CONTENT CURATION FOR LEARNING

PART 1:
WHY CONTENT CURATION MATTERS FOR LEARNING
4 WE LEARN BETTER TOGETHER:
THE POWER OF COLLECTIVE
INTELLIGENCE
If you were working on your own to filter the world’s content
for your professional interests, it’d be an endless and lonely
task. But we’re not alone. We operate in teams. And teams
are much better at filtering and curating external content
than individuals acting alone, because teams possess
Collective Intelligence.
MIT define Collective intelligence as a property of groups
that emerges from the coordination and collaboration
of team members. This collective intelligence is a good
indicator of potential team performance and a far better
indicator of success than any individual’s performance. So
what sets apart these smart teams and how do they build
collective intelligence?
In their research MIT have found that group satisfaction,
group cohesion, group motivation and individual
intelligence of team members, things that you might expect
to determine performance, were not correlated with
collective intelligence. Nor does having star performers
make the biggest impact. The research suggests there are
five ways smart teams build collective intelligence.
1. DIVERSITY 2. SOCIAL PERCEPTION
AND SENSITIVITY
Great minds think alike right? Well
actually, they don’t. Great minds think
differently which is why you need a
diverse group of people on your team.
“Group intelligence is not strongly tied
to either the average intelligence of
the members or the team’s smartest
member,” says Thomas Malone, MIT
Center for Collective Intelligence.
The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
have found that diversity of the group
was a better indicator of collective
intelligence than the IQs of individual
group members. This is true in broader
social networks as well.
They also found that collective
intelligence increased if the a group had
more women, though not exclusively
women. This may be explained by
differences in social sensitivity, which is
related to collective intelligence. Studies
show that women tend to score higher
on social sensitivity than men. Which
leads nicely on to …
MIT’s research has found that it is really
important is to have people who are
socially sensitive, whether they are men
or women. As we noted above women
tend to have higher levels of social
sensitivity.
The research also highlighted the
importance of egalitarian norms in
a team. Collective intelligence was
positively correlated with groups with
higher average social sensitivity and
equal distribution of conversational
turn–taking. In essence where a few
people dominated the discussion and
there were no stars.
There is also ongoing research into the
impact of technology and more remote
working on collective intelligence.
Initial indications are that equality and
sensitivity are equally important with
online communication. A personal view
is that it is possible technology allows
more people to contribute by sharing
articles and ideas, without having to wait
for a turn in a team discussion.
Content Curation For Learning
15
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