Collaborative learning

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Collaborative learning

• Christopher Padfield
• SEFI Annual Conference, September 2004

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Standing on the shoulders of giants

• In this presentation, I plan to build upon some
  of the very pertinent insights contributed by
  Professor José-Ginés Mora, yesterday morning
• In his presentation he called for lots more (a
  step change, a paradigm shift!) unshamedly
  intimate contact between universities, industry
  and the relevant professions
• He was driven principally, I think, by a fear
  that we Europeans are losing competitiveness
• I will approach the same issues from two
  complementary standpoints

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My two drivers

• The nature of society, and of knowledge creation
  and its application within society, has changed
  so much, that to stay with the old patterns of
  behaviour is to doom ourselves as surely as the
  dodo was doomed, after being discovered by our
  recent ancestors
• The nature of politics, and with it, public
  funding, has changed so much, that . ditto
• Far from being frightening, or limiting, intimate
  collaboration and continuous dialogue with
  society can enable universities to achieve their
  strategic aims, in ways that no other strategy
  seems to be able to deliver

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Plan

• University strategic aims
• Third Stream and engagement
• A long diversion through Gibbons and Mode 2
• Why the social contract underlying universities
  relationships with society is changing,
  representing, at one and the same time, a carrot
  and a stick
• What to do about it!

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A universitys strategic aims

• Cambridges Mission is basically
• Contribute to society through
• Learning
• Research

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Meaning of these strategic aims

• If we REALLY mean this, then
• Fundamentally important to ensure that (all?)
  education / learning, and all research /
  scholarship, ultimately contribute to society
• Academics have often forgotten this fundamental
  imperative, believing that they have a right to
  pursue knowledge for its own sake, at public
  expense
• Society has not lost out much in the past, as
  there is no time limitation on the application of
  new knowledge
• But the game is changing

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Finally, by way of background a bit of Her
Majestys Governments jargon

• Worried that universities are not delivering
  enough value for money to the economy, HMG have
  instituted a Third Stream of funding, that
  encourages engagement between universities and
  society
• First Stream is thus Teaching and its associated
  funding Second Stream, Research, (as if they
  were logically separable, ugh!) and Third Stream,
  everything to do with a universitys economic and
  social impact on society
• Engagement is NOT just about commercial and
  economic matters it has just as much to do with
  any universitys wider social impacts
• This word engagement is rapidly becoming very
  important not just in superficial propaganda,
  but in the deepest levels of understanding what a
  modern university is for, as we will see

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Third Mission examples of activity

• Commercialisation of intellectual property and
  expertise
• Entrepreneurship, company formation
• Advisory work and contracts
• Commercialisation of facilities
• Shared development of research and
  problem-solving agendas
• Contract and collaborative research
• Staff mobility, flow and exchange
• Student placements and other employee links
• Professional and continuing education
  teaching/learning activities
• Curriculum alignment to societal needs
• Social networking
• Non-academic dissemination, media communication,
  etc.
• Volunteer contributions to the community of
  labour, expertise, educational outreach, public
  understanding
• Contributions to public policy

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A diversion .

• to look briefly at the changing processes of
  knowledge creation and application in society, as
  they affect us
• Gibbonss now canonical work
• Mode 1 giving way to Mode 2, though not replacing
  it entirely
• Reference Gibbons et al, Sage, London, 1994

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Mode 1

• Universities traditionally revealed truth about
  the world and promoted its social condition
  through this enlightenment, whereas, we now
  understand that all scientific results are
  provisional seeking truth now seems rather
  quixotic!
• Academics acted as though they had a complete
  right to set their own agendas for teaching and
  research, and society would adjust, whereas now,
  society talks-back!
• Academics worked alone, at their own pace, and
  determined the validity of their science, which
  did not necessarily extend much beyond the
  laboratory
• Universities were essentially alone in the
  research game, with governments paying the bill,
  and companies doing development.
• No longer!

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Mode 2 - Socially-distributed knowledge creation

• Researchers and professionals from many points in
  society
• coalesce in (often remote) collaborative
  endeavour to solve significant problems
• then re-disperse, only to coalesce in different
  groups and different places to solve other
  problems later
• They bring their disciplinary expertise
• in the interdisciplinary process of problem
  resolution they acquire new expertise
• this new expertise is often initially hard to
  categorise
• new languages
• new disciplines, sometimes short-lived

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Mode 2 - 2

• These patterns of behaviour, characteristic of
  the knowledge economy, differ from previous
  orderly models (Mode 1)
• The new ones are socially distributed,
  heterarchical, heterogeneous, organic, complex,
  subtle, self-reinforcing, non-linear, transient
• Distinctions between pure and applied, or science
  and technology have become increasingly irrelevant

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Mode 2 - 3

• Dangerously, the emergence of Mode 2 has left the
  universities formal expression of their purposes
  well behind
• But informally, many universities have largely
  adapted to this new pattern many of their
  academics are often mobile in society, engaging
  actively with companies and other forms of
  external organisation they often do not see
  themselves as constrained by the walls, or
  institutional constraints, of their institutions

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A new social contract emerging

• Universities are no longer the principal players,
  alongside government-funded research
  establishments and companies, each with a highly
  distinct role
• Each type of organisation is increasingly
  invading the others territory
• Society is demanding more of scientists and
  engineers that their work be socially robust,
  having been tested in many different social
  settings and that it be relevant to the solution
  of a wide variety of social problems
• Scientists and academics now operate in a much
  more open society
• It isnt enough that they communicate their
  results to society they now have to be fully
  engaged with their related communities

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What does this mean for universities?

