The Crowdsourced Learning manifest

Crowdsourced Learning <–> Every1Tutor

A work by Jorge Couchet
Copyright © Jorge Couchet, 2010

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Copyright © Jorge Couchet, 2010

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Web page: http://www.drumbeat.org/project/every1tutor-everyone-tutor


THE CROWDSOURCED LEARNING MANIFEST

The open Web: its impact in the world
There is not doubt that the most important technological, economic and social development of the past
decades is the emergence of a global, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) based network:
the Internet. Internet, through open protocols and standards, decentralization and lowering the cost of
access and connection, has enabled an unprecedented connectedness in the human history. Now, this
connectedness is reorganizing how we communicate, how we work, how we learn, and ultimately how we
live.

The open protocols, applications and content has led the success of Internet , and concurrently the success
of one of the most important application on it, the World Wide Web (the 'Web'). This open nature has
ignited a technological and social revolution that has enabled millions of people around the world to
coordinate their attention to form bottom-up systems, in which the people in a decentralized way, are
creating content, building relationships (connections) and having conversational interaction with a
vocabulary consisting not just of words but pictures, videos, programs, and any kind of multimedia.

One of the primary drivers of this technological and social revolution, are the online social networks, such
as Facebook, SlideShare, Last.fm, Digg, Twitter, and many others. These social networks, through the
provision of free and intuitive to use technologies, have facilitated the people connectedness, and the co-
creation and social distribution of open information and digital content. Thus, Internet, the Web over it, and
the online social networks over the Web, enable everyone to become providers of knowledge, not just
consumers, a fundamental shift in the way that knowledge and media are created and transmitted.

A colony of ants through the chemical interactions between the individual ants creates a kind of ant
superorganism capable of things that transcends the individual, as for example to found the shortest path
to a food source. Similarly, a social network through the improved connectedness, and the interactions
produced by the co-creation and sharing of digital content, is a kind of human superorganism capable of
things that no single person can do. In other words, a social network is able to exhibit collective
intelligence, also termed as crowdsourcing, wisdom of crowds, wikinomics and others.

An example of this collective intelligence is Wikipedia, where thousands of contributors from across the
world have collectively created the world’s largest encyclopedia, with articles of remarkably high quality. A
project impossible to be addressed by a single person or even a company, but enabled by the social network
articulated by the Wikipedia social rules and technology. In a decentralized way, everyone can change
almost anything, and decisions about what changes to keep are made by a loose consensus of those who
care. What is more, the people who do all this work don’t even get paid; they are volunteers.

Collective intelligence has existed since mankind began to organize into groups, a very long time before the
existence of Internet. But, Internet through its unique capabilities beyond prior human-technology systems;
the ability to connect quickly globally heterogeneous systems (including humans), the ability to capture and
retain details of the access and use of information, and the ability with minimal loss to relate and transmit
information, have made possible completely new forms of collective action in acquiring, making sense of



and sharing knowledge. This new forms of collective action have enabled an unprecedented potential for
the human collectively intelligence, a potential capable to tackle complex problems impossible to be
addressed before.

Thus, the Internet and the open Web, through the everyone's local contributions to the multiple social
networks (online or not), that make up the global human social network, have world consequences that
directly or indirectly touch the lives of thousands every day, and help us to to transcend of ourselves,
achieving much more than acting alone.

The challenge: the opportunity
Learning is essentially about change for improving, through learning people become different than they
were before learning, different to address opportunities and challenges impossible before learning,
different to appreciate and enjoy life in ways unknown before learning. Thus, learning is the way that
everyone has to improve their lives, and through this change for improving, directly or indirectly touch the
lives of thousands every day through everyone's social networks.

Learning is inherently a human challenge. Or better, it is a everyone opportunity. Since ancient times we
know that the most effective learning occurs through the learner's practice (learning by doing) and the
personalized guide of an experienced tutor (one-to-one tutoring). Burke, Anania, Bloom and others,
through experimental investigation, found that the average student under one-to-one tutoring
outperformed 98 percent of the students taught under a traditional classroom setting. Bloom named this
finding the '2 Sigma Problem'.

Thus, learner by doing and one-to-one tutoring are the ideal way of learning, but the challenge is that they
do not scale with the technologies available before Internet. But despite the advent of the Internet, we are
far to solve the '2 Sigma Problem'. The root of this paradox is that technology alone is an enabler, but not
the solution to the challenge posed by the learner by doing and the one-to-one tutoring ways to learn,
because learning is not a technology challenge. The solution to this challenge is a everyone opportunity, in
other words, we need to focus the potential for the human collectively intelligence enabled by Internet
into solve this challenge.

