Collaboration Strategies

Collaboration can hinder or improve productivity and learning experiences in individuals. Good frameworks from which to draw effective peer to peer relationship can help enhance the productivity experience in collaborative team dynamics. However, just like any other collaboration, context influences what framework can be adapted in the collaborative environment. Inquiries by participants who have attended ICW workshops have specify three spaces of interest to learn more about collaboration that are interrelated, but with goals and outcomes that differ. These are: Academic, Industry / Professional, and Community. While each respective space may have individual goals and outcomes, they relate in the abilities that participants in a collaboration can recognize positionality, and design a collaboration framework that best fits each of the participants’ position and the overarching goal of the collaboration.

A strategic framework for collaboration is simply the mechanisms in place that are there to advert any complications associated with the goals of the collaboration. These can be miscommunication, feelings of voice not being heard, loss of trust, loss of productivity, and many more. These mechanisms should always function at facilitating the collaborative interactions. For example, during ICW Workshop 1 presenters described conditions / components of radical collaboration to cultivate collaboration across disciplinary, institutional, and programmatic context. These conditions are contextually dependent which is why interest in each may differ on an individual basis. We provide a description of each to show the similarities but also identify strategies in each contest that cultivate the true nature of collaboration in the space of inquiry.