Collaboration

Key point from the data:

• Collaboration with individuals and groups is a feature of the life cycle of learning and teaching applications and projects. It is important during the formation of the project idea, the bringing together of the project team, the development of the application, and while the project work is being undertaken.

In Chapter 9: Do the work anyway, Bill (D) and Lisa (C) describe their experience with ‘the project before the project’, that is, pursuing preliminary educational projects either without funding or with some internal funding. Among other things, this gave them an opportunity to work with colleagues and get to know their strengths and limitations. Agnes (D), too, stressed the necessity to collaborate when she said, 'The collegiality is another thing in that I knew the people (across Australia) I was working with already and had a good relationship with them so that networking capacity. I just think that sharing, the team collaboration, is absolutely crucial to getting a good proposal together'.

Reflecting on one particular OLT application, Agnes (D) indicated that team members' different strengths complemented each other and this led to a competitive proposal:

(My colleague) and I work extremely well together. (They have) got the most amazing brain that you could ever think of … very philosophical … but also very analytical … and mathematical. Whereas I've got a very ordered, rational brain. So together we came up with a really strong proposal.

Mikko (A) had good advice about internal and external collaboration from his experience in a smaller institution:

In small higher education providers the networks and connections their leaders have with other similar institutions form an important enabling mechanism for getting projects under way. So people contemplating projects that seek to access OLT funding in such institutions should connect with their institutional leadership at the earliest possible stage ... Seek multiple levels of support for long-term projects to develop ideas of lasting value, such as from colleagues, internal grants (if they exist), professional associations, discipline networks, e.g. deans groups in particular disciplines, philanthropic sources, and the industry most closely associated with your teaching and research area.

Also see Chapter 4: Building the project team.