How do you make Collective Learning engaging and accessible to students?

OER has so many great resources for Collective Learning! One of my favorites is the Historos Cave activity. This activity gets them thinking about clues that contributed to collective learning. We use the following resources: Threshold 6 Intro Video, Collective Learning Part 1 article, H2-Common Man video, and Early Evidence of Collective Learning video. I have the students write Collective Learning on the middle of a blank sheet and take notes in the form of a mind map. They color-code their resources and we talk about how the resources provided corroborate one another. Once we finish this series of activities, I like to have them work in groups to come up with a group definition of collective learning.

After we use the OER resources, we break up into biomedical and engineering groups. The engineering groups look up different early human tools and compare the ideal mechanical advantage of those tools using the math they have learned in their engineering classes. They use this math to show how the tools became more powerful over time. The biomedical groups look at skull shapes and note how the change in shapes allowed for certain parts of the brain to grow. They learn how the development of certain regions of the brain facilitated collective learning. This a fun activity, but it does require some collaboration with other teachers because I have no idea how the math works!

Why Does Language Matter is my favorite activity on this topic and a create WHP/BHP cross-over. I have my students generate a list of random words on a shared google doc (a feat of Collective Learning in itself!) and then set out to respond to the questions (i.e. How should we kill that mammoth?) Students love it especially when I actually convince them that it's ok to throw grammar out the window and "talk like a caveman"... and the results are usually hilarious. 

Speaking of crossover with WHP, I like to pair this activity with the language networks video.  It's great to see students reflecting on their own language networks and how they can relate this topic to their own identity and background. 

Adam Esrig , thanks for sharing this crossover resource. I haven't seen it before. I really like this and think I can weave it into my Biography of  a Continent project.

So happy I could be of service! 

My "favorite" resource for Collective Learning? That's too difficult, as there are so many good ones, and I've rotated them around depending on the students I'm working with. 

I guess one way that is fun to start is by looking at the Threshold Card (ingredients+Goldilocks conditions= New Complexity). We unpack and discuss what each piece would or could mean for the advancement of our species. Students can annotate the parts of the recipe/equation in small groups and then share out. 

After the group talk, on my own copy under the doc cam or projected onto the whiteboard,  I offer key phrases that I turn into a chant as a mnemonic for human knowledge, AKA Collective Learning.

• Share it
• Store it
• Pass it on
• Improve it

From this point on these four phrases can be used as filters to claim test whether an even qualifies as "Collective Learning". They can also be used as a checklist for student writing about Collective Learning. Does the event that the student is explaining contain evidence of all 4 parts?

I actually start by trying to get my students to figure out what collective learning is based on this timeline.  By the end of the period, they have to think of their own examples.  It's just an introduction, but they always seem to get the general idea. 

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