Section 3 / Strategies for teaching collaborative practice 

A range of fundamental skills is commonly recognised by colleagues in survey: 

• Observation: seeing / listening / watching / touching:
  Observation in non-literal sense too, ability to observe the strategies od student’s collaborative process and reflecting upon them 
• Trust: Essential between (students / tutors). Allows promotion of cooperation and creativity in the group
• Communication: openness in the understanding of other disciplines:
• Regular feedback: to analyse and evaluate own work and work of others 
• Reflective critical approach to the collaborative process (research activities, goals etc)
• Reflective discussion upon the acquisition of skills and techniques 
• Conversation to debate points of concern 
• Understanding of collaborative partner’s requirements 
• Teamwork: being committed and organised as a team 
• Risk-taking: ‘pushing beyond comfort zone’, 

Each collaboration is by nature a unique journey 
Experimenting with new creative perspectives 
A unique way of managing ‘the uncertainty and ambiguity of creative practice’ 
Collaboration is primarily a process of learning how to engage the self with the others. 

Strategies to deal with potential problems in collaboration:

• Ownership: Students have to learn how to ‘own’ their project, even though the ideas are not always initiated by the whole group but are the result of a compromise or agreement between its members. 

Section 4 / Concerns, issues and advice on the pedagogy of collaborative practice 

Group Formation: 
Forming groups as a first point of assessment
Staff selects groups at level 1 
Try different group formations in the process before choosing the ‘best’ method for the summative assessment 
Use shared interests and ideas to combine groups

Ways of working: 

• Keep ways of working flexible (working jointly, alone in parallel etc.)
• Clarifying roles; are they set out clearly or is it part of the learning experience to find out

• Not teaching collaboration but collaborating: Collaboration here is experiential, whatever the skills sets for collaboration are, they are arrived at implicitly through the activity of joint making rather than being spelt out in the aims or outcomes. -> SEE OUTCOMES FOCUS GROUP
• ..it is group discussion, conversation, joint critical reflection that are prominent parts of the pedagogy. ..the regularity of appearance of this mode of learning suggests that group conversation following points of activity is important in collaborative work in particular -> EXQUISITE CORPSE POST VIEWING CHAT

‘Best’ Practice: 

• Manage expectations 
• Encourage shared ownership 
• Use reflection as an iterative process
• ‘Challenge’ as driving factor for collaboration:
• To understand that there are other ways of working beyond your own method that are equally valid or might offer new tools of working 
• Challenging own artistic canon 
• Confidence building in dealing with unusual / unexpected 
• Foster desire to seek out uneasy territory for creative exploits 
• Transferable life skill of dealing with people & difference 
• Staff ‘over directing’ can be problematic 
• The benefit of moving between ‘I’ and ‘We’ (Frank Sinatra v Fatal Niceness) 
• Less talk more action 

Section 5 / Pedagogical Models 
Model 1: Striated and Smooth 
Everything planned out & structured with clear criteria vs none of that 
Model 2: Complimentary and Integrative 
Multidisciplinary = side-by-side, ‘music accompanying dance’
Interdisciplinary = boundaries less defined, contributors acquire skills from another

from:

Alex C., Dobson E., Wilsmore R., 2010, Collaborative Art Practices in He, Mapping and Developing Pedagogical Models