three more levels of complexity. LOWRY, Paul, CURTIS, Aaron and LOWRY, Michelle. A taxonomy of collaborative writing to improve empirical research, writing practice, and tool development. Journal of Business Communication (JBC). 2004. Vol. 41, no. 1, p. 66–99.
This corresponds to three questions posed by collaborative writing:
1. How do we pool and harmonise individual knowledge to produce collective knowledge?
2. How do we coordinate the members and their different opinions for the project to be successful? How do we overcome social and affective conflicts that arise in this collective exercise?
3. How do we establish a common planning and deadline?
Group dynamics: the core of collaborative writing
The truth is that beyond the intellectual and procedural dimensions mentioned above, what appears to be the real core of collaborative writing is the social dimension that will then allow all the rest to “run smoothly”. By “social dimension” we understand the ability to generate group dynamics that bring each of the members together around a common goal (producing a text), where each of them will find their place. Dynamics that will make it as easy as possible for its members to become engaged and that, if it does not exist, will make the whole cooperative project unavoidably fail.
Collaborative writing can, indeed, generate social and affective conflicts (different points of view, the feeling that one is being judged, etc.) that may seem difficult to overcome. The act of co-writing also requires:
A high level of reciprocal interaction between the members that is nurtured by frequent exchanges
Taking into account the different points of view and giving value to the contributions of each member to the community, and encourage them all to participate while remembering this sentence by Paul Ricoeur "Tolerance is not a concession I make to the other, it is about recognizing the principle that a part of truth escapes me."
That the facilitator is capable to regulate social and affective conflicts arising from different ideas and natures.
The work of a network facilitator is precisely to contribute a convergence within the community and to create constructive work dynamics that promote everyone's participation:
Facilitating the contribution of everyone using the method of the 6 hats
In order to make it easier for everyone to participate and for new ideas to emerge in a group, the psychologist Edward de Bono, specialist in cognitive science, developed in 1987 a method called the “6 hats”. Starting from the idea that searching for solutions goes through six clearly defined phases, this method invites each group member to explore, in a meeting, six concrete ways of thinking, symbolised by six hats of different colours.
Briefly, the objectives are:
to allow each member to perceive an idea, re-think it from a different perspective and thus make his or her point of view on that idea evolve;
to avoid any censorship on new ideas that arise in a group;
to create a favourable climate for exchange and creativity, favouring freedom of speech;
to solve problems in a collaborative way;
to offer a global vision and go deeper into the situation;
More specifically, once the problem has been posed, each of the group members adopt, one at a time, a different position by imagining they are wearing a hat, and start exploring new solutions:
The White hat represents neutrality. The person wearing it must simply announce the facts leaving all possible interpretations aside.
The Red hat represents emotions. The person can freely express his or her feelings and intuitions.
The Green hat means creativity. The person wearing it looks for alternatives, while trying to consider the problem from a different perspective.
The Yellow hat represents constructive criticism. The person "admits their craziest ideas and dreams".
The Black hat means negative criticism, judging. The person wearing this hat announces the weaknesses and the risks entailed by this idea.
The Blue hat represents organization, channelling the ideas and process. The person will look at the expressed idea from a distance.
This method that pushes participants to leave their usual way of thinking may prove very useful when it comes to writing collectively.
Three approaches for collaborative writing
Collective writing can be done in many different ways, depending on the levels of collaboration:
One member starts by writing an article which is then modified and added to by another member, and so forth until a “document” that is deemed complete by the whole group and that generates consensus is drafted.
An approach that is more cooperative than collaborative is when each of the members works on a part of the article. Then the different parts of the document are linked to one another and harmonised to constitute a single and coherent article.
A variation of this cooperation could be that each member, according to their skills and wishes, does one part of the work. For example, one person drafts, the other corrects, the third reads through it, etc.
Finally, the most collaborative approach is maybe one that includes all members in thinking about how they are going to write the article; one where there is no real distinction between roles. Each member participates in all the different phases. We will analyse the elaboration phases that could cover this last point.
Elaboration phases: tricks and tips for participatory writing
Each group can find their own method that fits best. However, to have some points of reference, here are some tricks and tips to start with participatory writing:
When preparing a group for collective writing, there is nothing better than to start by making them live a “Small Irreversible Cooperative Experience” (SICE). This is done to overcome any possible barriers, to bring about the first exchanges and to give a sense to the collaborative task. One of the best tips is to use Etherpad, an on-line service that allows several people to take notes simultaneously, jotting down unfinished contents that will then be corrected or one containing many spelling mistakes. This simple action will instinctively get people to correct the spelling mistakes despite any barriers they may encounter. This tip is even more efficient when the mistake leads to a person: to the quest for perfect spelling we must add ego….The harm is done: the person thus lives their first collaborative experience!