The big opportunity of our age is to uncover the collective intelligence power of the social networks in the
learning field, and thus giving to everyone the opportunity to change for improving, which in turn will be
igniting a chain reaction, propagated by the social networks themselves, that changes the world through
decentralized everyone's local contributions in the fields enabled by the knowledge learned. That is the
power of the open Web, and we can, if everyone wants, because reality is just the consensus of everyone,
that is the everyone's power.



The idea: Crowdsourced Learning

Every1Tutor

Everyone in the world is an expert in something, by the simple fact of doing something continuously
(learning by doing), and if we are alive, certainly we are doing something (in fact more than one thing). And
as the world is generously diverse, this everyone's knowledge covers every imaginable branch of human
thought. That is our first ingredient in our recipe to catch the big opportunity aforementioned: there are six
billions of experts in the world, sure that millions will be eager to help.

Forget disabilities, gender, social status, race, religion, or whichever other categorization in which you are
able to think, the knowledge makes no difference and is scattered in the everyone's mind. Everyone's mind
has a bit of the human global knowledge, but the human global knowledge is not in one mind, not even
remotely on all our systems (digital or analogic ones). The true knowledge resides in the everyone's brain,
remember, learning in its essence, is a human endeavor (the everyone opportunity), not a technological
one.

Before the ICTs, the Internet and the open Web, there were three problems that prevented us to unfold the
potential of this first ingredient; we had no way to easily connect all those experts, and even if we had
access, still remain two problems. We did not have enough computing power for capturing, processing and
retaining details of the access and use of information in an efficient manner. And worse, as reality is just the
consensus of everyone, even if we had solved the two problems before, we did not have the mental models
that allow us to freely harness this potential through the everyone's collaborative effort.

Now, after several decades of Internet and Web evolution, we are at the critical moment that we have
almost solved the first two problems, and we are beginning to understand and develop new mental models
to harness our new abilities (see the Wikipedia, the Open Source movement, and so on). That is our second
ingredient, we have at the top of the Web, our online social networks, waiting for us to uncover their
collective intelligence power. The power of the synergy that is achieved through the billions of interactions
among the millions of experts in the world, freely helping each other to learn from the best each other is.
In other words, Crowdsourced Learning.

But wait, we have available these two ingredients, however our education system is still stagnated in a
model that is 500 years old (at least). What is happening? Why we do not use these two ingredients to free
ourselves from ignorance? Because reality is just the consensus of everyone, that is the everyone's power,
and also the everyone's curse (because of our resistance to change). We are just beginning to replace our
old mental models, by models more appropriate for our newly acquired abilities. So, we urgently need new
mental models that allow us to create the reality in which Crowdsourced Learning is possible.

Humanity is like a child who have her/his legs ready for walking, but he/she does not know how. At this
beginning, he/she is still crawling, but as the child becomes conscious of her/his abilities and get help from
their parents and siblings, he/she stops crawling and starts to use the legs to walk. Precisely, create
awareness and provide help, are the goals of the present manifest. The manifest aims to create a
movement based in the power of our online social networks (because again, these goals are an everyone's
task that is possible to achieve through our social networks), in order to develop and disseminate a new
mental model that allow us to create the reality in which Crowdsourced Learning is possible.



The basement of the movement to be created is encompassed by the following mantra: 'Everyone a Tutor.'
Whatever your knowledge, skills and experiences are, you can make a difference in the life of someone who
need them, by freely offering to be her/his tutor in you expertise area. Today, you help he/she being
her/his tutor in you expertise area, tomorrow he/she will be your tutor in her/his expertise area , and thus
is woven a new kind of social network, where everyone is a tutor. That will be the driving force of the
Every1Tutor movement.

The best learner is the motivated one, and nobody is more motivated than one who has a real problem to
solve, but lacks of the knowledge and the expertise to address it in a satisfactorily way. That will be the
Every1Tutor focus, a bottom-up approach, where is the learner, who at the precise time that he/she is
having the need for learning, that sets the learning needs based on a real problem that he/she has (learner
centered). And he/she will learn as is solving that problem (learning by doing), with the guidance of a tutor
(one-to-one tutoring), provided by the Every1Tutor's social network.

