Open Content as a Rising Trend in 2010
Open content tools which started out as a small trend amongst a niche group of college students are increasing in popularity this year.
At GradeGuru we are witnessing a rise in student collaboration as more and more students take an active role in their education.
Open content tools that allow for this form of collaboration are likely to go mainstream this coming year as recently reported by Wired Campus.
EDUCAUSE and The New Media Consortium recently released their 2010 Horizon report offering insight into some of the technological changes occurring this year that are shifting the academic landscape.
What started as an academic movement spurred on by the MIT Open Courseware initiative has rapidly flowed into the student realm. The much talked about concept of “free” has come of age. Coupled with social networking, this has enormous potential to change the way students learn and expect to learn.
The introduction of tools like Google Wave, while yet to be fully introduced in an educational context is proving to have enormous potential in student collaboration and access to educational content -Google Wave’s functionality allows students to discuss and share videos and files all in real time . Professors are also beginning to explore the idea of Google Wave in the scope of academia.
A small subset of institutions are seeing the growth in open access tools and are adapting their current models accordingly. For example, Tufts University has begun offering learning material online free of charge. In addition to this, Open universities such as University of the People, a tuition-free online academic institution, are leveraging technology in the educational sphere by offering students the opportunity to access educational content for free.
Not only are students finding free expert content available online, they are also creating their own content, sharing it, collaborating and in many cases reaping multiple benefits – shared knowledge, peer-review and encouragement, increasing their confidence as they work with and engage with their peers, and even financial rewards and career advantages.
