Is crowdsourcing the future of college education?
What is crowdsourcing? This Web 2.0 term, first coined by tech journalist Jeff Howe in a June 2006 Wired magazine article, defines the 21st-century phenomenon of group-developed, open-source media that allows virtually anyone to contribute, anywhere. Examples include everything from Wikipedia, to CNN’s iReporters, to open-source software like Linux™ and Oracle® MySQL. With crowdsourced media on the rise—and even ubiquitous—it only follows that crowdsourcing will have a direct effect on college education. In fact—like it or not—it already is.
University of Phoenix students, like their colleagues in traditional universities, are making use of crowdsourced media in their studies, and University of Phoenix professors are responding with appropriate adaptations to their curricula.
Joe Lodewyck, MSCIS, is Director of Academic Data and a faculty member at University of Phoenix. “As a faculty member teaching in the College of Information Systems and Technology, I have worked with students to understand the various Web 2.0 technologies,” says Lodewyck. “I believe educators at all levels are recognizing that learners are more and more comfortable with technology of all sorts, and crowdsourcing falls into that category.”
Lodewyck goes on to say that while crowdsourcing is an important thing to consider in today’s classroom, it is also important to use crowdsourced media appropriately. “There are educators that do not recognize when using crowdsourcing in the classroom is appropriate and when it is not. In certain situations, learners may not actually benefit from using these tools,” he says.
Teaching his students to discuss and analyze when crowdsourced media use is appropriate is part of Lodewyck’s teaching strategy at University of Phoenix. “In the database arena, students discuss open-source database options such as Oracle MySQL and whether it is appropriate to run corporate databases on a system that has been developed by the general development community,” he says. “Many students recognize that there is a potential for security issues with open-source databases and are willing to discuss appropriate use.”
Lodewyck also cautions that just as open-source data platforms may not be as reliable as proprietary systems, crowdsourced information sources like Wikipedia may not be the best choice for research. “Many academics understand the value of using Wikipedia as a starting point for research, but using Wikipedia as an academic source is not typically appropriate because the peer-review process of this information is not completely established.”
Amy Patrick, BA, MS, a New York City-based graduate student with an academic background in both information technology and liberal arts, agrees that crowdsourced media should be approached with extreme caution. “I have not used crowdsourced media for any academic studies,” she says. “My reason is quite simple. When it comes to actual data, I prefer to gain my information from credited sources.”
Patrick is currently working towards her second master’s degree in the humanities from Empire State College; she already holds degrees from Ohio University and the Pratt Institute, and she doesn’t mince words when it comes to her opinion of crowdsourced media. “Sites like Wikipedia, private dot-com websites and iReporting all suffer from a lack of expertise, in my opinion,” she says. “Nowadays people feel that any person can write about anything. Everyone is deemed an expert. But for me, I believe an expert is one whose work has been vetted, judged by their peers, and uses historic and certified documents.”
Patrick hopes to use her multiple degrees to help her develop a career as a university librarian, and she brings a technology-focused perspective to that career path. “The Internet has already dramatically changed libraries,” she says. “Public libraries have seen an uptick in users, but those users have less literacy. In the academic realm, the librarians must work with academic departments and students to help not only with how to use electronic data, books, and other media, but also academic honesty and how to correctly cite crowdsourced media.”
Despite its potential pitfalls, however, crowdsourced media is here to stay, and both students and real-world professionals must learn to adapt their research practices accordingly. Furthermore, academics like Joe Lodewyck believe crowdsourcing brings opportunities for more robust academic research than ever before. “As an educational tool, crowdsourcing has the potential to put students in remote areas in collaboration with students in more urban settings,” he says. “The collaboration of these diverse groups through crowdsourcing serves to expand the learning potential for everyone.”
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