Collaboration – means or end? 

Today, collaboration has become something of a buzzword and used almost dogmatic in many professional sectors. All problems should be solved through collaboration. If organizations just could collaborate better and quit continue their ´siloed´ practices, much would be so much better. In public administration (in which I have worked for almost 10 years), sometimes the solutions itself seems to be collaboration. Of course, working together with others, finding new innovate ways of approaching ’wicked problems’ is sound and many times necessary. But when behaviors start being performed in dogmatic ways, without reflecting on why, we often seems to be missing the goal. A competent carpenter doesn’t use hammer and bolts if that’s not the best tools in relation to what is being built. The screwdriver may be a better option. 

This is also the case with collaboration in relation to achieving a task. It is always important to reflect on the purpose of collaboration prior to designing a learning activity. Perhaps this could be done individually? Maybe students could choose by themselves if collaboration is a good option here? This would be collaboration as mean.

However, the aim might also be to stimulate collaboration skills themselves. This can hardly be done in any other way than working together with others. Then, learning activities should be design in a way that stimulates collaborative skills. Student’s should, among other things, be provided with knowledge and tools to start reflecting upon collaborative practices.  This way of approaching collaboration would be collaboration as end, the goal itself.