A much-decorated playwright, George Bernard Shaw once said, “If you have an apple and I have an apple and, we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea, and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
The process of Crowdsourcing is not much different from the idea of Shaw. First coined in 2006, the term Crowdsourcing basically means a bunch of people coming together to solve a common problem.
Sharing ideas while working together is vital in any successful endeavor, especially in education, and Crowdsourcing has a solution for it. In the last few years, Crowdsourcing has proved to be an important technique to enhance the way education is conducted by teachers and received by students.
Crowdsourcing has had fruitful effects on student grades in numerous countries. It is very much vital to instigate an innovative program supported by a philosophy of sharing ideas in educational institutions. Everyone benefits, when a crowd collaborates to bring the best ideas about education together.
Advantages of Crowdsourcing in Education for Faculty
The faculty is one of the groups that benefits extremely from crowdsourcing in education. Professors and teachers can share lesson strategies with each other and find novel and innovative methods to share material among students. Working together, they can conjure up a database of best practices and resources that are valuable for their institution. Later, they can share the same information with other schools as well. Eventually, they can offer assistance in further developing curriculum while offering feedback. At last, peer evaluations can be used by the faculty to receive feedback on their teaching styles and to help with grading practices.
Many universities in the United States are experimenting with Crowdsourcing innovations. The Georgetown University uses crowdsourcing to employ the finest time and cost-saving innovations suggested by students and faculty. A virtual IdeaScale community allows concept suggestions, voting, and noteworthy discussion. Bringing class evaluations online is one of the key time-saving ideas that was employed at Georgetown. This method alone allows more efficient and effective access to feedback, allowing faculty to react to the student suggestions more rapidly.
Advantages of Crowdsourcing in Education for Students
The next group that gets benefitted greatly from crowdsourcing in education is students. On the first level, they can help each other with answers to the sample problems and homework as well. They can share the summaries of books, classes, and other materials they have created. On the next level, crowdsourcing in education gives students an opportunity to participate in a process where they can evaluate real-life-problems and propose innovative solutions.
The Columbia University used crowdsourcing to augment the student experience at the school, noticeably. The school received implemented changes and feedback that made a substantial alteration in how students learn at school when it allowed students to suggest ideas in the “What to Fix Colombia” community. Revised gate hours and a new mailbox notification system were some of the low-hanging fruit ideas it contributed. Other projects included a reduction in the bureaucracy associated with changes and eradication of the requirement which says commencement speakers have to have a Columbia degree. Throughout all of the improvements, the students learned the power of working together and sharing ideas to implement change.
Advantages of Crowdsourcing for Institutions
Colleges and Universities are in a competitive race for students and its getting more intense day by day. This race is extending to primary and secondary education as public, charter, and private schools are competing for enrollments. Through crowdsourcing ideas for enrichments, schools remain competitive, draw additional students, and build their reputation.
Through crowdsourcing initiatives, institutions get an opportunity to understand from students and faculty about what is truly working and what isn’t. Moreover, leaders get new visions into ways to save time and money. The changes don’t always have to be huge. A small change makes a big difference to the student’s experience and morale. Most of all, being open to ideas and change makes a university or college, much more attractive to potential students. The crowdsourcing process can itself become a recruiting tool, representing that your institution is receptive to ideas and easy to communicate with.
It’s fair to say that crowdsourcing is very critical to the future of education and it will drive the education on many levels. Crowdsourcing will define the success of students, faculty, and institutions in the years to come.