• Universities have to accommodate to the new
  social contract, or be marginalised
• Their decision-making is likely to be hastened by
  the declining levels, and the irksome conditions
  attached, to public funding
• These increasingly constrain the precious
  autonomy of our universities

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What does this mean for universities? - 2

• No longer a simple question of linkages between
  companies and universities
• Now universities will fulfil their social
  contract (and for the good ones, achieve
  prominence) by full engagement, within society,
  in setting agendas to generate and apply
  socially-robust knowledge, and in following
  through those agendas in intimate collaborations
• The focus has moved from one-way communication
  across boundaries, to dialogue and partnership in
  common territory, the boundaries (disciplines,
  institutions ) being increasingly blurred
• The focus has moved, but it remains important to
  retain a considerable amount of freedom to
  conduct Mode 1, disciplinary research, within
  universities
• How to achieve this new balance?

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What does this mean for universities? - 3

• Unprepared and unready to take control of their
  destiny in this new world, universities have felt
  hustled and commanded by external bodies,
  including government
• Universities resent the idea of being market-led,
  but they badly need mechanisms that help them
  evolve on (or ahead of) the crest of significant
  new developments
• The answer lies with us, and our willingness to
  leave the apparent security of the priesthood and
  join back in with society
• Gibbons talks about universities being willing to
  go out into the agora to negotiate the terms of
  our new social contract with whoever is there
  research institutes, government, companies,
  professional bodies, students

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What does this mean for universities? - 4

• Please note, that in none of this, have I
  suggested that universities should become service
  institutions nor that they should simply deliver
  the teaching their students ask for, or the
  research that clients pay for
• Rather, I am proposing a route by which
  universities can retain their independence (and
  continue to do curiosity-driven research) and
  originality a route that involves them in
  meaningful social processes with partners and
  stakeholders, progressively renegotiating the
  substance of their social contract

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And reverting back to the original subject ..

• We looked at strategic purposes, including the
  need to fulfil our social contract
• We looked at how doing science in an ivory tower,
  and showering the results down onto a grateful
  populace, wont work any more, because the nature
  of the knowledge creation process has largely
  changed, to Mode 2

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Collaborative learning

• All research is a process of learning in Mode 2
  we necessarily do it together
• Collaborative learning is not just a particularly
  effective way of conducting CPD with mature
  professionals it becomes part of the core
  paradigm of a universitys role in society
• If we play this ball right, we will retain our
  autonomy and our ability to speak out for what we
  think is right
• We will be engaged as valued partners in
  knowledge creation and application

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Collaborative learning and partnership in
Cambridge

• In Cambridge we have developed very productive
  mechanisms for
• working closely with companies, many of whom have
  staff in Cambridge, so as to be very close
  dialogue on the boundaries
• assisting the processes of dialogue
• developing socially-relevant, multi-disciplinary,
  research agendas
• . but we do not (yet?) consult widely in society
  when setting our teaching curricula!

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Collaborative learning and partnership in
Cambridge - 2

• Academics in Cambridge do not seem to be in any
  way compromised by working
• with others to frame the problems they will work
  on
• on the resolution of those problems as part of
  widely-scattered multidisciplinary teams
• On the contrary
• they usually find that their academic creativity
  and range of options is greatly enhanced
• the values of the University do not, by
  engagement on real-world issues, become purely
  instrumental or functional
• constraints to publication need not be an issue
• Cambridges academics seem to understand this
  better than the institution does itself!

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Collaborative learning and partnership in
Cambridge -- 3

• We are very comfortable that collaboration is
  central to our future the world is so
  competitive that we cannot achieve all that we
  desire to achieve, alone
• We work with carefully selected external
  organisations universities, government
  departments, RD institutes, companies as part
  of our routine way of doing business, to achieve
  our strategic aims
• Working with selected (mostly globally dominant)
  companies
• helps us remain in the forefront of research
• ensures that much of our research finds immediate
  application
• creates the environment for us to teach
  practitioners, and to be taught by them

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Practical actions

• Whether at the small scale of individually mobile
  academics engaged in consultancy and small-scale
  research engagements, or at the grand scale of
  large strategic multi-faceted research alliances,
  universities should assume that they generally
  act with others, in avrious forms of joint action
• They should
• think strategically, working out quite clearly
  what they want to achieve, seeking out other key
  players and forming enduring alliances,
• make clear to their partners that working with
  them will sustainably assist in the resolution of
  those difficult problems, that keep senior people
  awake at nights

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Conclusions

• The Third Mission, or collaborative learning, is
  central to the meaning of a university and its
  social contract with its stakeholders
• It urgently needs
• a higher profile in internal debate
• more explicit articulation
• integration into promotion criteria, etc.

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Conclusions - 2

• Universities should
• become much more strategic and politically savvy,
  while accommodating the democratic freedoms of
  their community of scholars
• support their academics in external engagements
• manage sophisticated mechanisms to promote
  dialogue and steward mutually-respectful
  relationships
• nurture partnerships that will secure their role
  in the global knowledge economy
• through the new-found confidence of their social
  partners, acquire independent sources of funds to
  buffer them from government policy and management
  incursions
• adapt their structures to favour
  interdisciplinarity and fluidity
• collaborate with government in the design of
  Third Mission metrics that will meet the needs of
  all stakeholders

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• Note These views are as provisional as any
  knowledge and they are mine, rather than those
  of the University of Cambridge. Please improve
  on them!
• Christopher Padfield