Abstract

Traditional educational systems prevalent in India represent a hierarchical dynamics of interaction. It ensures a certain amount of discipline when it comes to the curriculum and the nature of participation of each actor involved within the system. The paper attempts to create a new structural dynamics for such an educational system to nurture creativity and individuality. It incorporates the ideas of user-led innovation, mass creativity and professional amateurs (pro-ams) to create a democratic learning process that allows for a greater number of choices and information for the participants. The proposed framework accepts the need for discipline within an educational environment but breaks down the hierarchical dynamics of interaction. Moving on the assumption that education is necessarily participative, the paper would make attempts to look at the new methodologies being adopted across the Internet for creative collaboration and effective communication and contextualize them for a learning environment. The paper also looks at the rise in the learning curve of participants as a result of an argumentative approach to theories and concepts. The proposed framework would adopt an open source approach to provide for the scope for interaction, discussion and evaluation. Any new framework requires validation and quality assurance before one can commence the process of adopting it. The paper would make an attempt to qualify the necessary models of evaluation being practiced for the prevalent educational systems in India. The paper marks the hope of transition from the social structure of educational systems to a new socio-technical structure of education wherein the real and virtual may combine together to create an enriching experience of the learning process.