But also, the approach is bottom-up, because first, are the learners themselves in charge of improving the
learning material and provide additional comments, questions, examples and other kinds of contributions.
These contributions are mandatory, and will create the learner's learning track, which will be left freely
available to the other members of the Every1Tutor's social network, so, the next time another learner has a
problem that needs a knowledge/skills set approximately similar to the current learner, he/she will find the
current learner's learning track, and this unique perspective will help her/him to learn faster. Second,
besides the tutor, who is basically to provide guidance and answer deep questions (thus, enriching the
learner's learning track), the remaining community members are allowed to collaborate in this learning
process, as for example indicating some useful material available, answering some particular question,
doing comments, etc. Contributions that also enrich the learner's learning track.

Thus, through the learning tracks left in the Every1Tutor system, not only by the learner who ask for help,
but also by the members that help her/him, the Every1Tutor's social network will evolve an emergent
system able to provide Crowdsourced Learning in a more intelligent way (and easier for the Every1Tutor 's
members), every time that everyone uses it. In other words, for each interaction that is made in the system,
it gets exponentially smarter through the network effects and feedback loops that the learning tracks left in
the system are providing.

Roadmap (next steps)

In the first year the main goals of the Every1Tutor movement will be:

• (I) Start to offering to a maximum number of learners (to be determined), freely tutoring in the
'Learning programming' and 'The Accessibility Principles' areas, with the aim that through the
learning by doing procedure, develop a first rough Operating System (social rules), for the
Every1Tutor's social network (the Every1Tutor's social OS):
• For example, the social OS must define which actors the social network have (learners,
tutors, collaborators, supporters, ??), which are the actors responsibilities , how should be
defined the real problem that the learner presents, if the learners have to learn in groups
(minimum and maximum cardinality), the maximum number of learners who can be
attended simultaneously by a tutor (to ensure the one-to-one tutoring while safeguarding
the efficiency of the system), the rating system for the network's actors, determine whether
to award prizes to the actors (based on what and the time intervals), and many more



questions related to the social operation of the Every1Tutor's social network.
• The social OS must follow the the same principles that made the Internet successful, it
should be based in open protocols and standards, collaboration and contributions should be
done in a decentralized way, and must minimize the cost of using the system by all the
network's actors.
• (II) Develop the basic software (the Every1Tutor's system OS), in order to support the Every1Tutor's
social OS. The system OS must also support the capture of the learning tracks and the aggregation
of them in order to improve the Every1Tutor's Crowdsourced Learning capabilities. The social OS
must be designed and developed based in the following key features:
• Adherence to technical standards through the pervasive use of open industry standards in
order to enable interoperability.
• Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the pathway to manage the services integration,
ensuring security, flexibility, manageability and reliability.
• Scalable and composable in order to benefit from the cloud computing approach to be able
to respond to variable demand.
• Will be using Bamboo Learning, a Firefox-based framework being developed at the aDeNu
research group (for references go to: https://adenu.ia.uned.es/web/en/system/files/mock-
up_0.rar)
• (III) Develop the Every1Tutor's communication plan through the developing of the communication
material, and based in this material the diffusion, dissemination, education and proselytism of the
Every1Tutor movement's principles with the goal of:
• Create a community that in turn help to disseminate these principles.
• Help in the developing of the social and system OSs.



Conclusion
Crowdsourced Learning: is the power of the synergy that is achieved through the billions of interactions
among the millions of experts in the world, freely helping each other to learn from the best each other is.
We already have the basic ingredients necessary to implement Crowdsourced Learning, the online social
networks on the top of the open Web and the impressive computational capabilities behind it. We only
need to go ahead only one step more, create and disseminate a new mental model that allows us to create
an everyone consensus (the new reality), that Crowdsourced Learning is possible. That is all, basically is a
mental step, not a physical one (these already are with us), we can, if everyone wants!

If Every1Tutor fully succeeds promoting the Web as a medium to help each other to learn from the best
each other is, the human being is taking a step further on the way to the self liberation from ignorance. If
Every1Tutor, partially succeeds , its idea is planting a seed that will bear fruit in other more powerful ideas.
If Every1Tutor fails … there are no walls, only signals to change of direction .. that is evolution!

Please! Join at: http://www.drumbeat.org/project/every1tutor-everyone-tutor


The Crowdsourced Learning manifest

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