Garrison's Leading Collaboratively (Part I)

¡Hola! This post is a continuation of my blog, "Doctor Misterio", but it's also the first of a series of entries to be used as my portfolio for EDDE-804 "Leadership and Project Management in Distance Education", under the instruction of Dr. Marti Cleveland-Innes, as part of the Doctorate in Distance Education at the University of Athabasca.

Today I would like to post some ideas and comments from Randy Garrison's book "Thinking Collaboratively" (2016), in particular, those dealing with leadership and the Community of Inquiry model (CoI).  Although I won't elaborate on the principles of CoI, you can find a link to a video where CoI is explained above.

On pages 101-102, Garrison states,

"Collaborative approaches to thinking and learning have distinct advantages when confronting organizational change.  It improves the possibility of bringing forward diverse perspective and ideas essential for growth." This is, in fact, a summary of the thesis of his book, which is the importance of collaborative thinking as a way of sharing ideas and knowledge, enriching the learning environment, and working together for a joint cause or project.

He goes on: "Perhaps, more importantly, it creates the conditions to challenge basic assumptions essential for the transformation of an organization [...] this is in essence creating a community of inquiry at an organizational level." Thus, the principles of community of inquiry can be applied to an organization in order to create collaborative thinking and collaborative leadership.

Thus, "Leading collaboratively creates an organizational culture where leadership is a shared responsibility.  It is a culture where open communication creates the cohesion to address dificult organizational challenges.  Conditions are created for dialogue and debate where complex issues can be raised and considered [...] purposeful commitment, open communication and group cohesion are essential elements when collaboratively inquiring into organizational challenges, change and innovation" (p.102).

Based on this approach, we can and we should transfer the same spirit of joint effort, commitment, shared responsibility and open dialogue to the context of university education.  This can be applicable to relations between administrative staff and the faculty, as well as the faculty and students, among the faculty, and among the students themselves.  In this sense, what we see here is a democratic spirit where collaboration gets the best out of the people involved in the process of teaching and learning.

Is this possible in our Latin American universities? In the context of Costa Rica, where there is a rigid hierarchy in higher education, and an excessive bureaucratization, this looks like a Gargantuan task.  However, I believe first these new ideas, such as Community of inquiry within the academia, collaborative thinking and collaborative leadership must be introduced, discussed, and defended for face-to-face teaching and also online instruction.

Although I will retake this topic in my next post, including more of Garrison's ideas from this chapter, so far it has made me change my perspective about the overwhelming labor ahead as a teacher and researcher who is preparing to become a leader in distance education in my university and my country. 

In fact, Garrison's perspective has made me shift my focus regarding my future dissertation: I see now collaborative leadership and the principles of CoI as enriching and necessary possibilities for my present and future work context.  Not only further democratization and collaboration is a must in the academia, but it is also the most realistic scenario in the light of the transforming world in the 21st century.

Reference:

Garrison, R. (2016). Thinking Collaboratively, Learning in a Community of Inquiry.  New York: Routledge.