2. Brainstorming
After this first step is taken, then comes a second phase that can be done organising a collective brainstorm; i.e. a meeting to gather ideas that will then allow bringing together all the points of view and the writing proposals of the group. This technique encourages the group members to put ideas into words, to compare them to others and to re-formulate them. It also encourages creativity. Using a mind map is also very useful to gather all this information, create a hierarchy of ideas and have a general overview. The principle is simple: the facilitator creates a mind map covering the points mentioned by each group member and classifies these ideas by topics and sub-topics. Projecting it on a screen, everyone can see if there is information missing and makes it easier for them to intervene. This exercise makes it quick and easy for ideas to emerge and to take all points of view into account!
There are many mind map tools, including Freeplane, which is very easy to use.
3. Drafting
Once the work has been done, the group is ready to establish a drafting plan. The real drafting work will start with this plan. From the start, it may be useful to test different modes of writing (individual or directly in a group, the framework to be used, etc.) to find the way that fits the group best. A reflection on what induces the publication (=exposition) will also be necessary.
Drafting can be done using on-line tools that allow each member to edit and modify the document, improve the common writing work and have a real-time view of the state of the document.
Google Document is quite useful for drafting in small groups. It allows several people to draft an on-line document at the same time that can be modified by each member and where all these changes are automatically included in the document. The advantage of this tool is that work is never isolated and members can see how the drafting process is taking place and, with this, they can make their ideas on the project evolve along the way.
For larger groups, a Wiki could be a good option. Just as Google Doc and Etherpad, it allows publishing all creations or page modifications instantly and having a global vision besides offering other interesting options. In fact, there is the option of commenting on pages, with a more visual display of page contents, to decide on the on-line publishing of the document on the spot and also managing the record of drafting. It also allows a collaborative work that is possibly more structured.
Small feedback on the experience of Animacoop regarding collective drafting
During the Outils-Réseaux training “Facilitating a collaborative network” (Montpellier, October-December 2010), trainers suggested that the group of trainees from Animacoop drafted three articles for their newsletter collectively and at distance. The group members were accustomed to working together and writing an article allowed them to value a common good, a creation. “For the trainers, this writing exercise was sort of a methodological challenge”, say the persons in charge of the training: “How can we test the collective capacity to synthesise crosscutting contents produced during a training? Second challenge: how do we get trainees motivated to do some extra work that is not expected?”
The web 2.0 is a word created in 2004 by Dale Dougherty of the O'Reilly Media corporation and popularized in 2005 by Tim O'Reilly. In an article entitled What is web 2.0 ?, the author redefines the Internet not only as a simple media but as a medium of collective intelligence. A true revolution seating the user in the heart of the Internet and marking for some the return to the fundamentals, for others a vast swindle.
For users, it means more participative tools than can be acquired. For developers, it means formats, standards, technologies eanbling to link systems. In a marketing vision, it covers the notion of services in wich users create contents as well as the economic pattern where free is the rule.
In summary, five characteristic features of Web 2.0
Collaboration, interaction, exchange and technological evolutions appear among these key-words 1. Strengthened participation of Internet users ( blogs, wiki, tags,...)
the web becomes a social media, even citizen where everyone can be author (Wikipedia).
Production of web contents is democratized thanks to the development of technologies: blogs, wikis, podcasts, photos and digital videos, etc), to the wide diffusion of broadband and to the emergence of a new generation of internet users native of the digital technology.
2. Abolished borders
The web 2.0 abolishes borders: sites and services are no longer isolated islets of information. They communicate and enable multiple re-combinations:
between applications (inter-operability, applications combinations...): calendars, maps...
between medium (computers, telephony, audio reader, video, Internet), with the advent of teh web as main channel.
3.Improvement of interfaces
Interfaces become more ergonomicthanks to the simplification of actions: fewer clicks ("slide/put down"), more comfort (automatic recording of modifications).
4. The webisation of desktop applications
Traditional apps leave local desktops to join webtops. Expl: "Office live" from Microsoft
5. An unstable sector
Sites and services refering to web 2.0 do not stop increasing. Services are free or accessible at very low cost. The great majority of corporations proposing 2.0 services have less than 24 months...
