Group & individual epistemic cognition

In this blog, I would answer questions left in the last lecture.

1.     Re-answer questions in Class Activity One and Two.

Questions: a) What’s the definition of Social Cloud?  b) what are the possible applications of a Social Cloud ?

l  Activity One

a)     A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network.

b)    A Social Computation Cloud; A Social Storage Cloud; A Social Collaborative Cloud; A Social Cloud for Public Science; An Enterprise Social Cloud.

l  Activity Two

a)     A Social Cloud is a resource and service sharing framework utilizing relationships established between members of a social network. A Social Cloud leverages pre-existing trust relationships between users to enable mutually beneficial sharing within the context of a social network.

b)    A Social Computation Cloud: It is widely recognized that extensive computing power remains untapped through personal computers; A Social Storage Cloud: Storage is perhaps the simplest and most standardized resource for everyday users to share and utilize in a Social Cloud; A Social Collaborative Cloud: increasingly collaborations are turning to social networking concepts to share information and resources within diverse user communities, for example MyExperiment.org and nanoHub; A Social Cloud for Public Science: The Social Cloud is an ideal basis on which to create the next iteration of volunteer computing – primarily for solving scientific problems of community interest; An Enterprise Social Cloud: a Social Cloud may be configured differently, depending on the community it serves.

2.     What was the epistemic aim in these 2 activities? Is there any change in epistemic aim? If so, why did you change your mind?

As we can see, the answer in Activity One(individual work) is briefer, and it composed of some short sentence or key words. However, the answer in Activity Two( group work) is more completed and includes more information. In term of epistemic aim, in fact, I just pursue a satisfied answer ‘for the teacher’, cause the time is limited and I’m not interested enough about that article. But in Activity Two, the epistemic aim really changes, we feel free when giving answers, and we pursue more knowledge from group discussion.

3.     Is there any difference in terms of individual and group epistemic cognition, how?

I believe there must be some difference between individual and group epistemic cognition. When people learn things by themselves, if they are not positive learners, or we just say, they are not eager for what they are learning, they may just memorize information as completing a task. It’s inefficient. Opposed to individual learning, group learning can obtain better effect. In a group, we can get information from various aspects, people share their own knowledge and feelings. In a word, I hold the idea that individual learning is static, and group learning is dynamic.

4.     How did you approach to the problem individually and in group, respectively? Is there any difference in the processes involved?

When solving a problem individually, I would get help from related books or the Internet. It’s dull and waste more time as you may totally misunderstand the problem. However, when I am in a group, I would firstly handle the problem by myself, if there’s anything confusing me, I would inquire to other group members. Though this way, I always feel supportive and informed.

In my opinion, the attitude towards individual & group epistemic cognition varies from people to people. Additionally, male and female behave different in these 2 conditions. Generally, females are more likely to work in a group cause they may have a better communicating ability and more sensitive, while males tend to enjoy work alone. In fact, many factors can affect humans’ view on group & individual epistemic cognition. Further work can be done on these fields.