Collaboration or Competition: A Case of Selected Private Higher

Abstract:

Collaborative efforts and strategies are widely applied in

modern business and academic environments. Most of the

collaborative learning research has been done on children

and college/university students. Academic and administrative

staff in higher education institutions also learn from interaction

with fellow higher learning institutions. This paper shows the

divergence and convergence of collaborative learning efforts in

privately owned higher education institutions in Botswana. The

main benefit of collaborative learning is that people capitalise on

one another’s resources, knowledge and skills exchanging

knowledge, evaluating one another’s ideas, and monitoring one

another’s work. This paper is based on the understanding that

collaborative learning is based on that knowledge can be created

within a population (academic staff) where members actively

interact by sharing experiences and take on asymmetry roles. A

qualitative research was done on five (5) Botswana privately

owned institutions of higher learning where face-to-face

interviews were carried out to a sample of ten (10) academic

staff, two from each of the five institutions covered in this study,

who were drawn using a purposive sampling approach. Results

of the study showed that there is clear lack of collaborative

activities in the Private Higher Education institutions (PHE)

covered in this study. Instead what stands in the results is

overwhelming evidence of immense rivalry and stiff competition

where higher learning institutions try by all means to bring the

more successful institutions down.

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