Yesterday I turned this blog to an European project and found the question why it was possible to study globally but harder to work in small groups of different universities. And today I found a discussion about the same theme in elearningeuropa pages (communities> discussions):

“Web 2.0 is about social networking and the impact it has on learning or learning 2.0 is that it supports and enables learning networks. Rather than trying to limit the social networks in the boundaries of educational environments I would sport George Siemens and his theory of connectivism arguing that learning networks need to be open, with the learner in control. Learners should be able to choose networks that they trust and belong to. Web 2.0 is promoting and supporting such openness and connectivity the challenge is for educational institutions to develop a supporting culture of sharing and exist as an ecology not in isolation.”

And following:

“Yes, I think that the topic of “connectivism” by George Siemens is very interesting and challenging too.
I would agree that learning networks should be open and that learner should be in control of their learning and so have the chance to chose the networks they trust the most.
But still as you said “the challenge is for educational institutions to develop a supporting culture of sharing and exist as an ecology not in isolation”…. and this is very very challenging today…. I have no idea how institutions could overcome “competitions among them” and “privacy issues” among users, since in my experience even publishing an individual assignment in the provided course forum was not an easy task for the more shy or introverted student. In my experience it is not easy for any students to share with other peers (imagine if with milions or bilions of people..) their assignments, because they will receive a mark for that….I think this is still a tricky topic which need to be further researched and investigated.”

I love these writings and agree with them mostly. But it is not at all impossible for students to work openly, I have many experiences about success in shared knowledge and shared assessment in my online courses. People can share but institutions have problems in sharing because of continuous competition. So the project must be really useful to all participants? Usually it is, I suppose, otherwise it doesn’t begin.

Sharing is a skill that can be learnt.. and millions of people do it every day. For instance I am shy and introvert :)