ChangeMOOC

what is a self-organising system? They don't define. In a strict sense there cannot be such a thing - if any thing is in touch with its environment then it is being organised by its environment as much as by itself. Alternatively, "self-organising" is an unnecessary tautology - it doesn't add anything to the idea of a thing being a system. At best, chaos/complexity is a very loose analogy, not very helpful - because this learning network process is not shown to behave in exactly the ways prescribed by Prigogine etc (the makers of chaos theory). At best it suggests that the learnings gained by the participants are not initially foreseen (as they are supposed to be in a more formal education programme). In principle chaos/complexity theory could be used to explore the trajectory of learning in the system, if not that of individual participants.