APPLYING THE PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE SYSTEMS TO THE DYNAMIC AND COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT OF CASE STUDIES WITH STUDENTS

This project is related to the development of Case Studies referred to the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship via networking. Case Studies are collaboratively developed by students and teachers. To prompt students’ motivation the collaborative intelligence framework is used (Malone, Laubacher, and Dellarocas 2009). This framework identifies the underlying building blocks at the heart of collective intelligence systems (or genes). These genes are defined by the answers to two pairs of key questions: (1) Who is performing the task? Why are they doing it? and (2) What is being accomplished? How is it being done? The project seeks the possible answers to these key questions in the context of the development of Case Studies by students. Virtual platforms are used to achieve students’ involvement. Over the past decade, the rise of the Internet has enabled the emergence of surprising new forms of collective intelligence . The first question to be answered is, Who undertakes the activity? Here there are two basic genes: hierarchy and crowd. We answer this question in our specific context by letting that all students have permanent access to the projects of the projects of other students from the very beginning, and contribute comments, suggestions and assessments. The second question is: Why are they doing it? Questions about human motivation are not easy to answer. As a simplified overview of the possibilities, however, three basic Why genes can cover the high level motivations that lead people to participate in collective intelligence systems: pursue value, glory and love.
We use all these motivational levers to achieve students’ motivation. The Love gene can take several forms: people can be motivated by their intrinsic enjoyment of an activity, by the opportunities it provides to socialize with others, or because it makes them feel they are contributing to a cause larger than themselves. Studies of Wikipedia have shown that its participants are motivated by all three of these variants of the Love gene. We intend to create an environment in which enjoyment and support to others are emphasized. Glory or recognition is another important motivator. The programmers in many open source software communities, for example, are motivated by the desire to be recognized by peers for their contributions. As a consequence is crucial that relevant contributions be emphasized by teachers and students.
The third question to be answered for any activity is: What is being done? For What, the many organizational goals encountered in collective intelligence systems can be boiled down into two basic genes: Create and Decide. In the Create gene, the group of students generate something new—a new chapter of their Case Study. In the Decide gene, the students evaluate and select alternatives—deciding for instance which is the best Case Study. The final question to be answered concerning an activity is, How is it being done? In traditional organizations, the How question is typically answered by describing the organizational structures and processes. Many collective intelligence systems still use hierarchies for some of their tasks, but what is novel is how they use crowds. So we focus on instances of the How gene where the crowd does the Create or Decide task. Each group of students has full autonomy to develop their project, but they use ideas from their colleagues. Good practices are awarded.