Is it just me or does anybody else feel irritated by the author's insinuation that a perfectly natural process such as volcanism is a malevolent "serial killer"? Nature is NOT evil.

One could argue precisely the opposite: were it not for the life-giving nutrients derived from volcanism at hydrothermal vents, we would we not be here on hyppthes.is to discuss this article.

You can get out of banking without going digital.

Yikes! This is where I have a problem: I cannot learn all this stuff fast enough!

Aside from the generous HCCFellows stipend that is supporting me to type these lines, there is little more to offer at our institution. :(

It seems to me (and it ALWAYS does) that this kind of creative approach works best in a hybrid (digital + onsite, "tech + touch") setting.

I like this model even if it's a bit weighted toward IT.

It does me thinking about how I can apply it to my field: the geosciences.

I'm curious: do you have data that shows users actually interrogate the systems the use?

My feeling is that, for the most part, we give the systems we like a pass. Those we don't like, we ignore.

What sort of outreach is done to achieve this broad platform of opinion you claim? How do you know you've reached view-point diversity? Indeed, how do you (or I, since I just made up the term!) "view-point diversity"?

You'll need to convince me. From what I've read already, virtual environments seem more like virtual echo chambers. What I'm looking for is an appreciation for dissenting views, how alternative perspectives are cultivated and supported; and, eventually, how diverse views are reconciled into consensus. I'll read on. :)

All the more reason to do this stuff!

I see, Jack, how you applied linking to science. I like this. From my experience, many (most?) students don't appreciate disciplinary distinctions well enough to know they need integration -- as if they are building a bridge to nowhere.

How can this be applied to science?

I think the power of collaborative learning/ LCs is not what "I" learned but what did we learn together.

I'm sure leaning integration can happen inside one's head; it's social.

I think things like this have promise at least to get the students talking. I can envision other schemes.

Did you read the article in Scientific American this month about inner speech? Seems thinking is like inner/private speech (Vygotsky said that long ago) but dialogue (or "multi-logue") requires that we recognize other minds (other perspectives) and specific areas of the brain are activated that are DIFFERENT from private speech. I think this is why collaborative learning is so powerful and so difficult.

of course it does! we're not robots! I think John Dewey writes somewhere about intellectual passions. No educated person would split head from heart. But don't forget, by this analysis, emotions are the products of the intellect. Read a poem. Listen to music. I also recall Plato's Republic and Symposium: intellect is driven by passions, eros, actually!

Bruffee's point. His 1999 book is great -- dated now, but otherwise excellent. His book should be in the references cited section but is not: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/collaborative-learning

I've thought about conversation vs monologue a lot. Bruffee s one of my sources for this course. See https://www.uni-bielefeld.de/exzellenz/lehre/docs/Bruffee_Collaborative_Learning.pdf

The new reseach on inner speech back this up!

is this a problem at the graduate-student level?

Bruffee's analysis is much deeper than this. Conversations drive all learning -- his thesis is borrowed from Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolution. Science (all knowledge really) is consensual and "pragmatic." Dewey's position too.

graduate school did THAT for me.

I think this takes colleges off the hook; blame the student for not integrating their education :(

IL of course must be taught -- just as learning to read or write, but I think it's deeper than that: like science, humans are not hard-wired to think integrally as they have no predisposition to science (nor democracy).

hardly enough -- the institutions THEMSELVES need scaffolding!

beware of educational reforms that are predominantly cognitive in nature -- a paraphrase from Bruffee (1999), an entire chapter on the "Procrustean bed of cognitive science."

Learning is mostly social, a three-way Vygotskyian tria-logue.

all cognitive -- where is the social dimension?

where's the dialogue?

nice thought -- but integrated learning works both ways: students of science/tech must embrace the humanities and humanists must embrace the world of science and math. Remember Alfred North Whitehead's book, Science and the Modern World? I've always thought this is what education should be.

... where's the social dimension? I think Dewey would object that metacognition is really thinking.