Collaborative learning is defined as a process in which students work together to create

mutually beneficial outcomes (Don and Anderson, 2014). As such, Dr. Bill Anderson,
discussed the concept of digital collaboration and how it may be used in a variety of
contexts, such as academic writing at the undergraduate level and collaborative learning
utilising digital technology.

Dr. Bill Anderson explained in the module how digital collaboration can help instructors and
other education professionals cooperate on designing teaching plans, as well as generate
units of work and materials that may be utilised in online courses. The affordance to utilise
digital collaboration could be used to focus on teaching and how it supports.  For instance,
Luarrilard shares that her students engage in various forms of learning through the use of
technology. She describes its use as efficient as it promotes student collaboration towards
other students, instructors, and teachers (Laurillard, 2021).

Similarly, Harasim established learning theories and linkages concerning the affordance of
technology, whilst producing the model of OCL and Col framework in accordance with Tony
Bates (Bates, 2015). OCL builds integrated theories of cognitive development that help
learners focus on conversational learning which helped current deep learning conditions
and aided in the increased development of academic knowledge  (Pask, 1975; Marton &
Saljo, 1997; Entwistle, 2000; Laurillard, 2001; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006)

However, Garrison, Anderson, and Archer created the Community of Inquiry Model (Col) in
2000, which was described as "a collaborative educational community of enquiry for a set of
people who cooperatively take part in intentional critical discourse and reflection to create
personal meaning and confirm mutual understanding." According to Garrison, Anderson,
and Archer, there are four essential elements of a community of enquiry in this theory
model: social presence, interpersonal relationships, teaching presence, and cognitive
presence. Firstly, social presence describes how to communicate purposefully in a trusting
environment. Whereas interpersonal relationships address the matter of developing
individual personalities. Teaching presence is designed as the direction of cognitive and
social processes with the aim of generating personally meaningfully and educationally
valuable learning outcomes. Lastly, cognitive presence is defined as the extent of a learner’s
ability to construct and conform meaning through sustained reflection and discourse. 

The online conversation began in the 1970s and exploded in the 1990s as a result of the
advent of the World Wide Web. Dr. Bill Anderson and Don (2014) built a ‘framework of
understanding the varied ways in which individuals interact with one another in a learning
scenario' by discussing the effects of digital collaboration on motivation and the possibilities
of using social media in education. This is applied for both formal and informal contexts, and
it included concepts such as group learning, networks, sets, and collectives.
Consequently, Dr. Anderson Bill’s article discussed the limitations of digital collaboration
where online learning requires highly knowledgeable, skilled instructors, and a limited
number of learners. In specific, areas of education i.e. engineering and science, must
accommodate to these limitations which aid in digital collaboration difficulty.

Reference:  
Bates, A. W. (2015). Teaching in a digital age (Section 4.4). Vancouver, BC: Tony
Bates Associates. Retrieved from
https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/6-5-online-collaborative-
learning/