I'm having a little trouble accepting the term "Collective Intelligence" as applied to wiki's being examples of them. It's not altogether clear to me whether the term is being applied to the process or the product. Groups and teams working together may have a collective intelligence and what they produce is a result of that collective intelligence. Therefore, wiki's such as wikipedia are examples of products of collective intelligence, not intelligences in themselves.
Similarly with the 'voting' system used by Google, it seems to me that the resulting ranks are products not processes and as such are examples of 'the wisdom of crowds' but are not actually wisdom itself. One could argue that the construct of the voting system negates the collective intelligence of it's users as it's structure is rigid - one vote from a popular website inflates the importance of a secondary site and there is no evaluation process to determine whether the 'vote' was worthwhile or not.
So, thinking about all this in relation to collective intelligences in education.....as collaborative tools they have enormous potential and fit in beautifully with social constructivist theories of learning. The example Mark showed us in class where the students essentially built up a textbook was amazing. On a small scale, the collective intelligence of a group of students to build a class wiki has many of the same social constructivist advantages as a group of students doing any group piece of work, plus the advantages associated with using ICT in the classroom - for example, students always seem very motivated and engaged by computer work. It also has some of the same disadvantages - domination by the strongest member, access to computers, both at school and in the home. One of the biggest advantages and disadvantages is the skill of the teacher using it as a tool, the type of task set up, the time allocated, the way the groups are organised etc.
On a larger scale, it allows for global participation - a massive extension of 'pen pals' and of course the use of collective intelligence products such as wikipedia are already widely used as a starting point for many education projects.
Joanne, I am fascinated with the google 'voting' system and can see how it appears to be more of a popularity contest than a system of relevant resources. At the same time, links are created by users forming their own connections between different websites and what they think are the most important sites. So technically, i think this is collective intelligence as users are still active in the process of selecting information and creating links. The problem is though if we do a simple google search, we still find a lot of the same reiterated information.
ReplyDeleteYes, Lexie, I think you're right - the voting system is a form of collective intelligence, but I think it is hampered by it's construction, maybe more 'like' buttons when a search is successful (or 'not like' buttons when their not) may make it more 'intelligent'....
ReplyDeleteYou've made some very insightful comments about the nature of collective intelligence. As we mentioned in class, there are in fact two distinct types: the 'wisdom of crowds' where individual decisions are simply aggregated, so that collective intelligence is indeed more of a product than a process; and then there's the deliberative model you get in Wikipedia, where people are actively building their intelligence by adding, modifying, questioning and critiquing. I think in the latter case you could make an argument that collective intelligence is involved in both the process and the product.
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