Only What I Know: Collaboration is part of the learning process

Influence

I am learning one note at a time with my book. I am also reading what other guitar learners are learning and talking about at my online guitar groups, Guitar Noise and Guitar for Beginners. Each site has a forum that hosts conversations on subjects that are relevant to where I am in the process of learning guitar. I’ve posted at each a couple of times. Although I do not have anyone I could call a mentor yet, and I haven’t started in person training either, the responses at the websites have helped me understand how to tune my guitar and how to know when my strings need to be replaced.

Challenges

The main challenges posed by online collaboration (e.g., via forum conversation) is that the advice I receive is based only on the information I provide, is not instantaneous, and is offered by anonymous people who may or may not be expert for all I really know. The advice from online collaboration sometimes conflicts with other advice earlier received. It can also be indeterminate, inaccurate, too general, etc. This is because the advice is not based on the advisor’s direct experience with my situation.

Conflicts

In my experience so far, conflicting advice does arise during online collaboration. Its presence has caused me to wonder which of two or more competing sources is to be trusted. Sometimes I even question whether any competing source knows what is best for me to do in my situation. When there is a conflict on what I should do, I try to resolve it by weighing the evidence and argument supporting the competing opinions. When that does not do the trick, I just do my own research! The upside of conflict is that it requires me to think hard about who is right and how I know and whether I need to get additional information from other sources.

Divergence

Online collaboration seems to produce divergence, not a restraint on creativity. I say that because if you ask online for an opinion on this product or that, or this method or that, you’re bound to get a lot of differing views, and some of these will be unexpected and quite creative. Even when those opinions don’t solve my problem, at least they get me thinking about what else I might do to fix things.

Net Effect

Although it can be particularly tricky and time consuming to sort via the internet the good advisors and good advice from the bad, online collaboration has so far been a net positive for me. That’s because I’m a curious person who likes going from one topic to a related but distinct topic. When I ask a question, I get lots of answers to choose from. Some are good. Some are not so good. But the collaboration itself provides me many opportunities to follow up on the advice received by asking better, sharper questions and by doing my own research, which I enjoy.