Module Three: Collaborative Constructivism

Coming from a psychology teacher, I would say yes! If we examine the evolutionary perspective of psychology, humans are born with certain predispositions that are dependent on the environment...simple interaction of nature and nurture. For survival reasons, humans would benefit from a group mentality. Weird fact, but when researching whether or not humans can detect pheromones and what kinds, they have found that women secrete a fatty acid during their menstrual cycle that actually gets all women in one collectivity on the same cycle (from my students psych text--Myers). This behavior would not be possible if evolution supported independence from the group. Wouldn't it make sense to theorize that those who did obviously did not have their genes passed to further generations? This generation today, with the heavy infiltration of technology, is provided that environmental aspect to trigger our genetic dispositions. We enjoy connecting with others even if it is virtually. Doesn't that also explain the process of online dating? So yes, I think Rheingold was correct in his proposition but I believe it is dependent on environmental circumstances.

How can technology facilitate collaboration among learners based on constructivist principles? To me this is easy...each learner is unique and has developed his or her own schemata based on experience. Collaboration will either validate the process of assimilation or it will lead to accommodation through interaction with others. Resources such as Skype that allow social conferencing, blogs and even Wikis are examples of technology resources that allow for collaboration across states and even across the world. From my perspective as a psychology teacher and as I have mentioned, I do find validity in Piaget's stages of cognitive development. I attribute the varying abilities to simple brain maturation which leads to higher cognitive tasks. But I also believe and see validation in Vygotsky's idea of the zone of proximal development. At various ages of cognitive development interaction with one's environment is important (i.e. a rat study I teach my students about in psychology which supports the idea that enriched environments lead to more synaptic connections) so collaboration with other humans fits that mold. I thought that this publication was particularly interesting as I face this dilemma as an online educator. I have even had to defend to some of my colleagues the validity of my degree from on online university! Just to point out, my online students collaborate a ton through discussion forums, pages, emails, Elluminate sessions, blogs, and so forth...they score better than the national average on the AP exam; I am happy with that!