Collective+Intelligence

Collective Intelligence

Collective intelligence takes learners a step beyond the process of connectivism giving meaning to the saying, "We Are the Web." We are the web in the way individuals engage and participate as they create, contribute, collaborate, and share in the digital world. The virtual world keeps collective intelligence fresh and exciting with the new kinds of fast paced interactions and exchanges of information.

Collective intelligence refers to the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher order complexity and integration through collaboration and innovation. The key is to have a diverse group of thinkers come together with their own unique ideas and experiences in an effort to further study a situation or problem. As a result, the group might reveal new findings or perhaps reveal questions that need scrutinized further. It is more than shared knowledge, it is information known by all participating members of the digital community. Before going any further, take a moment to view the video below for a straight forward visual of how collective intelligence compares to a more traditional classroom scenario.

media type="youtube" key="NRk49dseRxQ" height="320" width="421" align="right" According to Henry Jenkins, a professor at the University of Southern California and author of //Collective Intelligence and Convergence Culture//, collective intelligence is a consumption process. He states how none of us can know everything; each of us knows something; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and combine our skills. (Jenkins, 2006)

Pierre Levy, a collective intelligence theorist, believes the collective knowledge exchanged and owned by individuals in cyber world will have substantial contribution to society now and years to come.

Listed below are key identifiers of what makes collective intelligence.
 * Intelligence of an aggregate community versus the individual; social core versus individual
 * Information sharing by individuals
 * Low cost creation of content by users
 * Increased access to user's knowledge
 * Possible incentives for sharing such as social recognition or monetary reward

In today's current educational system, students are asked to learn the same information/concepts only to be evaluated or tested on it after an extended period of time. In an article published by  Michelle Aubrecht, in the Ohio State University Digital Union publication, she writes of a literary homework assignment from a collective intelligence perspective. "In a collective intelligence scenario, students would take a part in creating the understanding of a topic. For example, if students were studying Moby Dick, they might focus on a character, a topic, or a place and then each student would share that knowledge and perhaps even generate the knowledge together. Students from other schools could collaborate. He explained that if one was looking at the route the ship took in Moby Dick, people who live along that route could share their knowledge about the area, whether or not whaling was still practiced, etc. In fact, they have developed a teacher’s guide to Moby Dick in order to model how these skills can be integrated into the curriculum. See the website for more information: @http://newmedialiteracies.org/educators/ "

In the end, collective intelligence is a learning skill that is a must for students of the 21st century. Students need to be equipped to fully participate in an interconnected world meaning they must have the ability to pool knowledge and work together towards a common goal.

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