A New Paradigm of Knowledge?

Daniela Pscheida in her presentation on A new paradigm of knowledge? How the web transforms our comprehension of knowledge and the way of academic research  says:

Digitalization and virtual network technologies change not only the way we communicate, get informed and entertain ourselves – they also have modified the conditions under which this is done as well as the standards that are applied to these processes….. Instead of stability, objectivity and institutional authority in the digital sphere timeliness, situational availability and the readiness for active participation do count. One can assume that in the course of this process the social understanding of and approach to knowledge have started to change.

Daniela concludes that:

Fundamental changes in knowledge are taking place

– Semantic Web, Citizen Science and VREs will transform the core structures of academic work and thus probably also the principles and conventions of the understanding and management of knowledge

– Scientists will have to accept that doing e-science is not possible without changing traditional scientific roles and concepts.

Great insights from Daniela.

This research reveals the importance of participation and collaboration among not only the researchers and academics, but the embracing of a participative and collaborative culture which extends to general public and citizens of interests.  The wikipedia and Citizen projects were just some of the examples of pioneer work illustrating the importance of keeping knowledge updated with a wider authorship, with its content being “editable, though controllable or manageable”.  This requires a paradigm shift of “Community Building” and “information sharing” when creating new and emergent knowledge.

What are some of the underlying principles involved in this sort of paradigm shift?  I think the principles could be explained through Paragogy, Peeragogy, Netagogy, where I argued in my previous post, and the learning theory strongly supported through Connectivism here, here and here.

I have also proposed that these acts of “creating knowledge” could be based on Creatagogy. This requires a connective creativity with collective wisdom (Wisdom of the Crowd) and individual creativity and creative learning capacity connected to networks with technology affordance.

I conceive new and emerging knowledge would be created through such “Global Community and Networks” which would be based on an environment, education and learning ecology with a network of learning platforms such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), MOOCs (Massive Open Online Communities) and MOOP (Massive Open Online Projects) over different spaces, network chains.  I have discussed some of the essential features in my previous post.  This would hopefully lead to the creation of a symbiosis between the educational social community and the more open collaboration on online networks.

Images: Google