Writing for the web : a journalistic writing potentiated by digital technologies
Contrary to a yet too popular belief, one can't write for the web just like that. Apart from an ability shared by journalists to organize and write out information, this exercise needs a good knowledge of the Internet's issues and a methodology peculiar to this tool, actually taking into account that a Netsurfer reads differently the Internet than a newspaper. Care must be taken to get his attention, to guide him, to enable him to come and go easily in the different strata of the site through links and to provide him straight away what he came for : clear, organized and updated data.
Writing Rules transposed into the Web
Generally, web writing takes up the basic rules of written press. We find there the same main writing items as in the writing techniques of traditional media. Namely :
Lede and title elements
The article is written around core elements which are:
The title which is divided in two categories:
informative : without any stylistic effect and meant to be simple and clear
incentive : which sets out to tempt to see the information. For example : "This infinitely small that arouses great debate " (Article on nano-technologies).
The lede : which sets out to force the reader to read the article until the end ( "to strike the reader ").
its form tempts to be lively and eccentric (content and form) to hold attention, to sharpen curiosity and interest.
vocabuloray is made of keywords (for the web indexing) and meaningful verbs.
Subheads which help to organize content, to make the text clearer and to improve visibility by search engines.
The Five Ws, Five Ws and one H rule
The Five Ws, Five Ws and one H rule is a mnemonics approach to remember essential information which have to appear in the article. It consists in answering the following questions :
Who : the subject of the action;
What : the action, the facts strictly speaking;
When : the period during which the action, the facts have or will occur;
Where: the place where they may occur;
Why : their reasons for being ;
How : their way of being.
The principle of the inverted pyramid
Recurring in written press, the principle of the inverted pyramid is based on the development of facts in decreasing order. It goes from general information to specific ones. Vital information are at the beginning following the postulate that the reader tunes out progressively. This technique leads naturally to rank and structure information. Widely used in the world of web writing, it is not inescapable, as often claimed. Web allows indeed to use hypertext links to go to the most specific and have several levels of reading.
Source : Own work
Or the "Champagne " approach
Today the technique of the inverted pyramid is questioned by some web writers for the benefit of the "Champagne " approach. Proposed by Mario Garcia, a famous graphic designer, this approach consists in organizing information to boost the reader's attention approximately every twenty one lines. The sought after goal is to keep the netsurfer interested and concentrated.
Designing readable and attractive texts : work on style
As with paper, it is compulsory to design readable and attractive texts to bind the netsurfer's reading and to develop loyalty by : Writing pleasant texts. In order to do that it is recommanded to :
Humanize the subject, making it alive : always favor descriptions, atmospheres.
Stage information.
Vary approach angles.
Acquiring and developing a style. For this purpose, it is recommanded to :
Read a lot. Learn to read as a specialist : what is efficient, what is pleasant.
Create a universe by dipping, taking inspiration, writing.
Train with short exercises : short portraits, atmosphere, situation, rumors, bulletins...
Fight your self-esteem : have your text read (even outlines), accepting criticisms, advices...
Unleash your sensitivity. A good writer never betrays the demand of objectivity but lets show his feelings, his enthusiasm, his indignation... He makes his article alive.
An optimized writing by the developments of digital technologies
If the web writing takes up the methods of traditional journalism, it can't be limited to a simple transposition of contents from paper to the Internet. This in itself has little value. The development of digital technologies has released the writing of numerous limits (time, the restricted broadcasting space, the number of readers, etc.) and allowed a direct relationship with the reader...
Turn the reader into an actor !
What characterizes web writing from journalistic writing is undoubtedly the place given to the netsurfer. Formerly simple reader, he is now with the Web 2.0 a full actor which can now generate content through comments made on articles, discussions on newsgroup, chats, blog. He can also "describe " the information received by taking it over and annotating it. Interaction is the heart of web writing! This is what will enable the content to exist, to go further and to spread on the Web.
This interaction with the netsurfer can be impulsed and fed by the implementation of different actions :
Get sure that the message received is the message you want to spread
Interaction presupposes closeness. It can't exist if the developed subjects in the writer's writings are not in adequacy with what he really means and the announced editorial line. It may be necessary to check the cohesion of comments by using for instance a "tag cloud " which allows, through a visual representation, the highlighting of the most used words on a site or a web page. Generally they appear in fonts even larger that they are used or popular. These tools are also useful to take some distance from the writings and have an overview of the most used concepts and by rectifying if necessary to match words with initial ideas.
