Co-creation

Summary: Learner-centric no more. My focus is shifting to the performance of connections.

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I post to Internet Time Blog almost daily, and I hope my words retain more value than yesterday’s newspaper. After all, the Blog is where I share my discoveries and interpretations, not perishable news. Nonetheless, on a standard Blog, the new pushes the old off the bottom of the page, out of sight, and out of mind, regardless of value.

To keep longer-lived items from falling over the edge, I decided to catch some of the run-off in a KnowledgeBase.

I needed a logical structure for pigeonholding incoming items. Performance is what it’s all about; that deals with organizational objectives and metrics, the impact of learning, and how performance improvement is implemented. There’s a Process level above this that includes meta-learning, design principles, timing, and how humans tick: things that transcend individual cases. There’s also a level below that specifies the Place the learning or performance is happening. My first approximation looked like this:

This evening I started divvying things up among the topics. The “Community” topic turned out to cover many potential topics:

• collaboration
• learning with peers
• social software apps
• discussion groups and wikis
• Communities of Practice
• informal learning
• reputation management
• expert locators
• corporate culture
• groupware
• social network analysis

While these topics differ, they’re all related. Collaboration means working together. Community is a group of people with common interests. Members of communities collaborate. Collaborators aren’t necessarily members of the same community.

Other “co-” words crop up in learning. Constructivism describes learning built on an existing foundation. Connectivism, recently coined by George Siemens, makes it explicit that the learner is augmented with connections to networks of people and information. Context is king this year, dethrowning content. Computer and commerce share the same linguistic heritage, as do commerce, competition, consult, contend, and correct.

So what’s the, ahem, connection? A very handy reference tool, The Online Etymology Dictionary, taught me that co- and com- derive from Latin cum, meaning “together, together with, in combination.” The co’s are all “with” words. It takes more than one to confer, to communicate, to concur, to confer, to condemn or to conceal.

Com-puter = reckon with

Con-spire = breathe with

Con-tend = stretch with

Con-trive = sing with

Con-tribute = pay together

Con-verge = bend together

Com-plex = woven together

Com-pete = strive together

Without a “co-/com” situation, there’s no interaction. There’s no action. Nothing happens. Learning is co-creation; work is co-creation; life is co-creation.

Separate entities…

…collide, connect, converge…

…to create something new.

In the virtual world, virtual connections will do the trick. We can connect with others, with ideas, and with tools from anywhere.

The proliferation of open connections heralds a new world of continuous improvement where chain reactions of combined thoughts and learning recombine in ever-greater patterns.

“Learner-centric” has been the rallying cry of eLearning for five years now. For me, it’s time to move on. That particularly squeaky wheel has been oiled enough. We’ve demolished the “instructor-centric” conceit that the only good learning is that which takes place when there’s a real live teacher running the show. Last year, in an informal history of eLearning, I wrote:

Learning isn’t content. Learning isn’t infrastructure. Learning is a process of forging neural links. It’s new thought being wired into the brain’s network. Hard to believe, given that the brain is a chemical soup shot through with electrical charges, more closely resembling a haggis than a sophisticated network processor. eLearning came along at the right time to embrace the learner-centric view.

Learning for learning’s sake doesn’t interest me. I’m pragmatic. This past year, I began to shift my emphasis from the learner to the worker. In 2005, I plan to focus less on individuals and more on ecosystems. My interest is turning to improving the performance of connections between workers and the work environment.

For me, it’s the year of the network connections. What’s flowing back and forth to the nodes has my attention. What? Where? When? How? How much? How often? Quality? Impact?

Now I’ve got to re-think that taxonomy. You can never do just one thing.

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Selected words derived from Latin cum, “with” or “together”

collaborate = work with

coherent = stick together

college = group of colleagues

colleague = those chosen to work with

collide = strike together

collusion = play together

combat = fight with

combine = yoke together

commence = initiate together

commensurate = measured with

comment = stay mindful with

commerce = trade with

commit = bring together

common = shared with

communicate = impart, share with

companion = one you share bread with

comparison = make equal with

compel = drive together

compendium = weighed together

compensate = weigh together

compete = strive together

complain = beat the breast together

complex = woven with

complication = fold together

compose = put together, arrange

comprehend = grasp with the mind

compute = reckon with, prune

concatenate = link with

conceal = hide with

concentrate = center with

concierge = with slave

concise = cut off with

concoct = boil together

concord = agree with

concourse = run with

concubine = lie with

concur = run together

condemn = damage with

condense = make thick with

condescend = descend with

condolence = suffer with

condominium = own together with

condone = give with

conduct = lead with

confess = admit with

confine = end with

confirm = strengthen with

confiscate = with public treasury

conflate = blow together

conflict = strike together

conform = form together

congeal = freeze with

congress = meeting with

conjugal = with spouse

connect = fashion with

connive = wink together

connoisseur = recognize with

connubial = marriage with

conscious = knowing with

consent = feel together

consequence = follow with

console = comfort with

consolidation = make solid together

conspire = breathe with

constant = stand with

constipate = press together

construct = pile up together

consult = gather together, seize together

consume = take or buy together

contain = hold together

contemporary = with time

contempt = with scorn

contend = stretch with

context = join together

contort = twist with

contribution = pay together

contrive = sing together

convalesce = grow strong with

convene = come together

converge = bend together

converse = move with

convince = conquer

convivial = carouse together

convocation = call together

convoy = go together

copulate = join together, link together

cordial = with heart

correct = with rule

correspondence = answer with

This is inexact science. Time changes meaning. Compete originally meant striving together. Now it has become strive against. It has grown closer to combat (fight with) than collusion (play with).

Related reference: Autopoiesis and Coevolution