http://emerge.elgg.org/francesbell/weblog/241.html
This very interesting interview with Morten Paulsen was blogged by Stephen Downes.
His work is based on his theory of cooperative freedom.
I found this table very interesting
"Table 1. Student preferences regarding Learning Partners and privacy
Preferred Privacy Level | Want Learning Partners | Don't want Learning Partners | Sum | Percent |
| Closed | 63 | 520 | 583 | 18,4 % |
| Limited | 975 | 650 | 1625 | 51,4 % |
| Open | 706 | 248 | 954 | 30,2 % |
| Sum | 1744 | 1418 | 3162 |
|
| Percent | 55,2 % | 44,8 % |
|
"
Paulsen has done some interesting and practical work in situations where students can express their preferences that then impact on their interaction with the learning environment. I'll try to read some of his papers. In our work on CABWEB, one consistent result over 5 years was that where 'collaboration' occurred across groups of students from two countries/ courses each group of students thought that whilst they gained from the experience, the other group gained more.
The distinction between cooperation and collaboration is also relevant in the Emerge context as Bob Rotherham has been showing.
Keywords: collaboration, cooperation, learning
