Share Paper: A learner's guide to nurturing wise crowds and taming stupid mobs

  1. Jon Dron, Athabasca University, Canada

Abstract: No one is a completely self directed learner - whether we learn from websites like Wikipedia, our Facebook friends, reading a book, watching a YouTube video, engaging in a community of practice, observing an expert or simply running a Google search or watching passers-by on a street, we swim in an ocean of teachers that guide, influence or shape our learning. To be human is to be a social learner, and the exponential rise in social media gives us exponentially more opportunities to learn from and with others. Moreover, if we engage at all with others, whether face-to-face, through email, ...