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.

DIGG THIS POST IF YOU DIG IT.

After scouring the web to find the web applications most used by students, we created a list recognizing the Top 10 Web Applications for College Students. Check out which ones made it below. (some of which will help you study for your upcoming finals)

Top 10 web applications for college students:

1. Facebook although no longer just for college students, this site is still a very big part of university life and some web savvy professors are using it for course management and student interaction
2. Unigo the leading university review site and an editorial resource for college news and advice
3. GradeGuru Citation Manager a bookmarklet that helps you collect and manage citations in APA and MLA style straight from your browser (a bit self-loving we know but this will make bibliographies and citations for your final papers a breeze!)
4. Chegg the #1 textbook rental site
5. GradeGuru Link List available as a bookmarklet & FireFox Add-On is a time-saving tool for instructors and students alike that captures URLs as you browse the web and provides a single destination URL to easily share resources with students  and classmates
6. Thinkfold real-time group collaboration for project planning and assignments
7. GradeFix time management tool that helps students organize their study time and plan their assignments more efficiently
8. Google Apps Google applications such as Google Documents, Calendar and GMail have become a standard suite of tools for college students
9. Pidgin (software based IM) and Meebo (web based IM) are the most popular multi-network IM clients used by college students (note: some consider IM to be as much of a distraction as they are a tool for collaboration)
10. Mindmeister online mind mapping and collaboration tool with iPhone apps and offline client solutions

What other applications do you use for learning, collaborating, course management, etc?

“Taking Notes Beyond the Classroom”

Below are a few highlights of the article:

Despite mixed reactions, note sharing has continued to grow in popularity. “Broadly, what we’re seeing is a trend in the increase of recognition that learning is collaborative. We’ve often treated what students do as private segments, they just go back to their dorms and study, when in fact they study together a lot,” said David Parry, assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas-Dallas. Parry is also part of McGraw-Hill’s Academic Advisory Committee. “We’ve seen Facebook and MySpace collaboration to share information. There are opportunities for [the note sharing] Web sites to play that role for students.”

“From our perspective, we see note sharing as evolving into a more collaborative community of notes, more real time discussion, students helping each other in more real time,” Sawtell said. “If other social networks should be taken as an example, that is what may ultimately play out.”

Another concern about online note sharing is the fear that it is essentially spoon-feeding material to students and propagating a culture of laziness. However, supporters of the sites say they attract ambitious students, rather than class skippers. Keith Hampson, director of digital education strategies at Toronto’s Ryerson University, who is also part of McGraw-Hill’s Academic Advisory Committee, said that his original sense of skepticism has dissipated. “The more I’ve looked into this, the more I realized that the people who are using [note sharing sites] are proactive students. They want to have their notes in their hands before they enter class, they may want two or three copies of those notes when studying for an exam.”

The article ends with the following statement from Dr. Keith Hampson:

“I think there’s a real divide in higher education as to how we ought to be teaching, how students ought to be learning,” Hampson said. However, he acknowledged that whichever direction education moves in, change is inevitable. “We are obviously moving towards a more active and collaborative style of learning. These social technologies and practices enable to us to do this on a much grander scale.”

The Open Access movement, ushered in by MIT OpenCourseWare, marked a significant shift in the way academics leverage the web to spread knowledge. We believe this trend is set to grow and perhaps reach a tipping point among college students in the next academic year.

Last semester, as thousands of students at hundreds of universities across the US started using GradeGuru, we quickly realized the potential for building a leading community to share class notes, improve their study skills and build their academic portfolios. GradeGuru is attracting Facebook and YouTube users who want to leverage social media to built their academic reputation.

We are very excited about the new designs and functions that we’ll be rolling out in the Fall and can’t wait to hear your thoughts. From full Facebook integration, to school specific pages, we think GradeGuru will be of value to hundreds of thousands of college students (fingers crossed). We truly believe today’s born digital college students are leading a revolution in learning and we want GradeGuru to be a vehicle for that change.

Best,

Emily Sawtell – GradeGuru Founder