Values shape our actions in life: what we do, how we do it and why. The ways we interact with other people also reflect our values. The same is valid in the student-teacher relationship. Our values as a teacher will be reflected in the way we teach and will influence student’s perception of the content, relation to the course, and will ultimately impact the overall success of the course and the education experience.
“We teach values by having them and in this sense we are role models for student learning and we pass on values whether or not we intend to.” (from Harland et al. 2011)
One aspect of values in education caught more of my attention. In the world that is highly competitive, the competition often extends as far as to the beginnings of formal education. Marks, grades, points were supposed to be one of the important factors in keeping student’s motivation. However, in some cultures competition plays less important role in education and there is a lot of weigh put on problem based learning, which requires group work, joint assignments and a lot of collaborative efforts and affinity for team work. While the benefits of learning together are well recognized, still it is clear that some students like the competitive environment, which keeps them even better engaged with the course.
Are competition and collaboration mutually exclusive, or is it possible to get the best of both in online education? Competition is still present in many domains of our life, and it seems necessary for student to get prepared to deal with this concept later in their professional life. So, where do these cultural differences in the preferred approaches come from? To me it seems likely that the professional area as well as economic environment plays a role. Not all professions function in equally competitive or collaborative environment, so if getting a job or performing well in it after studies requires high degree of competitiveness I think this would be also be reflected in students’ attitude during education.
The concept of gamification gained a lot of attention lately, as a method of organizing activities in communities so that they take in key concepts of games, and of what keeps participants enjoy the game and continue with it. In a very straightforward and rather classical way of applying gamification in education one could create a course which is based on individuals collecting points along the way, and the best or fastest one gets the best grade. In a more subtle and synergy-oriented way, gamification can be used to motivate collaborative efforts. In an online educational environment it could mean rewarding a special status (e.g. a badge, title) to students that are most active in online discussions or in helping respond to other students’ questions. By acknowledging their activity, that they could be recognized by other students as a possible source of help in their studies. In another setting one may make group assignments which encourage collaboration among individual participants, but make groups compete between each other and acknowledge the success of the best group, but in the end share the knowledge gained between all groups.
In terms of collaboration and competition, we as teachers may wish to pass to our students the values of team work, fair play, striving for better solutions, doing the best we can, but with empathy and thinking of the society as a whole.
References:
Harland, Tony & Pickering, Neil (2011) Values in higher education teaching Routledge (London & New York) ISBN 978-0-415-58922-2 127 pp
https://resourced.prometheanworld.com/collaborative-learning-students/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.11120/elss.2011.04010007?needAccess=true
https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/how-to-balance-competitive-collaborative-learning/