ROLE: Social Creativity and Meta-Design in Learning Communities

然而，在我们的教育文化中，大部分教学都假定一位无所不知的老师将知识传授给无知的学习者，而在课堂之外进行的大多数学习都是基于现实世界活动背景下的分解，从而导致反思和学习。传统方法在需要交流“基本知识”的情况下具有一定的有效性，但它不太适合终身学习和设计问题解决的高度定位。虽然创造性的个体通常被认为是孤立工作的，但与其他个体的互动和协作的作用是至关重要的。我们的智慧和创造力大多来自于利用（不同群体之间的）“无知的对称”作为一种力量来源。社会创造力强调，人类智能表现的核心不是个人的思维，而是群体的思维在相互作用以及与工具和人工制品的相互作用中。元设计的特点是创造新媒体和环境的目标、技术和过程，这些新媒体和环境允许用户扮演设计师的角色，为群体的创造力做出贡献并从中受益。该项目将：(1)发展一个理论框架和系统，以支持社会创造力作为终身学习的一种特殊形式；(2)研究元设计原则及其在学习和工作环境中如何支持社会创造力；(3)与特定社区合作，展示我们方法的可扩展性和可持续性；(4)重点关注课程信息环境协同设计等具体领域；(5)通过改变课堂环境和本科教育，探索社会创造力和元设计在实践中的作用；(6)评估我们的终身学习、社会创造力和元设计的理论属性如何与实践相结合，并评估我们的方法在现实环境中的优缺点。

Whereas much of teaching in our educational culture presumes an omniscient teacher transmitting knowledge to unknowing learners, most learning that takes place outside of the classroom is based on breakdowns in the context of real-world activities leading to reflection and learning. The traditional approach has some validity for situations in which "basic knowledge" needs to be communicated, but it is not well suited to the highly situated nature of lifelong learning and design problem solving.Although creative individuals are often thought of as working in isolation, the role of interaction and collaboration with other individuals is critical. Much of our intelligence and creativity results from exploiting the "symmetry of ignorance" (between different communities) as a source of power. Social creativity emphasizes that the heart of intelligent human performance is not the individual human mind but groups of minds in interaction with each other and in interaction with tools and artifacts. Meta-design characterizes objectives, techniques, and processes for creating new media and environments that allow users to act as designers and contribute to and benefit from the creativity of the group. The project will: (1) develop a theoretical framework and systems to support social creativity as a specific form of lifelong learning; (2) investigate principles of meta-design and how they support social creativity in the context of learning and working; (3) work with specific communities to demonstrate the scalability and sustainability of our approach; (4) focus on specific domains such as the collaborative design of course information environments; (5) explore the role of social creativity and meta-design in practice by changing classroom environments and undergraduate education; and (6) assess how our theoretical attributes of lifelong learning, social creativity, and meta-design map onto practice and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our approach in realistic settings.