What are crowd sourcing educational platforms? (Featuring KnowQuest)
What is Crowdsourcing?
The world is shifting towards a collaborative society. Education is one of the biggest industry’s that is constantly growing and innovating. Education in general has become much more accessible than ever before. And in order to implement collaboration within post secondary education, Agostino Menna a Professor at Ryerson University and his team have created the online crowd sourcing educational platform; KnowQuest. Working together is critical in the collaborative society we live in today.
I had an opportunity to speak to Agostino Menna, about his endeavours at KnowQuest.
- How did you conceive KnowQuest?
The idea was conceived while i was an instructor at Niagara College. I noticed that open access platforms were sprigging up but all over, but had a university academic focus and not a college or applied focus. I saw this gap in the education market and build the KQ platform. KQ is basically a mash up of Google (search); Proquest (database); Facebook (social); Linkedin (Professional network) and Yelp (Review).
2. What is crowdsourcing and where do you see the industry shift?
Crowdsourcing is a take off from the sharing economy where creators of applied education content can share their resources on the KQ platform and build a data base that can target the niche where users can quickly find a starting point for starting assignments, projects, course outlines and to keep improving the applied education experience. The shift in data bases is “open access” and that is exactly where i am going with this.
3. Where do you see KnowQuest in the next 5 years?
I see KQ in the next 5 years as a open access content hub that services all of the college across North America.
Post Secondary institutions only have credentials left going for them— Agostino Menna
Post Secondary institutions only have credentials left going for them, as Professor Menna said. Most people within society can learn through the internet about almost anything generally for free. Post Secondary education has to innovate and move with the wave of educational platform technology in order to keep up; before it is too late.
So what is KnowQuest?
KnowQuest is a educational crowdsourcing technology platform, that collaborates with instructors and students and eases communication between the two parties. Instructors are able to give feedback to their students directly through the platform. KnowQuest essentially combines a D2L like platform(Ryerson Students should know) in terms of submitting assignments as well as accessing course content such as course outlines and research plans. It also combines a instructor ratings and reviews by students, similar that of Ratemyprofessor.com (again Ryerson University students should know). KnowQuest also allows users to showcase their Educational achievements as well as their professional experiences with future potential employers. In a nutshell, KnowQuest is a super platform for all things Post Secondary.
So how is KnowQuest and crowdsourcing beneficial?
Crowdsourcing can help institutions ease communication between instructors and students by sharing lesson plans with students and other instructors, as well as collaborate to fine new and innovative ideas in order to share material with students. Crowdsourcing is also beneficial for students because students can access homework and collaborate with other students to find solutions for problems through the platform technology. Therefore the education industry is changing very quickly in to a collaborative environment.
