What is crowdsourcing?

Like the single idea of collective intelligence, crowdsourcing can be defined around the sharing of resources and the solution of specific problems. The term itself has been used in marketing for a while, as the use of external groups outside a company to solve problems or propose solutions in a massive way, with a number of people at the same time that could only work using new technologies. The very same idea applies in a way to education.

While collective intelligence deals around multiple inputs for a single work and many outputs too, talking about sources, resources and media, crowdsourcing talks about a single problem that uses the power of many to be solved. This means that with the use of internet platforms, for example, many people can use their collective intelligence and experience to propose a fixed solution for a problem, to give new ideas or to correct old ones. It means sharing one’s intelligence, talking about a single and specific situation.

This is something somehow impossible or very impractical for traditional education. Usually, we’re talking about a single teacher or a single textbook providing with information to a single student that will do only one work or one test. It’s hard to use any resources, many books and many sources for a single class because it’s impractical, and we normally prefer for students to work alone, and we think that information should not me shared, but memorized individually. This is quite opposite to the idea of collective intelligence and crowdsourcing.

We can talk about internet platforms where teachers share common ideas, problems, activities and solutions, or platforms where students can find common resources, and find multiple solutions in the form of multiple media (words, picture, video, sound). We can even talk about students sharing their works for the masses, for them to be shared, commented, and evaluated and for other students to use them. What was impossible or impractical in traditional education is now easy, and should be used more often. It becomes a practical solution, and it is quite clear so far that it’s not about how we memorize things, but what can we do with that information- all of this seems to indicate that the collective intelligence will stay around for a while.

Sources:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cohen-dec28/can-crowdsourcing-shake-up-education-idUSTRE7BR13V20111229

http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2016/05/16/crowdsourcing-future-education/