Stigmergy

Academics and theorists have discussed the self-organization theory of (informal) learning communities, with these creations identified as critical to lifelong learning. These grow not by any designed infrastructure per se but evolve on their own as people pursue their individual and shared interests. This concept relates to the one of the Internet evolving like a "tree," with its main trunk and branching off until the tips, where there are no nodes but tiny petioles. It's a form of the "invisible hand" idea borrowed from macroeconomics. The issue of information quality based on interests and popularity is an important one. Will such information devolve to the lowest common denominators with individual or clustered SMEs in their own Net nodes? In this context, Koper and Tattersall discuss the concept of stigmergy. This term comes from the French entomologist Grasse and describes "the indirect communications taking place among individuals in a social insect colony." As applied to learning communities, trackers identify the particular order that similar learners progress through information to reach a particular learning destination, and that information is used to enhance the learning of future learners who are going through this way. In some customization structures, like-learners then would be paired up with the forensic trails and learning profiles of other learners with similar goals and have a pseudo-customized experience. Technology would create these indirect communications links of shared expertise and prior learning and channel users through a data repository, a learning objects database....or even the Internet.