Saturday, January 31, 2009

Reviews and reviewer ratings

There needs to be some kind of recommender / reviewer network - perhaps peer-to-peer, that allows people to review OERs and then gain status as a trusted reviewer. Sort of like Ebay seller status.

I read way too much Stephen Downes to suggest that any one organization should own and operate such as system. But having some connectivist mechanism for pulling this all together out of the "ethers" needs to provide the trust / credibility / authority indicators to help adopters and learners identify the OERs that best suit their needs.

Is there any evidence that there is support for this? Are there any actual implementations?
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2 comments:

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  2. This is a very traditional definition of "textbook" which is fine. The traditional textbook model is somewhat limiting, with the continued reliance on the existing sources of authentication. Does the author or the reviewer need to be a known authority or person of status at four year university to be qualified to write or recommend a textbook? If this is the criteria, then it isn't really scalable to any great extent.

    A somewhat broader interpretation of "textbook" that includes wikis and other collaborations, collections and publishing tools, suggests more opportunities and challenges for consideration. Scott suggests a personal network approach, which also works, with limitations. However, it doesn't scale in a different way. How big is the biggest personal network you are prepared or able to manage? Are you missing some of the good stuff, because your personal network does extend wide enough or deep enough?

    There needs to be an expansion and recognition of citizen academics, just as there has been an enormous growth in world-class citizen journalism. Some aggregating and filtering would be extremely helpful.

    Perhaps some RSS feeds with a dash of Delicious and Napster on the side?

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