Crowdsourcing has become an important and simple way of solving challenging problems since the advent and evolvement of the Internet. Companies, scientists, charities etc. sometimes crowsource to acquire help from the crowd to get their difficult jobs done.
But have you ever heard about crowdsourcing in classroom?
Through crowdsourcing, students can easily leverage to get their important assignments or highly challenging class works done. In other words, it is a way of making everyone contribute his/her knowledge to handle a class assignment in order to arrive at the best possible answers.
Why use crowdsourcing for classroom assignments?
Some classroom assignments can be really challenging, and handling them could be time-consuming. So utilizing the power of crowdsourcing becomes the easiest and fastest way to handle such works. However, to crowdsource is not to cheat in order to get a task quickly done; rather, it is the act of pooling resources together to arrive at a highly researched result.
Besides, it is a way of getting information from different but reliable sources. When students crowdsource, the tendency is that different individuals bring in their contributions in order to get a rich knowledge base for solving their puzzles. It therefore provides a way for students to get broader knowledge on a particular subject.
Crowdsourcing also helps identify the best or most resourceful students from the crowd. Sometimes students can be shy to take assignments; even the best may not have the opportunity to showcase their talent. But with crowdsourcing, this obstacle is removed, and talented ones can be discovered.
Finally, to crowsource is a way of building students’ confidence and helping them to develop their teaching abilities. Some students could know what to talk about but usually, sharing their knowledge in a way others can comprehend can be a daunting task. With this way of sharing task and physically participating in solving assignments, students develop their teaching skills further.
How is crowdsourcing done?
Crowdsourcing is done by sharing responsibilities to all members of the team and allowing them to make their own researches. For example, you have a topic to discuss; you simply ask everyone to look up the topic from different relevant sources. Everyone is allowed to share with the team whatever he/she finds out. At the end of sharing, the students put their heads together to filter out the points that are considered useless, and then gather what is seen as verified and useful resources.
Sources where students can get information can be from textbooks, library, Wikipedia, Google, Twitter, etc. Google drive can be used to organize the crowdsourcing project and students are allowed to post in their answers. Everyone can easily use the same link to access the platform and share his or her ideas in real time, thereby saving much time.
Another practical way to share findings is to allow students make their own researches, and then share their findings each using the classroom backboard or learning board. This makes the information readily available for everyone to see and then brainstorm on the various answers provided to see which is more acceptable. A word of caution though, is that not all sources on the Internet can be trusted. Various sources have to be compared to see how closely knit the answers they provide are.
Everybody has to be given a chance to share his/her findings. In this way, you will not only be giving everyone an opportunity to participate, but you increase the chances of getting the best result for the question being solved. It is such a nice way of ensuring that all students irrespective of their intellectual differences learn something new from the group and has something tangible to take home.
Why not try and crowdsource your next classroom assignment? It might just be the best experience you will ever have with your students.
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From Mobile App development company TouchApp
