On Social Learning, Sensemaking Capacity, and Collective Intelligence

We are transitioning to an era in which the authority of previously dependable sources of understanding is increasingly called into question, in tandem with societal and global challenges that require new ways of thinking. Correspondingly, hard questions are now being asked about our education system’s adequacy. Our challenge is to create the infrastructures in which “K–Life” learners develop the capacities to thrive personally, and as citizens, under unprecedented conditions of uncertainty. The capacity to make sense of complex personal, intellectual, and social dilemmas is what we need to foster in our children, graduates, researchers, and employees: these skills can be summarized as “social learning.” This session will describe a range of R&D initiatives to illustrate socio-technical responses to these challenges, including intensively collaborative projects like the SocialLearn Project, the OLnet Project, the Compendium Institute, and the Learning Warehouse.