Final blog post: collaboration and community-building

Although oral, written, and print forms of knowledge do accommodate collaboration and community-building, folk knowledge accommodates collaboration and builds community more because it requires human connection. 

Knowledge. Picture by me.

Collaboration, by definition, is “the action of working with someone to produce or create something”. This happens orally, through writing, and through print.

• Collaboration happens orally. For example, this semester, each member of our class participated in midterm, King Benjamin’s speech, in which we all memorized a portion of King Benjamin’s speech from the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 2-5) and rehearsed it orally. We worked together to (re)create something—King Benjamin’s speech.
• Collaboration happens through writing. For example, modern students often use tools like GoogleDocs, where multiple people contribute with writing to create outlines, notes, and papers together.
• Collaboration also happens through print. Publishing in a journal is an example of collaboration through print. An author submits a paper and receives reviews. Based on these reviews, the author then often revises and resubmits. Eventually (hopefully), the paper is accepted and published. In this was collaboration takes place via print.

Community-building also happens orally, through writing, and through print.

• Communities are built through oral means. For example, one of the most important ways the harp studio community at BYU is built is through listening to one another (play harp) in masterclass. There was one member of our studio who was out of town quite a bit this semester. I feel less unified with her because I wasn’t able to participate as much wither her orally as I was the other harpists.
• Communities are built through writing and print. For example, the Book of Mormon, originally written, and later printed, connects, and, indeed, defines, the Latter-day Saint community.

This semester, we’ve learned about folk knowledge. Folk knowledge is domestic learning in the home—making cookies, efficient egg use, and hair-braiding—because it’s practical knowledge for living. Folk knowledge is learning to do new things, like diving, whip-cracking, and Zumba. Having folk knowledge is having talents. Folk knowledge requires practice. Folk knowledge requires repetition. What do all these have in common? Human presence. I couldn’t have taught others to make cookies without others being there. Sam couldn’t have learned diving without his instructor, and I couldn’t have learned Zumba without my instructor.

This human connection sets folk knowledge apart from oral, written, and print knowledge—they do not require the participation of other human beings.

And this human connection is why folk knowledge accommodates collaboration and builds communities more than oral, written, and print knowledge.

Because of this human connection, folk knowledge accommodates collaboration more than oral, written, and print knowledge. My experience teaching cookie-making is the perfect example. While I was teaching my colleague-friends, they made suggestions for how to do things better, like melting or softening the butter before blending it. When I made cookies the next time, I tried this, and it made making the cookies far easier. This collaboration was easier, faster, and simpler—better than it would have been orally, through writing, or through print—because my friends were there.

Folk knowledge also builds community more than oral, written, and print knowledge because of the human connection it requires. Above, I wrote that the oral nature of listening to my harpist colleagues built a harp community. But that unification would have been impossible if we were not actually present. I also wrote that the Book of Mormon builds the Latter-day Saint community. But we learn in the Book of Mormon that community comes through deliberate, unified actions, like baptism (Alma 4:5), prayer, (3 Nephi 27:1), and fellowshipping (Helaman 6:3). The book that itself unifies as a written then printed text, teaches community. In these ways, folk knowledge and the human presence it requires builds community better than oral, written, and printed communication.