Work from Home, Zoom Calls, Communities, one of the greatest positive outcomes of Lockdown has been collaborative learning. Well, this prevailed in the past but now technology has been to put much greater use with comparable work efficiencies.

Collective Intelligence

Learning through sharing and building is very constructive; board room meetings committees are examples of Collaborative learning, With advent of assistive collaborate tools, this approach to collective work has so much more reliable, authentic faster, whole encompassing.

It is not just your work; even for the greatest scientists. With technology enabled peer to peer learning we are all stepping into collective inherited intelligence. Just that it is now so much more possible! Online working and e-ecology has opened up endless possibilities of receiving and sharing feedback while learning and managing projects, the end result is far better than individual intelligence. They say a feedback from crowd is as good as from expert. It is quite amazing that with so many friendly platforms emerging, these are now happening.

You source information, take reviews. The digital environment allows you to take or select feedback and give feedback and share knowledge. It is just not individual thinking and intelligence but far more enhanced and enriched process of learning and product. We are now embracing the mode of Collaborative learning.

Barbara Leigh Smith and Jean T. MacGregor in their book ‘What is collaborative learning? define Collaborative learning” as follows- “by definition is an umbrella term for a variety of educational approaches involving joint intellectual effort by students, or students and teachers together. Usually, students are working in groups of two or more, mutually searching for understanding, solutions, or meanings, or creating a product."

Colloborative Learning is Active Learning.

I think technology has brought us together as one world with collaborative approach. Be it sharing drug efficiencies for COVID or taking opinions about lock down administration. Countries are sharing vital information and collaborating in this fight against COVID

Tackling COVID colloboratively

Peer to peer learning especially at undergraduates level cannot be discounted. Situational cognition a psychological explanation of learning through situations, interactions relationships and context has shown evidence of far enriching learning. These would have been a very remote possibility. But now it is possible instantaneous and real time. However, I do see a flip side, like the pace at which each works may not be same. Some individuals work better independently, some don’t like feedback, and some are not comfortable sharing. Yet in this medium, thanks to the lack of need for real time interaction it could actually benefit all sort of people

FlipGrid - an example of Colloborative Social learning

Aspects like reviews on products in Amazon is an outcome of collective intelligence, Blogs, Wikipedia are all products of collective intelligence which is open to general public views. ‘Twitter’ is a continual view sharer platform and a great source of collective intelligence, all of which has been enabled through digital environment’

Use of digital technology for collaborative learning is happening at schools. I am a teacher and I am now trying to apply Flip grid platforms to have a social collaborative learning system where feedback between teacher and students as well a peer to peer is done through videos and audios. These platforms allow individual pace and asynchronous learn and live social interaction too. Research says that these platforms lead to intrinsic motivations to do better amongst individuals where peer review is valued. These are highly possible in e-learning environments.

I will leave you with a very interesting talk by Michael Silverman, MD of Silverman Research and Founder of Crowdoscope, as answers questions about Collective Intelligence on how companies are working on crowdsourcing for ideas and working on collaborative learning tools.

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence explores how people and computers can be connected so that – collectively – they act more intelligently than any person, group, or computer has ever done before.

Let us keep going and work towards the best outcomes; it is all possible.

Sources, Citing and Credits:

• https://www.evidenceforlearning.org.au/the-toolkits/the-teaching-and-learning-toolkit/australasian-research-summaries/collaborative-learning/
• Pierre Dillenbourg. What do you mean by collaborative learning?. P. Dillenbourg. Collaborative-learning: Cognitive and Computational Approaches., Oxford: Elsevier, pp.1-19, 1999. hal-00190240
• https://cci.mit.edu/about/
• https://www.getcleartouch.com/what-are-the-best-online-collaboration-tools-for-students/
• What Is CollaborativeLearning?" in Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, by AnneGoodsell, Michelle Maher, Vincent Tinto, Barbara Leigh Smith and Jean MacGregor. It waspublished In 1992 by the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, andAssessment at Pennsylvania State Universit
• https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/view-working-from-home-heralds-a-more-efficient-productive-and-cost-effective-way-of-post-lockdown-working/articleshow/75072478.cms?from=mdr
• Picture on Collective intelligence- Courtesy- IPTC Photo Metadata.
• Picture on Collaborative learning- Courtesy: eZtalk webinar
• https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2020/04/24/default-calendar/global-collaboration-to-accelerate-new-covid-19-tools