This book shows how collective intelligence combined with new technologies can help us solve the world's biggest problems.

In the era of digital communication, collective problem solving is increasingly important. Large groups can now resolve issues together in completely different ways, which has transformed the arts, sciences, business, education, technology, and medicine. Collective intelligence is something we share with animals and is different from machine learning and artificial intelligence. To design and utilize human collective intelligence, we must understand how its problem-solving mechanisms work. From democracy in ancient Athens, through the invention of the printing press, to COVID-19, this book analyzes how humans developed the ability to find solutions together. This wide-ranging, thought-provoking book is a game-changer for those working strategically with collective problem solving within organizations and using a variety of innovative methods. It sheds light on how humans work effectively alongside machines to confront challenges that are more urgent than what humanity has faced before. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

"A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"--human and machine capabilities working together--has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies"--Amazon.com.

Humanitarian Futures: Challenges and Opportunities explores the increasing types, dimensions and dynamics of crises threatening the world in the twenty-first century, and argues that those with humanitarian roles and responsibilities can only meet such challenges if their approaches to strategic and operational planning undergo fundamental paradigmatic shifts. Strategically and operationally, such shifts must begin by planning from the future, for the future. Author Randolph C. Kent, the UN’s first Humanitarian Coordinator, with experience in some of the most complex crises of modern times, including Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kosovo, Sudan and Somalia, provides a blueprint for dealing with ever greater complexity on planet Earth and beyond. That blueprint is not about upgrading existing tools or relying upon tried precedence. Rather, it points to a new paradigm for meeting crises. It begins by looking at the changing nature of humanness and governance, and then turns to plausible future crises based on such changes, before concluding with practical steps for dealing with ever more complex humanitarian threats, now and in the future. This book will be an essential read for humanitarian policymakers and practitioners as well as for humanitarian and global studies researchers and students who are and want to be engaged in understanding and preparing for ever more complex and unpredictable humanitarian challenges.

Effective Use of Collective Peer Teaching in Teacher Education investigates the learning benefits of letting students assume leadership roles in the classroom, emphasizing both theoretical analysis and firsthand empirical research conducted with pre-service teachers. Building on Vygotsky's (1987) sociocultural theory of human learning and research on collective intelligence, this volume introduces peer teaching as a pedagogical practice with a significant and underexplored learning potential. The first part of this book focuses on findings from two separate teacher education programs, while the second analyzes the learning processes through three conceptualized learning positions: peer teacher learning, peer student learning, and collective peer learning. Investigating the balance and interaction of these processes, this book argues that teaching and learning cannot at length be separated from each other and discusses the practical implications of this idea. This book will appeal to researchers, faculty, and teacher educators with interests in theories of learning and international and comparative education. Its crucial insights into how learning can be maximized in the classroom will provide a nuanced picture of the complexity of learning processes.

Educational technology is controversial – some see it as essential to providing free global learning, others view it as a dangerous distraction that undermines good education. In both instances, most theories that have previously been applied to educational technology do not account for the distinctive nature and vast potential of technology. This book addresses this issue, exploring how education has been bound up with technology from the beginning, and recognising that educational aims have already been shaped by technologies. Offering a ‘dialogic’ theory of educational technology, Rupert Wegerif and Louis Major respond to contemporary challenges to education within this book, including, but not limited to, climate change, misinformation on the internet and the impact of Artificial Intelligence. Chapters introduce, discuss, and contextualise key theories and illustrate through case studies their uses within a diverse range of educational contexts, spanning from primary education to adult lifelong learning. Each chapter also concludes with a short summary, demonstrating how these theories translate to practical implications for design. A fascinating response to current developments in educational technology, this is a crucial read for all involved in creating, researching or making decisions about the use of technologies within educational contexts.