A multi-disciplinary conversation about Collective intelligence – reflection on some missing elements

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.

What would be the point of Education if computers replace teachers?

Turing’s work on developing early versions of computers led to the imitation game as a way of investigating whether computers can think? The imitation game (Turing test) involves a participant in one room, a human confederate (someone whose behavior is under the direction of the experimenter) in another room and a computer terminal containing a program that simulates intelligence also in another room. The task for the participant is to decide which is human. In 1951 Turing predicted that by 2000 the average person, naïve to the fact that an interaction partner was a computer program, would assume humanness 70% of the time. Undoubtedly these ideas inspired the foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its subsequent evolution is brilliantly summarized on the BBC’s iWonder website http://www.bbc.co.uk/timelines/zq376fr.  In July 2015 an article on research that uses an echoborg (a human who acts as the mouthpiece for an artificial intelligence system) for the Turing test was featured on the BBC Futures website http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150717-the-people-possessed-by-computers and for one week in September 2015  AI was a featured topic on the BBC reflecting a contemporary fascination with sharing our personal and working spaces with intelligent agents

However, the penetration of AI into Education (AIED) was not covered. AI techniques mean that artificial agents could replace teachers. An Intelligent tutor (IT), based on adaptive AI systems, means that learning contexts can be personalized for a student. The system (IT) uses a teacher-pupil model to adjust the learning task to an appropriate level and a task model to provide appropriate feedback to the student. Pedagogically sound opportunities to learn can be extended in both reach and frequency. A teacherbot has been used to answer student questions on a massive open online course (a MOOC). Teaching presence on MOOCs is sparse so that students who enroll on a MOOC need not incur a financial cost. Therefore, researchers are investigating ways in which the teacher can be assisted, or replaced by, a bot. https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/ask-teacherbot-are-robots-the-answer/2020326.article. Other examples of AI contributions include the ECHOES project that targets atypical development issues by using virtual agents to engage with children on the autism spectrum in order to improve their communication skills. http://echoes2.org/?q=node/2.

Versions of the headline ‘Intelligent agents replace teachers’ are increasingly common. ‘What if’ this transpires? with teachers replaced by AI products (robots, bots, virtual agents). What questions does it raise for Education? For example, what would it mean for a socio-cultural pedagogy that AI products are linguistically challenged and on current appraisal likely to remain so? Furthermore, the interdependence of emotion and cognition when learning is increasingly recognised, with empathy a foundational element of successful interpersonal interaction.  There is evidence from Neuroscience that both language and empathy are uniquely human capacities with dedicated brain structures and neural pathways. For a socio-cultural perspective meanings arise through social interaction and enable us to pursue personal goals and to think beyond the actual. It is social interaction that enables creativity. Therefore, it is significant that a recent report from Nesta concluded that ‘creative occupations are more future-proof to technologies like machine learning and mobile robotics’ http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/creativity-vs-robots.

That the ability to transform knowledge and create history through social interaction is a uniquely human ability can be supported by evidence from Neuroscience. However, according to Kevin Warwick http://www.kevinwarwick.com, by comparison with computers, our human ability to communicate information is slow, limited in reach, and error prone and our reliance on language may become ‘excess baggage’. Educational Neuroscience, a multidisciplinary area that assesses the potential of Neuroscience for informing Education, could usefully contribute to the debate.

Teacherbot, useful tool or just another example of the allure of innovation

When I read the following article

Teacherbot: interventions in automated teaching by Sian Bayne. Teaching in Higher Education. Published online 16 Apr 2015. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/13562517.2015.1020783

I noted with interest that students had dropped the descriptor ‘teacher’ from the bot developed for the E-learning and digital cultures MOOC (University of Edinburgh).  Perhaps like me students could not discern any teacherly function of botty (the name that students adopted for teacherbot) that could not be otherwise achieved by providing a repository of curated resources and a frequently answered questions (FAQ) list.

Undoubtedly the agent that follows the MOOC hashtag (#edcmooc) and harvests student questions and comments is useful, but what did botty achieve? The behaviour of teacherbot (a rule based agent developed by the teachers to automate tweet responses) is problematic for me. Instead of making queries about the course (for example, about assessment procedure) available to all students in their collated form i.e. as a list of FAQs, botty responds to each student individually through twitter. Furthermore, although 60% of the enrolled students are postgraduates (as is the case for many MOOCs) with a professional interest in digital education botty pushes individual resources to individual students. Surely, for this demographic it is access to a curated resource repository that is valuable. 

