Eyes are opening to the world of open systems, the movement started by open source software, that has the potential to revolutionize leisure, education, government, and a myriad of other not for profit projects. Wikipedia, Mozilla, YouTube, and other open systems have shown that group efforts, organized around open systems, are extremely effective at generating organic effort and innovation.
Research has consistently shown that educational results improve when students percieve that their work will make a difference. An engaged learner is more likely when results matter.
So how do we make results matter in learning situations? Meritocracy in it’s purest form is the answer. By connecting open groups to performance measurement feedback in real time. Cognitive efforts become aligned with intellectual captital, expressed in the form of scoring via project results.
The content used for learning systems can become one of the many creations of the contributors. Advanced students become the producers and maintainers of open content repositories. The circle is complete with rewards, content, parameters, contributers, leaders, and innovation.
Electronic open systems (likely expressed as social networks) allow for the all participants to see and understand the contributions of all other participants. Copying work from another is no longer possible, as original content and contributions are recognized in real time by leaders. Trying to cheat your way to the top of an open system? Not likely, the other contributors will make sure you are exposed.
Organizing learning objectives and course content around open social network systems will be challenging, to say the least. But the rewards could literally change the face of learning:
- - Problems solved online and graded instantly by the system
- - Fingerprint recognition touch screens prevent cheating during testing
- - Engaged participants working hard to outdo their peers
- - Testing and assessment results shared with peers instantly
- - Peers commenting on success and failure
- - Feedback on questions and answers to other learners and teachers
- - Third party interaction as appropriate (parents, other faculty, friends, etc)
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