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ERIC Number: EJ1039809
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2014-Sep
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-1492-3831
EISSN: N/A
Crowdteaching: Supporting Teaching as Designing in Collective Intelligence Communities
Recker, Mimi; Yuan, Min; Ye, Lei
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, v15 n4 p138-160 Sep 2014
The widespread availability of high-quality Web-based content offers new potential for supporting teachers as designers of curricula and classroom activities. When coupled with a participatory Web culture and infrastructure, teachers can share their creations as well as leverage from the best that their peers have to offer to support a collective intelligence or crowdsourcing community, which we dub "crowdteaching." We applied a collective intelligence framework to characterize crowdteaching in the context of a Web-based tool for teachers called the Instructional Architect (IA). The IA enables teachers to find, create, and share instructional activities (called IA projects) for their students using online learning resources. These IA projects can further be viewed, copied, or adapted by other IA users. This study examines the usage activities of two samples of teachers, and also analyzes the characteristics of a subset of their IA projects. Analyses of teacher activities suggest that they are engaging in crowdteaching processes. Teachers, on average, chose to share over half of their IA projects, and copied some directly from other IA projects. Thus, these teachers can be seen as both contributors to and consumers of crowdteaching processes. In addition, IA users preferred to view IA projects rather than to completely copy them. Finally, correlational results based on an analysis of the characteristics of IA projects suggest that several easily computed metrics (number of views, number of copies, and number of words in IA projects) can act as an indirect proxy of instructionally relevant indicators of the content of IA projects.
Athabasca University. 1200, 10011 - 109 Street, Edmonton, AB T5J 3S8, Canada. Tel: 780-421-2536; Fax: 780-497-3416; e-mail: irrodl@athabascau.ca; Web site: http://www.irrodl.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Middle Schools; Secondary Education; Junior High Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: 0937630