The Collaboration Generation

It’s 8pm on an average weeknight and my sixteen-year-old son is doing his homework. If this conjures a picture of a lone young scholar hunched over his books at the kitchen table; think again. He is on his cell phone and laptop, conversing with classmates, comparing notes, and discussing answers.

As a parent, conscious of the competitive college admissions process, and as an adult of a certain age raised in a culture focused on competition and individual excellence (whether I liked it or not), this method of doing homework raises some questions: “Why is he asking his friends about the assignment, doesn’t he take notes?” “Why is he giving her the answer; she won’t learn it if she doesn’t work it out for herself…”, etc. However, as someone interested in web 2.0, who recently finished reading Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything I can also appreciate it for what it is: the Net-Generation doing what they do; efficiently attacking problems using peer-to-peer collaboration,and perhaps, preparing themselves to lead in the new economy of mass collaboration. I still have uncertainties, but I can also see the possibilities.

I also know that institutions don’t always evolve at same pace as the cultures that inhabit them, so I wonder how school administrators and college admissions counselors are dealing with with this generation? Do they view collaboration as a form of cheating or plagiarism, or as a natural outgrowth of social networking and preparation for the business of networked problem solving in the real world? Perhaps this is a super efficient way for everyone to study and share their strengths while gaining from the strengths of their peers, or perhaps it’s only a way for some to get by without every really getting the material—and depending on your feeling about tests and assessments, maybe that doesn’t matter.

Of course regardless of what I think, it is happening and this is what my son and other sixteen-year-olds do now. And while in theory I can relate it to the open source software movement, or mapping of the human genome, I wonder if all of the gatekeepers that stand between these kids and the Wikinomic future will be as open minded, and should they be? What do you think?