Tagcrowd and Wordle mark themselves out among tag generators.
Enable the netsurfer to deepen his reading
The use of hypertext links (directed outside) allows to link one's writings to other pages on the same subject. This gives an opportunity to deepen the subjects with an access to complementary resources and settles a new dialogue between authors and readers. Internet has dramatically changed our relationship with information : it is no longer isolated, it gets into a large field of knowledge ! Creating hypertext links also offers numerous opportunities :
contextualizate the subject giving it therefore more body,
develop the reader's loyalty whom will appreciate the richness of the content,
give your writing a supplementary visibility by inscribing it in a wider network (sites quoted with their link can quote you back with your own site's link),
capture the netsurfer's interest by inciting him to trail around the page.
Arouse participation
Digital communication sets out less to produce a content than to share it with netsurfers who are encouraged to give their opinion, to build a relationship between readers and to relay it. It especially requires :
the implementation of comments appearing more and more as an extension of the article. Netsurfers will add new data, give another point of view or refer to other relevent contents on the same subject,
the implementation of "share icons " underneath the article which will encourage the reader to relay,
the launching of a discussion in a newsgroup,
a call for Papers, etc.
These techniques allow moreover to improve the content according to readers feedbacks and to unite a community around these writings. Furthermore, a tool as Wiki gives the netsurfer an opportunity to add his own data to the existing ones and to modify the latter. Digital technologies marks the transition from individual writing to collaborative writing !
Go beyond the bondaries of time
Instant writing...
Internet allows to have not only a direct relationship with the reader but to have it instantaneously... It is possible today, thanks to social networks, to broadcast contents and to have answers, all that live ! Twitter, Facebook, Coverit Live... All these "live-blogging " tools encourage the implementation of new writing practices in which the content is designed as a support to a broader information rather than as an end in itself. The writing is now part of a more collaborative world where the author attends live the broadcasting of his production : it is relayed on blogs, tweeted, scooped, retweeted, commented... A true editorial chain is naturally set up to make this writing alive, so far as it is of quality. This can only modify deeply the relationship between the author and his writing, the former having to "let go " more about his production, accepting to be judged, sometimes harshly... This fact requires for who wants to publish online to have a former thinking on his relationship with writing but also with what he is ready to show of himself. The transition from written to oral can be difficult...
...analysis writing
In parallel with instant writing, digital technologies allow an analysis writing/reading. In fact, the appearance of digital tablets, smartphones and other mobile communication tools led to a different reading behavior, the netsurfer being able to select and keep the sources that interests him, and to go back to them later in a more comfortable environment. The issue for the web will be to adopt new editorial strategies which will push the reader to collect the content and to read it later, deepening his reading. Dedicated tools have emerged : for example Pocket (formerly Read It Later) or Evernote which allow to put besides selected contents from the web, to archive them and to classify them with filters or tags.
Enhancing online information
Digital technologies allow to enhance articles with various contents and to mix formats for a richer route for the reader ! Loïc Haÿ, specialist in services and uses of information technologies reviews some widgets (= applications) which enable to enhance online information : creation and personalization of photo albums, integration of 3D models and of videos, etc. These video clips (in French) come from the Explorcamp organized by the Mitic (Mission for Information Technologies for Corsica) on the 26 and 27 of June 2008 and having for topic the Web 2.0.
Finally in web writing ideas are legion and persistent : one should write phrases of less than 15 words, simplify at most the message, avoid the use of negation and passive form, promote a subject-verb-complement structure, write in scan mode... Actually, as on paper support, writing must get as close as possible to the audience, to the subject, to the environment in which it takes place. A text for a Humanities revue or a site dedicated to Philosophy can't follow the same rules as a document conceived to promote a firm or commercial products.
The Eyetrack survey, carried out by the Poynter Institute in 2007, shows that netsurfers read thorougly online magazines, even more than they read written press. The legal blog of Maître Eolas, (http://www.maitre-eolas.fr/ ), one of the most visited in France, is a perfect example. It demonstrates that long notes can be written and still develop the loyalty of a large community of readers.
New technologies, digital technologies : new issues for training
Undoubtedly, the advent of digital technology and the Internet has given the sector countless training opportunities.
