Cooperative online education, by Morten Flate Paulsen

Paulsen, M. F. Cooperative Online Education. Seminar.net - International journal of media, technology and lifelong learning. Vol. N – Issue N – 20NN

In this article Morten Flate Paulsen illustrates the theory of cooperative freedom.

The author starts with some references, in order to clearly distinguish collaborative from cooperative work in distance learning context.

Professor Paulsen states that The Theory of Cooperative Freedom is based on the following three pillars: 1. Voluntary, but attractive participation; 2. Means promoting individual flexibility; 3. Means promoting affinity to learning community

Paulsen also connects transparency to cooperation, in an online educational context. Transparency promotes quality work, but should not be “used” indiscriminately.

Then, the author lists some social software and states the web 2.0 as cooperative learning facilitators. Some examples are wikis, blogs and bookmarkings. PLE’s (Personal learning environments) can surpass the role of LMS’s, once the first are better so serve students needs.

In order to illustrate the theory of Cooperative Freedom, Professor Morten Paulsen describes some of the investigation work about online cooperation he as been doing in NKI through 4 surveys about NKI’s services and tools. These services include, among others: students progress follow-up strategies (directed to teachers and to students) and the CLIP (Cooperative Learner Information Profile) strategy.