Fostering students’ participation in creating educational content through crowdsourcing

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes and evaluates a model of crowdsourcing in microlearning that includes the balancing of collaborative learning and crowdsourcing mechanisms. The goal of the research is to implement a learner-centered approach through crowdsourced content creation and to improve the process and outcomes of learning. Crowdsourced content creation was accomplished through a collaborative project within a higher education institution. Micro-courses in the form of short video lessons were created by students and published on the Coursmos platform and a certain group of students attended these micro-courses. The evaluation was carried out at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, the University of Belgrade on a sample of 71 students who created micro-courses and 74 students who attended these micro-courses. The results show that the developed model provides simple communication and collaboration among students, high level of their self-organization and satisfaction, efficient management of crowdsourcing network and collaborative knowledge building.

KEYWORDS:

• Crowdsourcing
• microlearning
• micro-courses
• collaborative learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Anida Zahirović Suhonjić is a lecturer at the School of Business, Information Technology and Market Communications “International Business-Information Academy” Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her professional interests include e-business, e-commerce and e-education. She is currently writing her PhD thesis titled Models of crowdsourcing in smart learning environments.

Marijana Despotović-Zrakić is full professor at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Prof. Marijana is the head of the Department of E-Business and Management Systems, and head of the Laboratory for the Simulation of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade.

Aleksandra Labus is an assistant professor in the field of electronic business at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia. Her professional interests include e-business, m-business, Internet marketing, e-education, edutainment, social networks and social media.

Zorica Bogdanović is employed at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade as an associate professor in the scientific field of e-business. Her professional interests include e-business, e-education, Internet and mobile technologies. She is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Computer Chapter Secretary CO-16s.

Dušan Barać is employed at the Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade in the position of assistant professor in the field of electronic business. His scientific interests are e-business, Internet technologies, e-government, e-education and e-banking.

ORCID

Anida Zahirović Suhonjić http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9341-3530

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Education Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia [grant number 174031].