Crowdsourcing in Learning

Crowdsourcing is one of those terms that has a few different meanings. However, on the surface it's basically the same across all - gathering contributions from large groups of people, and there are a lot of ways in which this can be of benefit. 

For instance, a group of astronomers used this technique to help search for the elusive "Planet 9" - a theorized planet outside of our solar system. Scientists had long speculated the planet was there based on how its gravity was affecting our solar system, although they couldn't see it. 

So the scientists set out to achieve, "four years of scientific analysis in under three days" through the use of crowdsourcing. Basically, they asked the public to look at data sets which would help them sort through the vast amount of information. Essentially, they temporarily hired thousands of extra workers to help them with a very involved task.

So crowdsourcing has these types of benefits. You can lean on the collective masses online to help solve some task. You can also use it for other means, particularly in learning. If you've participated in any type of group project in school this is a form of crowdsourcing - working together with a set of shared knowledge to solve some type of problem. Or, you may have been in search of practical knowledge, such as how to build a deck for your house, learn how to speak a language, or do some other type of task. As such, you may have found yourself on some online community forum, such as Reddit, gathering ideas from the shared collective of members.

So the practice has been around for a while, and in today's learning environment instructional design practitioners are leaning on this community centric approach to leverage new methods of teaching. The internet provides a perfect medium for crowdsourcing, as you can go far and wide to reach people. 

As an example, we're in the process of creating a type of crowdsourced website where I work. The idea is simple enough - create a shared, online community that aims to connect a spread out collective of workers. One of the issues we saw was that knowledge of tasks/procedures wasn't effectively distributed across or many departments. Those with a higher number of skilled workers, and more resources had a distinct advantage of those without. So the idea was to unite everyone together in a shared, online community. Here, they will be able to share idea and connect with each through a forum, and with other resources.