Teacherbot is positioned as a research initiative that seeks new ways of understanding and developing automated teaching through adopting a critical posthumanist perspective.  While arguing for a critical posthumanist approach Bayne reviewed a previous initiative for automating teaching that was funded by the ESRC http://www.tel.ac.uk highlighting efficiency and productivity as the dominant discourse for that program. However, that section of the Bayne article mystified me. A closer look at the title of one of the targeted articles[1] offers a very different interpretation; higher quality and more effective learning are the outcomes that were envisioned. Nevertheless, Bayne develops a narrative that characterises the current conversation about automated teaching as dispute, with efficiency gains and teacher resistance oppositional views that need to be resolved. By response teacherbot is positioned as  ‘an assemblage of the human and non-human’ unhindered by humanistic assumption and efficiency agendas and thereby provides a new way of revisiting teacher automation.

Does teacherbot make a research contribution? The article is eloquently written and intriguing to read. However, the outcomes are mainly descriptive and anecdotal. As a teacher (and on occasion student) continuously and actively involved in online teaching and learning for more than two decades I have never considered the automation of teaching to be a threat.  Indeed, I can envisage how automation (for example, the collection and collation of learning analytics (LA) data) has promise and I would not object to it being considered as co-teaching provided that the automated information and myself were appropriately assembled so that LA information is monitored throughout.  However, I cannot discern any evidence to suggest that botty and the MOOC teaching team are entangled in a way that merits a claim of co-teaching or that this initiative has informed the scholarship of online teaching in any useful way. Furthermore,  the evidence presents botty as not very accomplished when it comes to recognising and responding to the socio-emotional needs of students – perhaps because it is not human.

1.         Laurillard, D., Productivity: Achieving higher quality and more effective learning in affrodable and acceptable ways. 2011.

http://www.tlrp.org/docs/ProdBeta.pdf.

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Virtual Social Interaction - does it mean Mind Change?

As someone who has been studying Virtual Social Interaction for the last 10 years I intend to read Susan Greenfield latest book Mind Change – How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Its publication has attracted a great deal of media attention and today Susan Greenfield was the invited speaker at the Royal Society of Arts, UK, the audio recording of this event is here.

The chair of the event, Jonathan Rowson, who leads the Social Brain project at the RSA, asked Greenfield about her vision when writing the book.  By response she listed her three personal aspirations for 'folks' of the future; a strong sense of identity, fulfillment and that they would be useful to society, with all three achieved through creativity. The interpretation that some have made is that Greenfield is suggesting that the Internet is compromising creativity and therefore  those aspirations.

For example, one of the issues she raised at the RSA event is the effect that the Internet is having on interpersonal communication skills.  In an interview for Hard Talk here

with Stephen Sakur she also addressed this issue, and  in more detail. I quote

(In everyday life) 'we’re trying to process what we’re each saying. We’re judging from voice tone, from body language, what the person is feeling. On the screen, those cues are not available to you. …………..So if you are constantly rehearsing a form of communication where you don’t practice eye contact, body language, voice tone interpretation it seems not unreasonable to say you’re not going to be so good at those things’.

 Susan Greenfield is not the first to raise concerns on this issue; the question of whether remote interpersonal communication mediated by a computer compromises the quality of interpersonal interaction has been debated for over 3 decades.   However, her academic discipline, neuroscience, has led her to question the impact on the brain, as well as socially.  

It is why her book is a must read for me since I am researching from both these perspectives.  I am investigating interpersonal interaction in  online forums when writing is the mode of communication, and monitoring the process neurally.    Being able to interact remotely has the potential to benefit distance education profoundly and is why I have been beavering away at trying to understand more about the student experience of this form of interaction.  Given the growing popularity of MOOCs  (Massive Open Online Courses) for example, as offered by Futurelearn,  https://www.futurelearn.com/ it is likely to remain a  topic for debate (MOOCs rely on text based forums for social interaction)as the answer is important.  As is evidence, and that is what I am hoping to provide. Evidence, or more specifically the lack of it, is an area where Susan Greenfield is often challenged see Professor Dorothy Bishop’s comments here http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/ and Ben Goldacre’s here .

