Students are on-line more and more rather than in lecture halls, particularly those who have grown up with the Internet. They chat, use Wikis, Facebook, Skype or Flickr and Blogs to communicate with each other. They choose to trust sites that have similar information elsewhere and search engines are their first choice for finding relevant information. They have relationships on-line and are constantly in touch with their friends via Twitter. (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2004, Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005)
”Constantly connected to information and each other, students don't just consume information. They create-and re-create-it. With a do-it-yourself, open source approach to material, students often take existing materials, add their own touches, and republish. Bypassing traditional authority channels, self-publishing-in print, image, video, or audio-is common. Access and exchange of information is nearly instantaneous.” (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2004)
In Collective Intelligence (1998), Pierre Lévy writes about the theory of the collective intelligence where the net is a network of knowledge and that the Internet has created an alternative way of living with free knowledge formed in cyberspace. He defines collective intelligence as ”a form of universally distributed intelligence, constantly enhanced, co-ordinated in real time, and resulting in the effective mobilisation of skills” (Levy, 1998, p. 13). As most people become wired, the creation of a collective intelligence is constantly created and re-created. Lévy states that his ”hypothesis is that it is both possible and desirable to construct technical, social, and semiotic means that will effectively incarnate and materialise collective intelligence” (ibid, p. 105). Tim O'Reilly, the man who popularised the term web 2.0, argued that in the new web 2.0 the users are the ones who add value to the Internet. Most web 2.0 applications are social and mobile in nature; there is a definite shift from expert-driven content to user-driven, participatory-content production. (O'Reilly, 2005) Software such as Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopaedia where anyone can add, change and start new entries, is a collaborative effort on a massive scale. As content creation without expert approval, this is truly a huge success and Wikipedia is now students' first choice of reference (Lorenzo, Oblinger and Dziuban, 2007, Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005) . Other sites such as del.icio.us and Flickr use a concept called "folksonomy", which is a collaborative categorization of sites, where the users decide on which keywords they want to associate with a particular site. They are also called tags. Tagging allows for multiple, overlapping associations with each person tagging that particular site. Users get suggestions on how others have tagged that site and by searching on tags, users can see what other users have bookmarked. This is a rather less rigid categorisation decided by the user and other users, rather than such search engines as Yahoo which is categorised for the user. (O'Reilly, 2005)
Lévy argues that an ‘attempt to make human groups as conscious as possible of what they are doing together and provide them with practical means of coordination’ (Lévy, 1998, p. 177) will, in a virtual space with collective and smart formations, prosper. He goes on to say that this ”universally distributed intelligence’ will enhance and fuse the collective knowledge, skills, and imagination in all its diversity. By sharing and exchanging knowledge a new form of intelligence is created, the collective intelligence.
From a learning perspective it is interesting to investigate the implications for teaching, learning and assessing that learning, specifically in a university setting. It is important that we conceptualize and investigate the implications for higher education of these new web 2.0 environments in order to avoid the solutions to our learning needs being built on obsolete learning theories, which will not match the problems of understanding new ways in which learning takes place in the web 2.0 environment. Let’s not make the same mistakes over and over again! Time has come for a real change in the way we learn together!
Levy, P. (1998). Collective Intelligence. Cambridge:Perseus Books.
Lorenzo, Oblinger, and Dziuban. (2004). Technology and the way information is created, used, and disseminated have changed, as has the definition of "net savvy" – http://www.educause.edu/eq/archives
Oblinger, D. and Oblinger J. (2005). Educating the Net Generation. Educause http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen
O'Reilly, Tim (2005) What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Retrieved 2009-07-07 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html
Wow, another thought provoking post! This overlaps somewhat with my thesis on learning ecologies and the connections (collective intelligence?) we create. I wonder how we prove (if we need to prove at all) the existence of this ability to connect and create more than we could alone? Do we simply base it on people's experience? Through qualitative measures like phenomenography or do we need something more quantitative and measurable?
SvaraRadera