Finding Knowledge in the Global Golden Age of Learning
The Los Alamos Map of Science shows how subjects
can robustly interlink in an open network with
nodes that need to be findable; Click to enlarge
By 2015 more than five billion people will have access to the internet from mobile devices. It will become possible for the first time to deliver what is known by humankind to essentially everybody. The question is: will those five billion users be able to find the knowledge they seek online?
Judy Breck—frontiersman in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement (see www.oercommons.org)—proposes findability as what logically comes next for online learning resources.
“Open had to come first,” Judy explains. “The Hewlett Foundation was a major force in getting some universities to open their educational resources. I realize that usage of the OER has been important, but its potential use has only begun. The reason the OER use is small is because these opened educational resources are mostly bundled in curricula and course pdfs.”
Judy Breck, a champion
for OER
Finding: the future
The next step for mainstreaming online learning resources hinges on findability. Enhancing findability requires optimizing nodes of knowledge within bundles like curricula and course pdfs. “Those OER bundles, as is true of online newspapers, are not responsive to learners because different users need different small parts of the bundle,” Judy posits, explaining how learners find knowledge and use it in unique ways to learn.
In The Big Switch, Nick Carr describes this phenomenon in his chapter called “The Great Unbundling.” If we can describe and distribute to experts findability methods (keywords, tagging, link juice, etc.) that they can use when inserting their nodes into the open network then the OER movement will become radically more robust. We will move past the threshold into the global golden age of learning.
A global golden age of learning
So how might we help usher in this global golden age in which knowledge is findable?
Judy thinks the next step is about teaching experts how to make their knowledge findable. To do this, Judy is partnering with the Global Knowledge Initiative to translate her insights into a set of tools that experts in any area can use to ensure that their knowledge can be shared, used, and, most importantly, found by those who seek it.
Entailed in this collaboration is the construction of a toolkit for experts. The toolkit will help scientists, teachers, researchers, students, innovators, or anyone else with ideas to share to use best practice in terms of findability when producing content.
Judy Breck, was recognized a decade ago by the Industry Standard for her leadership (1997-2001) at HomeworkCentral.com, the first major open educational resources website. She has written five books on online learning knowledge and the network laws that drive it. “Building the toolkit would be an enormously satisfying way to convey what I have observed and have come to understand about how knowledge functions in networks. I hope others will have the vision to support and implement node level findability for what is known by humankind. As Nick Carr explains, the network laws are not to be denied: unbundling will happen. The question is, how soon. There is no excuse for not starting now," Judy asserts.
We agree, which is why the Global Knowledge Initiative is seeking sponsors to support Judy and our team in producing the toolkit and ensuring its widest possible dissemination. Please contact Sara Farley at the Global Knowledge Initiative if interested in supporting this work: sara@gkinitiative.org.
You can write to Judy at: judybrek AT gmail DOT com or visit her blog www.goldenswamp.com.
Contributors: Sara E. Farley; Judy Breck
