Smart technology for self-organizing processes

Abstract

Learning technology periodically undergoes changes in response to changes in the prevailing models of human cognition and learning. A major shift throughout the behavioral sciences that began in the 1980s is beginning to have effects at the level of classroom learning and its supportive technologies. Inspired by complexity theory, it is a shift that treats all learning and knowledge building as essentially self-organizing processes. The design challenge is not to control the self-organizing process, as some instructional approaches attempt to do, but to facilitate the emergence of higher-level outcomes—e.g., better explanations, more coherent understanding. To foster such higher-level emergents, smart technologies not only need to support people interacting productively with other people but also ideas interacting productively with ideas and feedback systems promoting engagement between people and ideas. This is in contrast to conceptions of smart technology that see it as providing increasingly precise centralized control over learning processes. Smart technology attuned to the emergent character of learning and thinking does not simply turn more control over to the learners but shifts the emphasis from control to productive interaction among learners, teachers, ideas, and technology.