Nori Jacoby, assistant professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded an NSF fellowship for a project to develop algorithms to more effectively harness the intelligence of crowds by improving the quality of collective evaluations. The project promises to lead to more effective crowd-sourced feedback systems, which can empower communities to govern themselves and manage public spaces and services through bottom-up initiatives rather than top-down direction. “Designing Smart Environments to Augment Collective Learning & Creativity,” is Jacoby’s collaboration with co-principal investigators at Princeton University, City University of New York, and the University of California, Davis. Many communities are already utilizing "smart" technological environments that adapt to meet specific goals, such as a learning platform that delivers different content to different students, Jacoby said.
