Thoughts on Digital Tools and Collaborative Design (W10)

This week, I took the opportunity to revisit some social media tools I didn’t get a chance to fully explore earlier in the semester. As has become a bit of a theme for me the past few weeks, I followed my curiosity, and it led me to three different tools: Diigo, Cluster, and Sutori.

First up was Diigo, and I was pleasantly surprised. Because it’s a browser-based tool and not tied to a stand-alone app, the links people share function seamlessly. There’s also something charmingly “old-school” about the layout. It reminded me of early forum threads, in the best way. I could see it being useful in academic spaces where the focus is on deep discussion and resource sharing.

Next was Cluster, which immediately gave off Instagram vibes with its visual-first photo feed. But Cluster feels more purposeful, especially in educational contexts. The gallery function stood out to me the most. I could totally see this working well in something like a class scavenger hunt, where students document findings and post them to a shared space. There’s a built-in sense of contribution and visibility that I think could motivate students.

The final tool I explored was Sutori (one of the Week 10 tools). I’ll be honest, based on the Canvas description (“a tool you can use to create lessons”), I was excited. But once it loaded, I felt a little let down. To me, it seems more geared toward K–12 lesson mapping rather than higher-ed or professional applications. That said, I could see its visual timeline structure being appealing to certain learners or for storytelling-based assignments.

As I explored these tools, I found myself reflecting on one of our discussion board prompts for the week: the shift from group projects to collaborative authorship, and potentially even to collaborative design. The prompt asked us to think about how Web 2.0 and social media tools shape these forms of collaboration, whether they inherently support collaboration, or if the collaboration comes more from how we use the tools.

Thinking all the way back to high school, most group projects I did fell under the category of collaborative authorship. Everyone was assigned a part, completed it independently, and we pieced it all together. Honestly, that’s still the default model I fall into. In fact, I just did this recently in EME5250 with a group project where we each contributed specific sections.

But that same project also gave me a glimpse into collaborative design. Rather than just dividing up tasks, we brainstormed a custom framework for how educators could approach AI usage in the classroom. It about co-creating something new rather than combining parts. That experience felt messier, more fluid, but also more engaging and creative.

I’m left thinking about how the tools we use either reinforce one model or open the door to another. Tools like Diigo might support collaborative authorship by making it easy to divide and discuss resources. Tools like Cluster and even Sutori might lend themselves more to collaborative design, where the form and function of the project are shaped together in a visual and interactive space.

At the end of this, I have a question that I am still mulling over: do we choose tools that match our collaborative goals, or are our goals shaped by the tools we default to?

Thoughts?