Collaboration

Although collaboration is translated by many dictionaries by the synonyms cooperation, help, aid, synergy, and co-participation, education specialists say that the act of collaborating is more complex than the others, in which people cooperate, yes, but to achieve a common goal, shared by others from common beliefs or desires. In a collaborative situation, the participants are and perceive themselves as interdependent and together, each one with their set of skills and knowledge can build something new.

According to Teacher John Spencer, researcher and author of books on active methodologies, especially on Project Based Learning and Problem Based Learning and on teacher mediation strategies and practices, collaboration is a step beyond cooperation, and cooperating without collaborating tends to unplanned results, commonly with group disunity.

Cooperating comes from the idea of operating something with someone while collaborating is about working (laboring) something with someone. That is, in collective work, it is necessary to operate a set of actions and activities, but not only that. The work, according to Spencer, requires trust, time to develop, and often the creation of new ideas. And collaborative activities benefit from Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) that favor horizontality, synchronous doing even at geographic distances, and memory of doing and learning of those involved.

In education, both are part of the list of soft skills and are seen as fundamental to facing the challenges of the present and future, in the process of building innovative solutions to local challenges.

Collaboration: a key element for solving complex problems

In Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, Collaboration emerges in the reference to soft skills and the 4Cs (acronym in English for Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration), competencies for the 21st century, such as those necessary for contemporary students to conduct their journeys of learning, and fundamental for the resolution of complex social problems. Along the way, students and professors are invited to collaborate and with multiple parties involved in the project, from the integrated construction of the planning, defining and agreeing with responsibilities, to the execution of the different stages of the Project journey. With the assumption of being a collective construction, the project dynamizes the group’s relationships, inviting young people to learn to respect, listen and trust each other.