Work, public and community life is more manifestly energized by collaborations. Peer-to-peer collaborations can be exemplified by Wikipedia and YouTube, which are the product of massive social collaborations. In the area of new media, learners assemble their knowledge representations in the form of rich, multimodal source - text, image, diagram, table, audio, video etc (Cope, Kalantzis).

The source of collaborative intelligence Wikipedia defines peer-to-peer learning as:

• an educational practice in which students interact with other students to attain educational goals,
• as a mode of "learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything”.

In a joint paper, Roy Williams, Regina Karousou, and Jenny Mackness argue that educational institutions should consider "emergent learning," in which learning arises from a self-organized group interaction, as a valuable component of education in the Digital Age. Web 2.0 puts distributed individuals into a group setting where emergent learning can occur (Wiki).

Peer-to-peer learning is an essential part of what is known as a “collaborative intelligence”, - a knowledge obtained and a product produced by a number of individuals, rather than just one. Individual cognition doesn’t lose it’s value, however, focus has been switching to a notion of collaborative intelligence. Key aspect of collaborative intelligence is to structure learning systematically around peer collaborations. It is a shift away from knowledge memorization towards a culture of knowledge sourcing; and developing skills and strategies for knowledge collaboration and social learning (Cope, Kalantzis).

In my personal experience we use peer-to-peer learning as a part of a collaboration work every day. We are a small team of assessment specialists with different backgrounds and areas of expertise. We develop an information and communication literacy measuring instrument for the middle school graduates. The process of creating one task item (scenario and evaluation rules) has to undergo three reviews from other team members. We all share opinions and provide a feedback on each other’s work. Once the item is ready, it goes for another review by the psychometrician, who inputs his opinion and provides developers with a feedback as well. Upon the completion of this phase, we discuss graphic design and programming options with the designer and a IT specialist. Visuality and technical implementation have to satisfy strict requirements for an assessment. Therefore, we discuss both thoroughly and second opinion does matter on this stage a lot. By the time the item is fully developed, the entire team has spent a decent amount of time in collaboration work in order to make it happen. We all learn from each other’s expertise and vaue each other's knoeldge. I think this project is the most interesting I have ever worked on as it highlights the collaborative intelligence. I fully agree with the statement provided by Cope and Kalantzis about “key aspect of collaborative intelligence is to structure learning systematically around peer collaborations”, and that’s exactly what we do.

Also, for our test items we write scenarios in which students are supposed to work in a team for various projects in order to provide learners with yet another platform to review each other’s work, provide feedback, accept feedback and just master the skill of collaborative work.

Emily Rose Purser from the University of Wollongong and her colleagues released a report in 2013 under the title “Realising the potential of peer-to-peer learning: taming a MOOC with social media” in which they described their experience in collaborative work and peer-to-peer learning using an e-learning platform Coursera. “As participants, we experienced deep and significant learning, very much through social media. The peer-to-peer learning we engaged in and benefitted from was not traditionally organised ‘group work’ or micro-managed interaction, but something more fluid, open, student-initiated and led, that seems to have gone to the very core of what online learner agency, and digital culture, is all about.”.

In my son’s first grade classroom kids are divided into groups and work together for the most part of the day. They create projects together, do shared reading and math. They are currently learning to listen to each other and provide feedback in an appropriate way. They learn to respect opinions and work done, be proud of their input and are excited to share the final project. It often seems that the true motivation doesn’t necessarily come from the academic reward, but rather from the recognition of work among peers.

I would like to share this video as an example of activity to suggest for peer-to-peer learning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhey6ZRIo9Q

Conceptualizing Learning (Cope, Kalantzis)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_learning

http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1435&context=asdpapers