The position paper by Allison Littlejohn and her presentation leaves me a bit challenged, particularly in terms of the vocabulary. If you recall, there was a large amount of discussion in CCK around groups vs. networks (and Terry Anderson’s session here), collective vs. connectives, the entire crowdsourcing hype (p16 on Paul Anderson’s What is Web 2.0), the Critical Literacies MOOC and some of my own work centered around trying to find a way to capture evolution of collaboration in networked settings and different learning formations.
Although the presentation is titled Connected Knowledge, Collective Learning, Allison talks more about collective knowledge (which she defines as the knowledge distributed across people, machines, networks and artefacts) and Collective learning (the term used to describe learning processes that make use of this collective knowledge).
Collective Knowledge is then, the output of charting – connecting, consuming, creating and contributing by people. In her opinion, the individual and the network are indivisible and collective learning itself is emergent. Also, the individual views the networks, groups and collectives through the lens of her own goals.
Allison defines groups as composed of the individual, team, manager and colleague with similar skills. Network is broadly defined to include this group and external contacts, peers with similar goals and anyone.
The quest is to understand the inter-relationships inherent in groups and networks, understand the forces that bind individuals in their learning, understand the learning process, how collective learning can help improve outcomes at the workplace and the literacies required to achieve collective learning and how to understand how different resource types might support collective learning and knowledge building.
Collective knowledge is defined as formal learning, libraries, dynamic knowledge (wikis), collaborative spaces, knowledge networks, smart information, your knowledge, shared and recommended resources. The Collective is defined as a combination of groups, networks and collective knowledge. The individual is as the center and connects with groups and networks, creates/consumes/contributes to collective knowledge. Goals may change/evolve over time and so may paths, Allison feels, and this where she says charting really helps.
Rethinking Education 