Learning on the Job: Do We Learn and Develop Faster with In-Person Collaboration?

Source:  https://www.myworldofwork.co.uk

Do we learn more from in-person collaborators than remote teammates?  That question has been top of mind for many people over the past few years.   Much of the dialogue about this question has not been evidence-based though.  It's been highly anecdotal.   Recently, however, I read about some fascinating research on the topic. 

Frank van der Wouden and Hyejin Youn analyzed more than 17 million academic publications over decades to address the question of whether local collaboration generates more learning than remote collaboration.  The scholars wanted to identify each researcher who collaborated with someone outside their discipline and later published a sole-authored paper in that new domain.  That later publication would indicate that the researcher had learned a great deal from this collaborator outside his or her original field of expertise.  Youn and van der Wouden compared the learning rate for those who collaborated locally vs. at a distance.   They found that the learning rate of local collaborators exceeded that of distant collaborators, with a particularly substantial impact in areas such as chemistry and engineering.  

Moreover, Youn explained why the impact of local collaboration was greater for people early in their careers: “That’s understandable, because early in your career, you still need to acquire knowledge, and you have to be present to do that when knowledge isn’t yet codified. It’s like riding a bicycle. You can’t learn how to ride a bicycle by reading a paper.”

The study covered the period from 1975-2018. Therefore, some will argue that we have much better tools for virtual collaboration today, and we have become more adept at remote interaction.  As a result, they will conclude that we cannot draw far-reaching conclusions from this study.  That may be true, but it still warrants consideration and certainly indicates that we need further study of the topic for the more recent period of time.  The finding about young people is of particular interest to me.  What do these findings mean for how we bring new workers into the fold early in their career? What should onboarding and apprenticeship look like in those early years?  How will they learn and develop most effectively?  We've been thinking a great deal about what type of work can be done best remotely vs. in-person.  We should also be thinking carefully about the stage of each person's career and how that impacts our decisions about in-person vs. remote collaboration.