PPEL – Cooperative freedom

Morten Paulsen – Cooperative freedom: An online education theory, available at http://www.studymentor.com/cooperative_freedom.pdf. Accessed on 25-10-2009

In this article Morten Paulsen talks about the Theory of Cooperative Freedom, describing what the word cooperative means in distance education as well as freedom. This theory is influenced by Knowles’ Theory of Andragogy which defends that adult learners perceive themselves as self-directed human beings, defining themselves according to their personal achievements and experiences.

The Theory of Cooperative Freedom understands the distance students as people who need cooperation with their peers as much as individual freedom.

Paulsen states 6 facets of freedom in his Hexagon of Cooperative Freedom: time, space, pace, medium, access and content.

Usually we can think that freedom and cooperation are two opposite concepts. Paulsen refers to that in his article. But, if we think about cooperative learning and the tools that are nowadays available for people to learn, we cannot keep conceiving these two concepts without relating them to each other. With the web 2.0 tools, we have space for ourselves, for our individual learning process but we can also learn from and with others, as well as they can learn from and with us. Tools like twitter, Facebook, MSN, blogs, allow us to share information and knowledge that our peers can use in their learning process.