e-Learning Ecologies MOOC’s Updates

Students contributing to collaborative intelligence for the world at large

We often consider education to be a preparation for living. But as John Dewey, education is living and not merely preparation for living. A lot of education is not intrinsically motivating because the reader of each student's assignment is an audience of one. However, the social nature of web 2.0 means that we can use the affordances offered by technology to create more intrinsically rewarding and motivating activities. 

Dave Eggers in a TED event, talks about how at 826 Valencia, he and a few of his friends were able to create a community where students were able to work with industry experts in creating books that were of high value to society. In addition, these writers were able to work with the students and provide them feedback and support to improve their learning.

The products that they did end up with were a book that was published. This book was written by the students together. The book in essence acts as a product of value to the world at large. This also acts as an instance of contributing to collaborative intelligence.

These kinds of experiments could become a lot more easier with the affordances offered by e-learning technologies. Moreover it doesn't have to be limited to the writing industry. We often talk about peer feedback being useful. Technology offers just the affordance of giving professional feedback as well.

Assessment artefacts in traditional education is often restricted to essays written by pen on paper and the paper is only read by the teacher and the assessor at most.But the internet could make assessments a lot more public affair. There doesn't need to be a test of memory but rather a project that students together engage in would contribute to the world at large and not merely tests of memory. This question is posed by Dr Cope in his lecture:

How can we build a world where there are not these extrinsic motivations which [are] institutional rewards but are intrinsic motivations in the actual work that you're doing?

Thus, technology affordances would enable these kinds of intrinsic motivations to become a regular part of learning with blogs maintaining public record of assessments, or perhaps students working with industries externally on small projects, and so on and so forth.

https://www.ted.com/talks/dave_eggers_my_wish_once_upon_a_school/transcript?language=en#t-50865