The change in methods that follows goes beyond technological contributions, and the whole organization of information, space, distance and time is changed.
Factors of change linked to new technologies :
Unlimited access to resources (ITyPA! Or the Internet, Tout Y est Pour Apprendre)
Remote multidirectional interaction, the remote "presence " where the valuation of relationship is meaningful
horizontal communication network
the introduction of virtual reality and micro-worlds
the logic of participation driven by digital culture
All these items lead to foresee a new model of education:
Trainers of the Network of Remote French-speaking education of Canada REFAD have pointed out very exhaustively opportunities and challenges linked to the Web 2.0's tools :
Opportunities :
Mobility and portability and hence an increased flexibility for users which have access anywhere and anytime.
An increased motivation of at least part of the trainees, particularly the youngest, leading maybe to more persevering.
The trainee as a producer of learning contents, and thus a more visible apprenticeship leading to an improvement of his taking over of the matter, of his autonomy and of his getting a sense of responsability.
Numerous possibilities of cooperation, of socialization and exchanges and thus of apprenticeship of collaboration and team work so much for the students than for the trainers and institutions.
Theexpression under various forms, including multimédia, allowing a personalization and a suppport to different styles of apprenticeship.
Theease and speed of the information's dissemination at very low cost, independent of distance, increasing its impact.
The multiplicity ou pervasiveness of tools being able to bear all the aspects of an educational experience.
Awide access to contents, to experts and trainings, constituting a factor of levelling out, in particular between regions.
New possibilities of organizing information and of creation of metadata.
An opportunity of apprenticeship of the use of media and ICT tools and of information literacy, transferable to other contexts.
Anopportunity of educational innovation, of widening to new approaches and organizational innovation, among other more personalized and contextualized learnings.
Challenges :
The need for teachers and institutions to share their power and supervision. An evaluation of authority towards transparency, from expert to facilitator, from presentation to participation.
The support to motivation and participation necessary to the evolution of the trainee's role from passive listener to active and creative participant.
A need for apprenticeship of numerous information literacies : use of technologies, informational skills, management of digital identity, etc.
Questions linked to intellectual property and to evolution in contents of producing practices and works (assemblies, cooperations, etc).
The management of immediacy of communications and fast evolution of social softwares.
Risks linked to safety of information on the Web and to cybercrime.
Choice of tools and of their integration to institutional systems or not.
in : WIKIS, BLOGS AND WEB 2.0 ,Opportunités et impacts pour la formation à distance , 2010 Full text
Specific educational practices
The reasons to adopt new technologies are at first educational, in connection with the trainees needs.
So they can have important impacts on the design of the device and on the modalities of supervision. Here are some tips :
Motivation and participation support
Designing trainings needs to plan important fluctuations in interest and participation and to implement measures to arouse and maintain it beyond initial enthusiasm. Tools only are not enough, the purpose or direction given by the pedagogical scenario for their use remains central.
Social media play a motivating role in most educational experiences. They offer an empowerment feeling to trainees and new possibilities of socialization. They advantageously request each trainees perseverance on longer trainings.
Two items related to the motivation of the trainees are often given:
evaluation of participation : it's more a forced choice to participate than a deliberate one. It is also a risk of a minimal participation aiming only at the infringement of the evaluation's criteria. Contrary to the preconceived ideas according to which the pupils will make only the works which will formally be estimated, the absence of stiff constraints (relative to the blog e.g.) incites the pupils to blog even more. The dosage between constraint and freedom is to be found.
wide broadcasting of the contributions : opening gives visibility, pride and allows the reuse. It is thus generally seen as a factor of motivation. This practice is systematically used in Animacoop's trainings. The trainees produce diffusable contents. It is a more binding but also more appreciated work. (e.g.: http://animacoop.net/wakka.php?wiki=ContenusProduits).
Individual, collaborative or cooperative paths
The multiplicity of communication tools and the different needs lead to a diverse range of pathways. Then the good teaching position would be to vary in order to give trainees, whom have different learning styles, the possibilities of a more adapted path.
Collaborative activities, facilitated by Web 2.0 tools, have however a particular interest : they are both "a good learning vector" and a mean "to promote the development of social ties between trainees", they allow to "fight against the risk of isolation and demotivation especially in distance learning". They achieve various goals simultaneously:
accomplishment,
reasoning of higher level,
gain of working time,
transfer of learning,
motivation for achievement,
intrinsic and continuous motivation,
social and cognitive development,
interpersonal attraction,
social support, friendships,
reduction of stereotypes and prejudices,
valuing differences,
psychological health, self-esteem,
social skills,
internalization of values,
quality of the learning environment ... and many others.
