Reciprocity learning

I watched this morning's PLE conference (#pleconf) unkeynote by Grainne Conole and Ricardo Torres Kompen, which was streamed live from Aveiro, in Portugal. In it, they represented a number of perspectives on personal learning environments, including a discussion on the differential between institutionally managed Virtual Learning Environments (or VLEs) and the free tools that learners are now using on the web. Particularly emphasised was the power and capability of the personal learning network (or PLN) which can not only save you time when you are looking for the answer, but can also lock you into a huge network of like-minded individuals, from where you can 'distribute your knowledge'. We are indeed 'distributed beings', said Grainne, perhaps invoking the work of Mark Curtis.

There was much food for thought, but the conversation that struck me the most, was between them and one of the delegates in the hall, Ilona Buchem (aka @mediendidaktik). Grainne and Ricardo had crowdsourced much of their presentation, through a series of video clips, blogs and tweets. Reflecting this willingness to participate, Ilona suggested that much of the power of the PLN is owed to the willingness of participants to share their knowledge with each other freely. The old adage 'you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours' has never been so well applied as it is to does to the PLN. This kind of reciprocity occurs because people are willing to share, and in so doing, are free to then gain access to the sharing of the other members of their community. It's a kind of membership fee of the largest community on the planet - the network of networks that many millions of people are making use of to connect to each other, to ideas, knowledge and experiences beyond their own immediate physical sphere.

The psychologist Leon Festinger developed social comparison theory - a theory that attempted to explain how people relate to each other psychologically. He suggested that we compare ourselves to others often subconsciously, and then attempt to improve our own positions and gain more accurate self evaluation. It is very much rooted in the traditions of symbolic interactionism (see for example the work of Charles Cooley or George Herbert Mead). Social comparison, in Festinger's terms, is not considered to be a form of competition, but more likely will be to elicit a feeling of belonging within our chosen community. It goes farther. Most would agree that the act of self-disclosure at the start of a relationship can garner a similar response from others. Self disclosure reveals something personal or subjective about yourself. If I remark that I come from Plymouth in South West of England (personal information), the person I am conversing with is more likely to reciprocate by telling me where they are from, or may even remark on their interest in England, or Plymouth, some allied topic such as Sir Francis Drake or the Mayflower. It breaks the ice to self disclose.

In the same way, reciprocity learning relies on the willingness of both parties to give freely. I have written before about the merits of giving your stuff away for free. You never fail to be rewarded. We are, in Mark Zuckerberg's terms, living within a gift ecology - where without freely offered knowledge, and a little give and take, we would all be much poorer.

Image by Chris Ishikawa (NB: Chris made his cute animal image free for use under a CC licence, so his photo gains a wider audience on this blog. Other photographers chose not to offer their cute animal photos in the same way, so they miss out on you appreciating their artistry. Just saying....)


Reciprocity learning by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.