Week 2, Option #2

In my second update, I would like to reflect diverse aspects of collective intelligence, which I personally find important to mention, and the connection between collaborative learning and collective intelligence.

Social cognitivism highlights the role of social interaction in learning. Under the umbrella of social cognitivism, remarkable terms such as social mind, distributed cognition, collective intelligence overlap in some aspects. Collective intelligence reflects a group’s capacity or capability to perform tasks or solve problems. In a group, or a team or a community, whichever we name it, members do not have to be friends, but they produce a common intelligence, which gives the opportunity to predict a group’s future performance.

Collective intelligence is also named “Wisdom of the crowd”. It can give feedback, comments, find an innovation, discusses about a problem. For example, collective intelligence can collaboratively work on an online platform to find solutions against climate change (Visit the web site https://www.climatecolab.org/). Collective intelligence encompasses knowledge sharing and workload distribution. (Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pb-brVzwjw) Workload distribution refers to assigning tasks accurately, at this point, individual’s abilities and knowledge need to be taken into consideration.

Can collective intelligence be measured through IQ-Tests? Absolutely not. Collective intelligence (CQ) is different from the individual’s intelligence (IQ). CQ is the ability of a group to achieve something together. A group with a higher CQ may work in a flow and produce much more satisfying outcomes. But CQ and its potential can be observed through surveys. However, in the future, collective intelligence will also be supported and enriched with artificial intelligence, so that groups will get much smarter and their connectivity will increase. Maybe in few decades, artificial intelligences will be among our group members, who will suggest, innovate or share knowledge.

Do groups, communities or teams always do more or better, when they combine all what they have? From the view of psychology, there are numerous studies that show negative possibilities of collaborative working in groups, which are directly related to collective intelligence. At this point, I would like to explain two terms: social loafing and group thinking. What social loafing is that when a group gets together, the members of the group may tend to show less performance than his/her performance on his own. And as the group get larger, performance of each individual will decrease, but surprisingly, the performance of each individual will not be 0 due to the fear of being criticized or isolated from the group. The second term, group thinking, is that thoughts of a leader can be exaggerated by the members in order to be praised by the leader and the leader will exaggerate thoughts of the members to prove that he/she is the leader. This vicious circle were the reasons of unlogic catastrophic actions and wars in the history.

From the view of education, educators apply a wide range of techniques to get the most of collective intelligence in the classrooms. Those techniques unify under the term “collaborative learning”. Collaborative learning is an approach that relies on the students’ interaction with each other in groups to learn or to produce something knew.

Collaborative learning is not restricted to a specific age group, it can be applied to any age group. To design and implement a great number of varieties of techniques in collaborative learning (also named cooperative learning), we must follow basically a three-step process: “Introducing the task, providing students with enough time, debrief. For larger project groups, the following steps will help:

• Providing opportunities for students to develop group cohesion,
• Giving students time to create a plan, deadline and divide up responsibilities,
• Having students establish ground rules,
• Assigning roles to members of each group,
• Allowing students to rate each other’s quality. But the teacher will weigh heavily on student’s final grade,
• Checking groups intermittently and encouraging them to handle their own issues before asking for teacher’s assistance.” (Cited from https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning)

In teacher-centered classrooms, students learn individually and their interaction with peers and the teacher is restricted. However, collaborative learning offers a classroom structure, in which student can socially engage in the lesson. The teacher’s role shifts to a moderator or mentor. The teacher can also struct collaborative group activities in a competitive way. But learning must still overweigh. Peers discuss with each other, share knowledge, resolve misunderstandings, cover their knowledge gaps, give feedback, evaluate or produce collaboratively. What peers do in collaborative teaching, resembles that of in collective intelligence.

Some strategies to encourage cooperative learning are: think-pair, share, jigsaw, STAD (Student-Teams Achievement Divisions), project-based learning (Cited from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationalpsychology/chapter/cooperative-learning/). Also, computer-supported collaborative learning includes computers as tools of social learning. Collaborative learning is proven to be effective, but its effectivity varies upon the group’s strategy, their individual and collaborative skills. Collaborative learning environments ensure social-emotional competencies such as development of relationship skills (team work, social engagement, organization skill) self-management (organizational skill), decision-making, self- and social-awareness. It develops higher-level thinking, ability to express himself clearly and better, and it prepares the student for the real life social and employment situations.

John Dewey, the father of American educational philosophy, named two sides of educational process in his article My Pedagogic Creed published in 1897: “… I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. … I believe that this educational process has two sides - one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following.” (Cited from http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm) In his article, he stated the relevance of social engagement of the students in schools.

Collaborative learning is infusion of social interaction in the classroom. Test results, responds to teachers’ questions are not the sole indicators of success. The pattern of collaborative learning is much more realistic and it plays a role as an exercise to build collective intelligence.

References:

Dewey, John. (1897). My Pedagogic Creed: Article One What Education Is. School Journal, 54, 77-80. Retrieved from: http://dewey.pragmatism.org/creed.htm

Social Cognitivism. Learning, Knowledge and Human Development, Retrieved from https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-knowledge-human-development/lecture/W0VRK/social-cognitivism

Collaborative Learning, Cornell University Center for Teaching Innovation, Retrieved from https://teaching.cornell.edu/teaching-resources/engaging-students/collaborative-learning

Collective Intelligence, The Oxford Review, Retrieved from https://www.oxford-review.com/oxford-review-encyclopaedia-terms/collective-intelligence/

Superminds, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, Retrieved from https://cci.mit.edu/superminds/

Collaborative Learning, Education Endowment Foundation, Retrieved from https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/teaching-learning-toolkit/collaborative-learning/

Collaborative Learning, The University of Sydney School of Education and Social Work, Retrieved from https://sydney.edu.au/education_social_work/learning_teaching/ict/theory/collaborative_learning.shtml

Cooperative Learning, Module 9 Facilitating Complex Thinking, Retrieved from https://courses.lumenlearning.com/educationalpsychology/chapter/cooperative-learning/

Lodewijckx, Ilona. What is the difference between artificial and collective intelligence?, Machine vs. Human?, Retrieved from https://www.citizenlab.co/blog/civic-engagement/what-is-the-difference-between-artificial-and-collective-intelligence/

Sutherland, Stuart. Irrationality: The Enemy Within. Pinter & Martin Ltd, 21st Anniversary Edition, 2013. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Irrationality-enemy-within-Stuart-Sutherland-ebook/dp/B00EEDA7QQ

Dobelli, Rolf. The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions. Sceptre; 43643rd Edition, 1994. Retrieved from: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Thinking-Clearly-Decisions-Dobelli/dp/B00CF6CQ8G/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

CASEL, Core SEL Competencies, Retrieved from https://casel.org/core-competencies/

Climate CoLAB. Work with people from all over the world to create proposals for how to reach global climate change goals, Retrieved from https://www.climatecolab.org/

Crowdoscope. What is Collective Intelligence? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Pb-brVzwjw