However the arrival of digital technologies only reveals some hang-up of collaborative learning: sharing critical information efficiently for a joint project is an additional step that many organizations do not take, on one hand by lack of shared culture, and on the other hand because of the basic needs of individuals. The collaborative work is based, primarily, on voluntary service and can not be an obligation.
A more personalized apprenticeship and environment
The culture and the multiplicity of choices given by the Web 2.0, combined to its opportunities of directing the "I", calls for a greater personalization of paths, as indicated above, but also for methods of expression and tools. It can be a very limited personalization : profile and personal pages, photos, etc, added inside an institutional apprenticeship environment, focused on the course or the term rather than on the trainee. But more often, as said in the former chapter, we talk of a more fundamental questioning in which the trainee builds his own apprenticeship environment, from his own choice of tools, independantly from successive institutions that he will spend time in and where he will constitute the portfolio testifying of his training and experience and of his digital identity.
Active educations and more contextualized apprenticeship
More over tools of the Web 2.0 promote an apprenticeship in action, more authentic or more located. The trainee can for example build up resources reusable by the community. E.g. : articles written by Animacoop trainees are reused by trainers for the production of new courses.
Multimedia contents
Another challenge for educators presented by these tools is the trend towards less textual learning resources. Videos in particular encounters a lightning popularity.
The use of blog : it allows to leave tracks of one's apprenticeships and is excellent in the practices of formative assesment.
Wiki shows the contributions of each member to a collaborative work.
Vidéo and video conference enable to assess the spoken expression or the content's appropriation. We can also build on existing content, e.g. evaluate or complete an article on a wiki.
The use of appropriate tools
Placed in front of an abundancey of tools, the trainer must be able to choose the most relevant for the desired apprenticeship. Often, if his institution hasn't done it for him, he also has to select the software to support them. The discussions between trainers on specialized newsgroups show very well their perplexity in front of the multiplicity of offered tools and the difficulty to choose those which will fit best their educational activity.
Farther we propose you a small selection of tools classified according to their uses.
Support
To exceed the level of simple comment or formatting, to progress to a training of higher level, such as the development of argument, criticism and synthesis, a steady veducational support is essential.
The supervision of interactive progresses as those allowed by Web 2.0 asks thus not only more time, but also a steadier availability. To face this greater need for time and for availability, several solutions are proposed.
the need to establish, from the beginning, slots of availability,
the collaborative work. The supervision was assumed in team of four trainers : "This way of working favors students who receive instant answers as well as trainers who share the task of answering emails".
Hybrid training combining distance and on-site “learning” is an excellent tool for life-long professional development.
However, many conditions are required for this type of training tool to be a real learning ecosystem.
The Cooptic experience has reinforced our convictions regarding certain conditions for training to be successful in the digital era.
Training is no longer a pyramidal transmission of knowledge, where the person that knows passes information down to the person that is learning. It is a co-building of knowledge by networking available information, chosen by the trainers; individual knowledge and experiences that are collectively enriched by reflective exchanges. The training process is rendered explicit by the trainer so that the training provided enables the process of learning to learn.
People are at the centre of the learning process. But these people are easily connected to the world and to others thanks to the new technologies available.
In the training, Cooptic and Animacoop, its French equivalent, we have experienced the construction of learning communities that operate in a similar way to epistemic communities (cf. supra). Trainees publish articles and create training itineraries while gradually becoming active “amateur-experts”. This new quality in people that are training is a real conjunction of intellectual, pedagogical, and even democratic ambitions that really sets the grounds for the pleasure of learning.
The work of trainers changes because it entails several roles in parallel:
“Expert” trainer: is the reference for the subjects dealt with and transfers knowledge.
accompanist: is the person that structures and accompanies the group’s progression in a learning environment based on communication and exchange.
tutor: is the person creating an individualised link with each of the learners helping them to overcome the isolation induced by distance learning.
"technician": is the person that makes sure that all technical devices work properly.