I agree with Greenfield that it is important to raise questions about the effect that the Internet is having on the brain, and on our culture. I also agree with Bishop and Goldacre, evidence that is open to review by peers should be what provides the answers.  Hopefully we can address some relevant questions, and and answers,  at an upcoming event  that we are starting to plan between the Technologies  SIG and the Neuroscience & Education SIG at BERA  http://www.bera.ac.uk/ sometime during  Spring of 2015. 

Experience in online networks- some massive

For one week in 2012 the emotional content of Newsfeeds from 689,003 Facebook users was manipulated; by reducing the number of positive expressions, or the number negative expressions. The findings were reported in PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

The publication resulted in a huge outcry about the ethics of Facebook manipulating Newsfeeds in this way - see  here  and here  and comments posted directly to PNAS, as to whether Facebook users actually  give  'informed' consent for this kind of experiment and what the consequences for individuals could be. It is a debate worth having. However it seems that it was at the expense of a critical look at the authors ( A.D. Kramer, J.E. Guillory, and J.T. Hancock) claim about 'emotional contagion on a massive scale'.  From the perspective of  someone interested in social learning at a distance using computer mediated communication the article missed some key points about the emotional experience of  'written' interpersonal interaction .  So I wrote a letter to PNAS but it will not be published (yes it was rejected).  Neverthess here it is.

The outcome of the manipulation was as follows;  a reduction of positive expressions produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts with the opposite pattern occurring when negative expressions were manipulated. The authors claim that these findings show that emotional contagion can be elicited in the absence of nonverbal cues and that given the link between emotion and well being the finding could be important for public health. There are implications in another domain, education, specifically for social learning online.  In higher education an increasing number of universities and MOOC platforms are providing facilities for students to communicate with each other remotely using social media, e.g. text based forums.  The opportunity for students to  ‘learn by discussion’, to collaborate with each other on a shared task, ‘learning by collaboration’, are extremely effective ways of achieving depth of understanding (3) and also equip students for the teamwork skills required by modern organizations. However, the emotional valence of the experience is an important factor.  Reports that social interaction online is less satisfactory and experientially ‘uncanny’ (1,4) is why the findings of (2) are relevant.  Interpersonal interaction defines social learning however (2) claim that for their study contagion and social interaction are disentangled.

Two constructs are challenged: the conceptualization of emotional contagion and mimicry, assumptions about ‘direct interaction’. A taxonomy, on which to base the definitional nuance of the emotional experience that results when others share one’s emotional experience: mimicry, contagion, personal distress, affective empathy, cognition empathy, sympathy, and the criteria that distinguish each, has been formulated (5). Mimicry and emotional contagion are both characterized by affective behavior while emotional contagion involves affective experience and isomorphism. Although affective behavior was elicited the authors (based on the cross-emotional encouragement effect) concluded that mimicry, as an explanation, was not sufficient. However claiming contagion is not substantiated; they do not have any data to confirm that affective experience and affective isomorphy occurred.

That ‘emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction’ is the significance claim. However, conceptually ‘direct interaction’ is underdeveloped.  ‘Direct interaction’, as when individuals meet face-to-face, involves two shared aspects, time frame and place. Asynchronous interaction means conversational turns may be disrupted and response is usually delayed, while interacting in an online space means that multisensory information is not available and real time context is not shared. The specification of all these factors is crucial when evaluating emotion communicated online through writing.  For Facebook, a written communication from ‘friends’ will sometimes results in  ‘friends’ moderating their responses (the data that the authors collected).  That is the essence of human communication: the use of written language and metacognition. The usefulness of the study lies in the foregrounding the power of language. However, the value of this approach, theoretical and practical, will depend on substantial integration with research in two fields, emotion and computer mediated communication.

(1) BAYNE, S. (2008) Uncanny spaces for higher education: Teaching and learning in virtual worlds. ALT-J  Research in Learning Technology, 16, 197-205.

(2) KRAMER, A. D. I., GUILLORY, J. E. & HANCOCK, J. T. (2014) Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 111, 8788-8790.

(3) LAURILLARD, D. (2012) Teaching as a design science. Building pedagogical patterns for learning and technology., New York, London, Routledge.

(4) ROBINSON, K. (2013) The interrelationship of emotion and cognition when students undertake collaborative group work online: An interdiscplinary approach. Computers & Education, 62, 298-307.

(5) WALTER, H. (2011) Social Cognitive Neuroscience of Empathy: Concepts, Circuits and Genes. Emotion Review, 4, 9-23.