Difference between spontaneous and group collaboration

While I was working on some ideas that I had as a result of my Fontys session, I came to a conclusion. All my currently new ideas were based around the idea of collaboration within project groups. While not a bad thing, I got back to thinking about my original goal, which was to use tablets as a means towards improving education through collaboration.

Project groups already have to collaborate. It’s there in the definition of most courses that use them, namely “Create result X with your group. You all get the same grade.”
These project groups can create their own methods of collaboration and are obligated to do so. So motivating collaboration in project groups mostly consists of making the collaboration as smooth and efficient as possible.

Spontaneous collaboration on the other hand is something else. It involves a group of people who are not necessarily working together, but still have some thing in common. In this project, this would be a school or a course. Motivating collaboration for this group of people means making it attractive to collaborate at all. Drawing people into collaboration, perhaps through an attractive interface where they know they can contact others quickly or that they’ll feel rewarded when they actively participate.

In a sense, spontaneous collaboration is more about creating a community than making collaboration quick and efficient. That’s why I’ll have to keep the following definition by designer Amy Jo Kim in mind:

“A community is a group of people with a shared interest, purpose, or goal who get to know each other better over time.”