Inspiration strikes at the strangest times. Sitting at the Sonic, surrounded by the visually commanding posters for their offerings, I wandered into why the Arts and Science, most particularly Anthropology, are not as online as they could be. Which led to how Anthropologists work ... mostly on their own. Collaboration is not a by-word in the Anth community. While archaeology is conducted with a sort of team ethic, there is usually one and only one leader of said team. Discoveries are his/hers. Everything is written up under the dig leader's name. The Leakey's may have scoured Olduvai Gorge together, but the publications, until very late in life, were under Dr. Robert Leakey's name, not both. While his lady may have been credited with finding the first bits of something, the fame was his, the accolades were his, and the grants were his.
OLC's are about community and collaboration. Ethnography is frequently about one person investigating one culture, or a portion of one culture. Paleontology is sometimes more of a group effort, but even there, the discovery of a new fossil is generally attributed to one person, not to the group working on the site, but the the actual uncoverer. (Is that a word?)
So, when attempting to sway the Anthropological academic culture to online classes, one is faced with not only overcoming the F2F mentality of traditional lecture delivery, but a resistance to collaboration. Reports may be written in collaboration, but discoveries are, more often than not, solitary.
All of this sort of erupted from the thought that I tend to take online classes because I am more solitary than community oriented and therefore more inclined toward indepentent work than collaborative work. I have resisted the entire concept of collaboration where my writing is concerned since I was about 15 because "if I get help, or work with someone, it isn't mine". Oh, yes, I have taken that to heart sometimes which makes it interesting to offer up anything on the writer's list I belong to. (To which I belong
). It is not easy for me to accept criticism, but it's getting easier. I hope this will help with the collaboration worries and in finding my own way to working with others on learning, I will see a way to start working through the perception barriers between the current status quo of arts and sciences classes and where I think it would benefit them to go.
