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.

Spending a day with the Emotion Historians

This event https://emotionsblog.history.qmul.ac.uk/2015/09/tears-and-smiles-programme/ was an opportunity to exercise some transdisciplinary thinking. Could emotion historians contribute to the scholarship of online and distance education?  Specifically, the issue of disembodiment when interpersonal interaction takes place online.

Descriptors assigning purpose to an emotion (e.g. mocking, patronising) peppered the day and emotion as culturally situated performance for control, or to resist control, was a strong theme to emerge. Emotion as a rational act expressed for strategic purposes although, there was some debate on ‘the complex emotion repertoire’ of Margery Kempe (a medieval mystic). While those around Kempe  perceived her behaviour as irrational it could be explained as a manifestation of illness. Self-report by Kempe, that sensory stimuli could  trigger strong emotion, would fit with the experience of some with neural evidence of temporal lobe epilepsy. 

Emotion as experienced and in particular socio-emotional experience, those feelings and thoughts embedded in the dynamic of an interpersonal interaction, did not feature. Understanding social emotions is important for a socio-cultural pedagogy based on the idea that students will co-construct knowledge through discussion, through sharing ideas. The negotiation of ideas can generate strong emotions and when it takes place online it is through written communication and is mediated by a digital device i.e. the physical other is unseen. ‘The textual face of the medieval poet’ did provide an eloquent account of using literary device such as metaphor and the multimodal  (through styling for example, embolden) to express emotion and achieve emphasis through writing  (as is the case when people interact online).  But once again, this account was confined to the expression of emotion and one-way interaction i.e. poet to reader.

Art history provided considerable resource throughout the day, an observer interpretation of an expressed emotion that is then reinterpreted by the historian.    By contrast social emotions rely on language,  spoken or written, and their history would require a different resource. So, while I enjoyed an illuminating set of talks, thank you, I am still searching for the history of those emotions, experienced and expressed, that are embedded in the social.

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.

When myths about the lack of embodiment online get translated to conclusions about student science misconceptions

The Institute for effective evidence (IEE) http://www.york.ac.uk/iee

is an influential filter of educational research providing ‘rigorous evaluations of programmes and practices’. It is why it is disappointing that a recent report from them on this article (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.21169/abstract

in the Journal of Science Teaching by Wendt and Rockinson-Szapkiw was notable for its lack of evaluation. The research had looked at learning outcomes (with a focus on student misconceptions about science) when instruction in class is followed by group work. The interpersonal interactions required for group work took place either face-to-face (control condition) or were enabled through computer mediated conferencing (CMC)  (the experimental condition). The researchers claim that using CMC for the group work compromised the quality of the learning outcomes; that misconceptions about science tended to persist for students who used this form of communication. The purpose of this blog post is to explain why I think that the discussion and conclusion sections of that research article are misleading.

Wendt and Rockinson-Szapkiw make several references to the lack of embodied communication, behaviours such as pointing, facial expression, as a factor might have influenced the learning outcomes of the students who used CMC for group work. However, it has been demonstrated repeatedly in the research literature that when participants use CMC for group work they adapt by using on a wide range of digital fluency practices for example; metaphor, typography and by appropriating the functionality of the technology for example, threading.  Provided that participants are digitally fluent, they are provided with appropriate facilities, and opportunity for discourse online, the quality of interpersonal interaction for learning should not be compromised by the absence of non-verbal cues.

The key to the success of CMC lies in the design for learning (as is the case for all forms of learning) and it is not a simple case of directly substituting one mode of communication (using CMC) for another (face-to-face). For the research critiqued in this blog entry group work online was presented so that all factors (other than mode of communication) were controlled. It has meant that scholarship of design for this form of learning was ignored and by consequence, professional development for online teaching appears to be lacking. The design did not take into account the constraints (more time is required) of CMC, or capitalize on the affordances. A great advantage of asynchronous discussion is that students can be given the opportunity to reflect and a full textual record of the discussion is available for them to refer to while doing so. The textual record is also available to the teacher whose feedback should be enhanced by access to a full verbal account of the discussion of all the groups involved.  The design did not capitalize on the pedagogic affordances of CMC and when evaluated in this context the conclusion, that CMC is an inferior form of communication for group work, is misleading. The IEE report will amplify the reach of these misleading conclusions and is likely to influence, negatively, the uptake of this form of communication for group work. This is unfortunate given the well-documented advantages that group work online can offer including the potential of Learning Analytics data (which are collected with more granularity and more easily online) for enhancing our understanding of student learning behaviours.

Group work as voodoo teaching: Fair appraisal or not?

In Teacher Proof, by Tom Bennett, group work is characterised as voodoo teaching:  an approach to learning advocated by armchair educationists, based on theory and evidenced by proxy measurements, while from a teacher perspective there are a considerable number of disadvantages for example, inactivity (disguised), unequal participation and too much social chat.

Don’t these behaviours occur whatever pedagogy a teacher uses for imparting knowledge?

When the aim is to improve teaching and learning oppositional conversations are not helpful. If teachers could be convinced of the value of group work then the disadvantages might morph into barriers to be overcome. However, two misconceptions need to be dismissed at the outset. Firstly, learning is not about accumulating factual knowledge and being able to recall it; understanding the knowledge and making conceptual connections are the key indicators of knowledge acquisition. Secondly, the idea of group work is not that students teach each other. The value of inter student interaction lies in the process od developing their  learning of a topic through verbalising their current level of  understanding while communicating it to other members of the group, and by assessing and/or developing the ideas of their peers. With a 1/30 teacher/student ratio it would not be possible for the teacher to undertake this process with every student.  However, the teacher’s expert knowledge is not wasted, she/he can correct any misunderstandings that persist at group level. 

Hard to learn stuff is cognitively and emotionally painful so there is value in easing the emotional strain.  In the UK we have just witnessed the annual duel between the Oxford and Cambridge university boat crews. Although both Oxford teams won easily (for the first time female crews competed on the same course on the same day, albeit not at the same time) it hasn’t always been the case. The media spend a great deal of time describing the commitment and explaining the endurance required by rowers. In 2007 when the Oxford male crew were not doing so well research was carried out that involved comparing threshold for pain when elite rowers trained individually compared with training together in a virtual boat when the physical effort involved was done collectively [1].  Physical effort is known to stimulate endorphin (opioid) release and it has been shown in other studies that high opiate activity is specific to the areas of the brain associated with mood. Could this finding be translated to a group learning context? Does working on a task collectively provide a more conducive emotional climate for the learning? Is the mood of students enhanced in a way that helps them to tackle the painful business of learning? The unknown is whether collective action without physical exertion is sufficient to achieve a positive effect on mood. I propose that it is a sufficiently important area of inquiry for encouraging further research and encouraging teachers to persevere with group work.

Teachers’ experience of group work in practice is that it can lead to a loss of control and increased disruption. Provided that a school has the technological infrastructure to support forums group work could be done online i.e. mediated by a digital device and associated software. Students would know that the teacher could be monitoring their interactions without being physically co-present in either time or space and that a persistent record of their conversations is available. That should wrest some control back to the teacher.

1.         Cohen, E.E.A., et al., Rowers' high: behavioral synchrony is correlated with elevated pain thresholds. Biology letters, 2009. Evolutionary biology.