Ahrashs Blog

Reputation-building seems to be all the rage these days, at least for online communities. This is not a bad thing; indeed, I think that many of us looking at the growing size and personalization of the Web have felt that the development of working reputation systems will be key step. In education, reputation is king, and highly reputed institutions command steep tuition and fees, and highly reputable professors are well compensated for sharing their knowledge. In education, desirability is measured by exclusivity – the lower the percentage of interested people who actually gain access, the greater the perceived reputation (and value) of that educational offering.

It stands to reason that reputation will also be crucial in open education, but here the rules have been changed, since reputation borne of exclusivity is no longer an option. The challenge, then, is to develop reputation systems that are honest, in the sense that the “currency” of reputation is authentic, and that external consideration (and perhaps validation) of reputation is transparent. In its most basic form, such a reputation system will have to demonstrate that a given educational resource (course of study, textbook, learning module, tutor, what have you) in fact improves the targeted skills and knowledge for any given learner. In other words, you need to be able to determine the student’s competency prior to the educational intervention, and then evaluate the gains made, and the difference should be positive. In my mind, this is one of the more important potential ramifications of open educational practice. Seat time and simple exposure to certain types of materials will not be (and really, never has been) sufficient.

So what are our options here? A first step might be to simply list as many web-based reputation systems as we can find. For example, Notemonk, a site that supports virtual study groups and exchanges around books, has a point system to reward people who “contribute to the community.” Similarly, the Huffington Post has a “HuffPost Badge” system to “recognize and empower HuffPost readers and users.” And we are all familiar with ratings systems, such as Digg rankings, eBay seller ratings, customer review (star ratings) for both products and sellers on Amazon, and myriad crowdsourced review sites like Yelp, Zagat, Angie’s List, and more. Some traditional reputation metrics simply migrated online, such as institutional branding (people tend to trust physics lessons from MIT more than from a random physics lessons site), popularity indices (page views, downloads, subscriber numbers, etc), and certification by agencies that position themselves as arbiters of quality (think of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval). This last category seems ripe for expansion and innovation, particularly if educators and associated institutions are willing to pay for the service of evaluating and filtering some subset of the vast pool of content on the Internet.

To ground this exercise a bit, we want to consider possible reputation systems with an eye towards specific implementation in P2PU. We are gathering pointers to existing online reputation systems on the Mozilla wiki. Any system might be of interest, regardless of the type of organization using it and the way in which it has been implemented. In the meantime, we are already fleshing some of these systems out so that P2PU can better support their use and experimentation.

One of the growing challenges we face as researchers is managing the deluge of relevant information out there – never mind the irrelevant stuff that also obviously consumes huge quantities of time. So much of what I know about a topic comes from so many different places – conversations, blog postings, peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations… it’s totally overwhelming. And for those of us working outside of traditional academic settings, this problem is even worse since so many of the “authoritative” sites are (still) inaccessible, making less formal modes of communication even more important.

As someone trained in academic discourse, I feel it is important to ground my work in the existing knowledge base. But at the same time, especially given the wide range of my interests, I have little capacity to ensure that I am fully informed of the latest thinking in any one field, at any breadth or depth. This can engender a form of academic paralysis, where I think I might have something interesting to share, but I am afraid that someone else will have already said it and it might be perceived that I am unfairly claiming the idea as my own.

What to do?

Well, first of all, I added a note to the project blog (see to the right) that clarifies that any absence of referencing does not indicate any unique claim by me to the posted ideas. We all know that ideas build on each other, and existing referencing customs are designed to ensure that the generators of prior knowledge are given credit. I believe that credit will be given here as well, but perhaps as an after-the-fact acquisition from the broader community instead of as an a priori review by myself.

Second of all, I think we need to reconsider our idolization of the idea originators. It is my sense that people naturally find ways to distinguish themselves and their ideas from other people. The harder task is finding and building on the common ground. Besides, if someone generates a lot of new(ish) ideas, that person will acquire recognition regardless of what legal or community norms are in practice. In fact, I would submit that ideas are relatively cheap – it is their contextualization and implementation that is difficult and worthy of support. In the Internet age, we can imagine systems that reward “idea movers” more than “idea generators.” I suppose we have to be watchful for simply rewarding whomever shouts the loudest, but the archive that is the Internet will help us sort out who has done most to conceptualize or promote an idea, without getting too bogged down figuring all of that stuff out beforehand.

Finally, I am hoping that anyone and everyone interested in this project will contribute to a crowdsourced reference database, growing here. Ideally, references listed here should include links to the particular postings (or other media) where the reference seemed relevant. There might also be some cool way to accomplish similar aims using Zotero, semantic wikis, or the like. Feel free to make suggestions. In the meantime, instead of taking offense if you or your favorite reference is left out somewhere, just add it in!

I’ve uploaded a basic description of the P2PU/Mozilla Open Accreditation project and the tentative scope of work to the wiki. Check it out, share insights, get involved.

Many of you already know that P2PU and Mozilla have teamed up to develop pathways to competency in open web skills, or web craft. The idea is that many potential participants in P2PU are seeking to do more than simply satisfy random or hobby urges – in many cases, they are seeking bona fide courses of study for development of competency in areas of possible employment or other tangible uses. The initial focus is on open web skills, or web craft. Several of us are hashing through these ideas and seeking engagement and feedback from the broader P2PU and Mozilla communities.

In that vein, this blog will be a forum for me (Ahrash Bissell, project lead on open accreditation for P2PU/Mozilla) to share my musings, post questions and entreaties, and otherwise just keep people up to date. I expect I will be blogging about authentic assessment, open accreditation, effective pedagogical models, peer learning, digital media and learning… well, blogging about a whole mess stuff related to Peer to Peer University, open education, and assessment/accreditation.

Much of the work on this project will be taking place on the P2PU section of the Mozilla wiki.

Feel free to get in touch!

-Ahrash

And here we go!