Projects Underway
Crowdlearning: Towards Collaborative, Self-Sustaining Learning Environments and Practices
Alexander Nikolaev
Project Team- Suzanne M. Miller, University at Buffalo
- Alireza Farasat, University at Buffalo
University at Buffalo
2016
Tier Three
This project explores the utility of socio-technical pedagogical paradigm Crowdlearning in physical and virtual classrooms, across academic disciplines.
The vision of Crowdlearning is that of a self-sustaining collaborative learning environment, where the participants - students of a given subject - intermittently take on the roles of (1) the creators of subject-focused problems (problem statements/formulations with answer alternatives, hints, correct answers with explanations, etc.), (2) problem quality evaluators, and (3) problem solvers, all on an anonymized gamified online platform.
The PIs work to foster a self-regulated process, where student-initiated contributions feed into the growth and refinement of problem banks for academic subjects, with the evaluator responsibilities being crowdsourced to the students themselves. The resulting problem banks then enable gamified personalized learning.
This project encompasses development, implementation and data analysis efforts in two physical (STEM and Graduate Education) classrooms and in one online course, exploring pathways to wider adoption of the Crowdlearning practice.