The
mobile phone and its connectivity with the internet allows growing numbers of
us to find, connect, and interact. That was the technological foundation for
the original vision of cMOOCs (developed by George Siemens and Stephen Downes) as
a democratic learning experience, and connectivism as a learning theory for a
digital age (Siemens 2005).
Collectivism,
as discussed in a multi disciplinary context at Nesta
http://www.nesta.org.uk/event/roots-collective-intelligence, relies on the same
technological infrastructure. What is collectivism and how does it differ from
connectivism? We heard that the Internet allows for a new form of activism for
example, political. How do individuals participate? We were given the example
of number of Facebook likes as an indicator of collective intentionality, a
starting point. However, how to sustain collectivism i.e. participation, was a
recurrent question; how does an individual move on from the Facebook click to participate? Participating in connectivist learning
opportunities requires good infrastructure design and from the individual curiosity,
motivation to learn, to contribute, openness, digital literacy (a fair amount) and
I would argue that digital fluency and socio-emotional experience are the
elements that sustain on-going participation.
Intelligence.
Summing up the day Colin Blakemore focused on intelligence. His considered opinion
was that we hadn’t spent enough time talking about what we meant by intelligence.
He is a cognitive neuroscience and so unsurprisingly, he also spent some time
reflecting on the contributions made by the speakers who were cognitive
scientists. Those mainly cohered around what, when and how collective
intelligence occurs with when and what depending on group size (Robin Dunbar) how
on noise reduction, competence, persistence, reputation (Chris Frith). Others
concentrated on decision making as investigated in the laboratory; the role of
argumentation in decision-making and the quality of decision making. This was a
useful contribution as we had already heard that a binary response as the norm could
be the problem for collectivism in political contexts. Also, it has some
connection with learning science, where design for collaborative learning (i.e.
group work) requires a joint task and the opportunity to propose ideas, discuss
them with others, negotiate a solution to disparate ideas, and contribute to a
shared outcome.
Overall,
the multi-disciplinary approach was very successful. However, there was a sense
that the individual was objectified. The subjective was largely missing from
the day; purposefulness and socio-emotional experience. Therefore, it was
interesting to learn about the fall off in Wikipedia contributions since bots
were introduced. The explanation provided was that the bots were overly obedient
to protocol and rules - another example of the clunkiness of bot interaction as
described in a previous post and that the uniquely human nature of
socio-emotional experience is so often neglected
Surely,
design is important both for successful knowledge building and the
socio-emotional experience of collective action.
Siemens, G. (2005).
Connectivism: A learning theory for a digital age. International journal of
instructional technology and distance learning, 2(1), 3-38.
