Hróbjartur Árnason: University of Iceland: Keynote held on June 3. 2021 at the FLUID & IDA conference: Collective Intelligence – When Learning becomes Collective: https://www.fluid.dk/ci/

1. Learning, Creativity and
Collective Intelligence
Hróbjartur Árnason
University of Iceland
hrobjartur@hi.is
FLUID / IDA Conference 3. June 2021

2. Global Challenges

3. Global Challenges

4. Global Challenges
• Artificial Intellegence
• Bio-tech
• Climate change
Pandemics

5. •Wicked problems
•Complexity
•Challenges that can only be addressed
collectively
The future we and our students face includes:

6. … and we are trying to create
relevant learning paths for our
students!

7. The character of adult education
Classical Adult Education Credo
• Practical, Useful, Applicable
• Train for self directed learning
• Foster critical thinking
Today we need “21st Century Skills”
• Regularly redefined
But:
• Learning how to learn…
• on the job
• with groups
• collaboratively

8. 3 perspectives
• Learning
• Creativity
• Collective
Intelligence
Learning &
Teaching

9. 1. Learning
The study of the "process that in
living organisms leads to
permanent capacity change and
which is not solely due to
biological maturation or ageing.”
(Knud Illeris, 2016, How we learn. P. 3)

10. • How do people learn?
• How can we support learning?
• Can learning be improved?
• Can people get better at learning?
• What role does a teacher have in someone else’s learning?

11. One persistent problem
• The general discourse on learning [still] seems
dominated by the vocabulary of a
“transmission-model”:
• Where learning is about accumulating
information and teaching about distributing it
• Discourse influences practice
• Probably too many learning events are
organized with the “transmission-model”!
• Do not take into account current knowledge
about learning or realities of modern adult life
• Often makes learners passive
• Is this your experience too?
• We are thus probably cheating our learners
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is 11

12. Modern theories on the learning (that
matters in our discussion) depict learning as
something learners DO, not something that
happens to them.
They even use words that can be
synonymous with creating:
“Build, Construct, Interprete…”
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 12
The thing is...

13. Learning is something learners do
Arguments
• From theory
• Learning is an active process
• From research and experience
1. Learning motivation: “Why do people learn?”
"Adults learn in order to deal with present needs“
• E.g. Malcolm Knowles, Andragogy and many others
2. Adult learning is often connected to work and finding solutions to work
problems where the solutions are not known, Through learning people
create new solutions (c.f. Expansive learning: Y. Engeström)
3. Learning, the result of adult’s creative engagement with ideas
• E.g. each learner takes different learnings from the same event
4. Adult Learners intuitively USE learning events for creative purposes:
• E.g. dealing with change and crisis (Research on participation)
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 13

14. Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 14

15. Three examples
of learning
theories
Yrjö Engeström:
Expansive Learning
Etienne Wenger:
Communities of practice
Jack Mezirow:
Transformative learning
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 15

16. Learning – a few definitions
• Learning is a process of construing and appropriating a new
or revised interpretation of the meaning of an experience as
a guide to awareness, feeling, and action. (Mezirow, 1991)
• The concept of community of practice … is a perspective
that locates learning, not in the head or outside it, but in the
relationship between the person and the world, … the social
and the individual constitute each other…. Meaningful
learning in social contexts requires both participation and
reification to be in interplay. (Wenger 2010)
• [E]xpansive learning is a historically new type of learning
which emerges as practitioners struggle through develop-
mental transformations in their activity systems, moving
across collective zones of proximal development. (Engeström, 1999)
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 16

17. 2. Creativity
Study of human ingenuity:
How do humans solve problems,
generate new and useful ideas
and artefacts?

18. • How do people create?
• Can people learn to create?
• How can people be more creative?
• What can we know about the creative process?
• What happens when groups are creative?

19. Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 19
Wave 1 Creative individuals

20. Wave 2: Creative process
Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 20

21. Hróbjartur Árnason | hrobjartur@hi.is | 2021 21
Wave 3: Group creativity

22. Research into creativity in groups
Groups create best when:
Group composition
• Diverse group of participants
• Clear common goals
• Suitably different / alike
Very different – interferes with work
• Dependence ← → Independence
• Freedom ← → Constraints
Process
• Organized ← → Unorganized
• Create common aim
• Brainstorm (needs improving)
• Facilitated
• Activate all
Create a learning community
Group composition
• Similar evidence on diversity in the classroom
(e.g. Terenzini et al., 2011)
• Plan for diverse groups
• Make every one feel welcome
• Plan for a good mix of control & freedom
• Respect boundaries: Individual vs,. Group
Process
• Good mix – organisation and chaos
• Facilitated process
• Help group find common goals
• Cooperation ← → Competition
22
Based mainly on Sawyer, 2012 but others too
Sawyer, K. (2012). Extending Sociocultural Theory to Group Creativity. Vocations and
Learning, 5(1), 59–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-011-9066-5

23. • …intriguing point of view on
human endeavors from the point
of view of how people in groups -
large and small – often can reach
better or smarter results together
than alone
3. Collective Intelligence
Photo by Rob Curran on Unsplash

24. • Can groups be intelligent?
• How are groups intelligent?
• Can groups be MORE intelligent?
• How can we make groups more intelligent?
• What can IT do to support Collective Intelligence?

25. Inspired by intelligent self organized behaviour
of other creatures
• Bacteria (Create different collective structures in
different environments)
• Ants & Bees (Build colonies, Move colonies etc)
• Swarms of birds and fish (Safety in numbers)
About People in groups
• Groups
• Families
• Companies
• Societies
About “Superminds” (T.W. Malone, 2018)
• Hierarchies
• Democracies
• Markets
• Communities
• Ecosystems
The study of Collective intelligence is…
…a new and emerging field of study
Results from:
• Social psychology
• Psychology of intelligence
• Organisational behaviour
• Political science
• Learning Sciences
• etc
T.W. Malone 2018

26. • Rules and structures (Culture, stories, tabus, methods, institutions…)
• Intelligent artefacts
• Vygotsky: “Mediation” – 3 = subject, object and mediating artefact
= We think through our objects and tools
• Wenger: Thought is not in our brain, but in our connection with things, others
• Pen + paper, URL, Books, man+horse, Drivers + traffic signs
• Example development of safety in cars (build, materials, rules/laws, safety equipment)
• Society’s investment in infrastructure
• E.g. the Sagas, Schools (literacy), firm, university, charity
• Networks – Societies of mind
• Newton, Royal Society, Linux, Wikipedia, Scientific publications
Infrastructures that support CI
Geoff Mulgan

27. Collectively intellegent teams/small groups
Group Composition
Effect on groups collective intelligence
Little Much
Member Intelligence x
Social perceptiveness x
More women than men x
Cognitive style diversity
 Very similar styles x
 Moderately diverse x
 Very diverse styles x
Interaction
Communication
• More communication is better
• Equal amounts is better
BUT vs:
in studies on "Well functioning groups"
• group satisfaction
• group cohesiveness
• psychological safety
Are important, but NOT for collective
intelligence
• no correlation

28. • Tools (Excel, eMail, Twitter, To-do)
• My masters thesis (Handwritten texts), Graduate research (computerized texts), Collegues: “expert
systems”,
AI can amplify these as:
• Assistants
• Evernote – content links between your notes.
• Automatic feedback on grammar, style etc. (Turnit-In), Outlook suggestions, PowerPoint Design hints,
Alexa, Siri…
• Visual feedback on online discussions (cf. Deliberate Practice)
• Peers
• Bots in MS Teams – delegate questions from students or suggest exam prep material
• Course on AI with AI
• Managers
• Tell you what to do: CrowdForge: Automatically manages an “army” of writers
• Traffic lights
How can IT & AI make groups more intelligent?
…or Support their learning?
Built on an idea from Malone, 2018. Superminds
By the way: in one
research, teams
which had a bot as a
manager were LESS
collectively
intelligent!

29. • Examples
• Wikipedia
• Amazon recommendations
• Democracy.IO
• What do they do?
• Remember (Storage)
• Mix thoughts and ideas (Structures)
• Suggest (AI)
• Support decision making
(Information, structures etc.)
How can IT support collective intelligence

30. ideas

31. What can this look
like in our practice?

37. Structured Discussions

40. Collective
Intelligence
Creativity
Learning
Three perspectives
on the practice of
organizing and
supporting adult
learning.
Perspectives which
complement each
other and can give
interesting ideas
about the practice
of adult education. Hróbjartur Árnason
University of Iceland
hrobjartur@hi.is
What ideas did you
get?