These new "roles" fulfilled by one or more trainers require deep changes:
reconsidering “distance” as a space and time with multiple possibilities for interaction and learning. It is possible to learn, create links, work together and produce a resource in multiple ways:
asynchronous distance contribution based on availability of a space for writing, sharing resources, exchanging via email or a forum,
synchronous distance during video-conferences or exchanging practices between groups,
on-site and distance at the same time…it is possible to organise a course on video-conference with two groups in parallel at two different sites.
making the relationship between trainers, learners and knowledge more horizontal. In the flow of information and exchanges, the trainer is just one element among many others.
adopting the "surf method "1 ....accepting uncertainties and being brave enough to experiment during the process. Trainers are the ones guaranteeing the methodology: they create the balance conditions and do not necessarily master the form of co-production outcomes.
Innovation elements and the effects they have on the training tool and the cooperative learning
How Cooptic innovates
The effect on training
The effect on cooperative learning
Choosing a wiki as a training platform
Technical device that is easy to use with an intuitive configuration and carefully designed graphics. The trainer tries to minimize any possible technical difficulties.
Reduces difficulties for participation. Generates trust in the tools. Creates a feeling of pleasure. Encourages trainees to publish on the NET.
A common space and individual spaces
The wiki platform enables creating personal spaces that are easily linked to a collective support.
Belonging to the learning group is natural (common spaces). Individualised learning is possible (personal space).
Open contents
Courses are posted on-line and are accessible to all outside training times.
Freedom to refer to the courses at all times. Greater availability for activities and exchanges.
Learning contents that extend beyond those in the courses
Posting the course on-line “frees” time to accompany trainees along the process of acquiring skills.
Knowledge acquisition: "learning to learn" and "learning to work with others".
Modular structure
Contents are divided into units (granulated). The general itinerary is defined, but it can be modified during the training.
Building a more personal itinerary is possible.
Systematic approach
Contents are selected so they correspond to the activity as a whole, the collaborative network and to the different levels (individual, group, environment).
Acquisition of global perspective. Relatively complete study of the collaborative processes.
A multiplicity of structured itineraries
Modular course itineraries (the life of a network). Group activities itinerary (learning community). "professional project” itinerary (collaborative environment).
Multiple opportunities to deal with issues on cooperation and collaboration; put them into practice, facilitate them. Analysis of the collaborative process.
Gradual change in the size of work groups
Activities are programmed based on progression: individual exercise, work in pairs, in groups of 4 to 8
Practice on epistemic communities. Exercise on ephemeral groups (change in scale).
Networking and exchanging practices
The activity is conceived as a knowledge aggregator. The trainer provides the methodology.
Valuing experiences as a source of knowledge (reflective practitioner). A particular form of professionalisation (based on the experiences of others). Reinforcing self-esteem.
Co-production of contents
An evolutionary platform: everyone can add pages and text. The trainer accompanies the process and ensures it is consistent.
Active stance towards knowledge. The sense of creating a “common good”.
Notion of "presence" from a distance
A fine-tuned articulation of distance and on-site times. The effort of accompanying is placed on interaction between participants. “Distance” accompanying is systematized (fixed points with the trainers).
The effect of distance decreases or even transformed. Removing project and culture proximity methods.
For further information: epistemic communities
Epistemic communities can be defined as a (small) group of representatives who share a common cognitive aim to create knowledge and a common structure that enables a shared understanding. They are heterogeneous groups. Therefore, one of the first tasks for its members is to create a codebook, a form of "code of conduct", defining the aims of the community and the means to achieve these aims, as well as the rules of collective behaviour. Therefore, what distinguishes an epistemic community is, first and foremost, the procedural authority, that ensures progress towards the established aim while allowing participants a certain degree of autonomy.
The production of knowledge is done based on the synergy of individual specificities. This requires that the knowledge that flows within the community is made explicit. This is done by converting tacit individual knowledge into explicit and collective knowledge: the members of epistemic communities are united by their responsibilities to value a particular set of different knowledge. The aim of the assessment is therefore related to the individual contribution of effort towards a collective aim that is to be achieved, and the validation of the cognitive activity (production of knowledge) of each member is done by their peers based on the criteria established by the procedural authority. The same applies to the recruitment of new members in this type of groups: it is done by the peers, following the pre-established rules regarding the potential in new members to achieve the community’s aim.
Bibliography
Cohendet, P., Créplet, F. et Dupouët, O., (2003), Innovation organisationnelle, communautés de pratique et communautés épistémiques : le cas de Linux. Revue française de gestion, n° 146, 99-121.
1 Rosnay, Joël. Surfer la vie : vers la société fluide. Paris : Les liens qui libèrent, 2012
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