Derek, I like how you describe education 3.0 as another layer in education providing more options for individuals. E3.0 it seems is less about organizations provisioning education and more about individuals provisioning their own.
I argue that an abundance in both learning resources as well as “accreditation” is what will enable velocity. When we provision our own learning, there is an important role for accreditation in its broader meaning as a 3rd party stamp of approval.
For instance, when we travel, we can choose to travel on your own or we might go with a package deal where everything is pre-planned and quality controlled. Both forms of travel benefit from various 3rd party stamps of approval. These can be ratings and comments from fellow travelers, recommendations in a published guidebook, or the brand name of the organization offering the experience. Different trips benefit from different kinds of 3rd party recognition depending on our purpose for the trip.
Likewise, in education there are stamps of approval for all of the parts of the system: content is peer reviewed, published and awarded prizes by 3rd parties whose names are respected among a particular community; processes can be ISO certified for quality; degrees can earn approval from professional bodies that are the keepers of standards and best practices in their particular communities; institutions can be recognized by governments and accreditation bodies by demonstrating adherence to rules and practices; and individual learning outcomes can be recognized by normed exams and evaluation by recognized evaluators - to name a few.
A long tail in open learning resources benefits from a wide variety of stamps of approval from an unlimited variety of 3rd parties “ including individuals. How else can we find what best suits our purpose, including the characteristics of openness, in an ever-growing abundance of good stuff”?
Our purposes and contexts are not only local, but personal. We need stronger recommender systems and ways to identify useful resources fit for our individual use. I believe that velocity in the growth of resources needs to be matched by growth and variety in stamps of approval so we can make more informed choices.
IMHO – Chris
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