Who Says We R0 Ready for Change?

This paper uses a theoretical model of cooperative learning to examine the survivability of communities of learners. A primary assumption in this article is that individualbased learning tends to use local information to increase an individual’s “fitness” while collaborative learning, based on the sharing of information, knowledge, and resources, increases group fitness. We frame our discussion about the importance of cooperative learning at the community and individual level using theories of intellectual development based on the views of Vygotsky (“individualistic”) and Piaget (“social”), and mediated by concepts and ideas from the fields of epidemiology and evolutionary biology. Our approach is motivated by evolutionary biology metaphors and modeled via epidemiological (contact) processes. Furthermore, using a simple cooperative learning model, we address the belief that sharp community thresholds characterize separate learning cultures such that one must cross a tipping point to move from one culture to the other. Our results allow us to discuss the impact of individual learning on community intellectual development and its resilience to change.