Decentralized Curriculums

Decentralized Curricula

Empowering non-traditional Education Pursuits

The internet grants access to the largest and most accessible store of information mankind has ever collected. Much of the business around this technology is centered around using algorithms and systems to efficiently organize and transfer data to points where it can be used to provide services to end users.

Lesser organized is the mass of informative content intended for humans to consume: academic journals, Wikipedia articles, educational pages, how-to’s and guides, videos, classroom documents. One looking to build a curriculum with free material from the internet in almost any particular subject with some amount of work should have no trouble finding references and resources. The path to a free, high level education seems tantalizingly close upon discovery of quality content.

The premise is a resource which connects a collection of material on the subject to be learnt, organized for the purpose of efficiently teaching those who follow it the full material it offers. At its simplest form it is a text document with ordered topics to learn, and materials from other sources linked within those topics. This would already empower many to learn, and the ceiling for quality stretches much higher .Some of the important advantages of this are:

Component learning: curricula can be split up so that each section is not contingent on the previous one assuming the prerequisites are met. Students do not have to start over or complete a comprehensive work load if they have or need existing sections mastered, and are not required to finish any curriculum past their own goals or needs.

High range of subjects: Any subject with resources can be made into a curriculum. Institutional subjects need not be abided to when deciding what subject to build a curriculum on; water-color painting, particle physics, and medium scale beet farming are all equally qualified to be taught, and college equivalency courses may prepare students in the future for tests of certification outside the current paradigm for earning degrees.

Smooth transition from resource collection to research: In subjects which end in theoretical questions, the expansion of the curriculum and its agreed upon validity would be equivalent to accepting the premises of original concepts or research.

Transparency and flexibility: curricula can be edited and differ from ones teaching the same subject(s) for various reasons. Explaining why a curriculum is the way it is will expose students to inherent grey areas as well as separate the art of teaching from objective claims on maximal effectiveness. curricula need not follow standardized routes.

Positives include:

Anyone with an internet connection can access the swath of free learning material.

Independent learners can direct their education outside of standardized curriculum to suit specific end goals.

Independent learners can work at their own pace, and are not required to restart or push through material if they become stumped (like they would if they failed or dropped a traditional class).

Multiple sources for the same concept can be cited, so that inconsistencies in a comprehensive sources quality, or different learning styles can be accounted for. Often times when stuck trying to understand something, hearing or reading the same thing formulated in slightly different ways adds depth to the concept, the same way that video (multiple images) adds depth to a single image.

These students often face challenges such as:

Students lack community and accountability. One may grit their teeth and attempt to power through, but many who have attempted serious self learning can attest to the burnout which sets in quickly when working alone, and relying on disparate sources for help.

If a student cannot find a set of resources that educates them to their desired goal, they must put together their own curriculum which is often inefficient or impossible to do before they understand what they are trying to learn.

Many resources that take students to their desired goal are often built more as reference material by a single author, and feature more breadth than a novice requires. The student is at the whim of the presentation style, intensity level, and end goal of the author, which can cause a lot of wasted time sorting through and deciphering material not intended as instruction, or with misaligned goals/prerequisites.

Students cannot easily test themselves or practice what they learned. Just like building your own curriculum, finding ways to test yourself in a non-redundant manner is difficult or impossible. In addition, some material may be structured in such a way that students have trouble finding the meaningful breaks in which it is important to check for understanding.

    The challenges listed here can be summed up in a single analogy: the independent student is like an explorer without a map. While there are many offers to guide them along a specific path, an opportunity is being missed by not compiling and ordering relevant information irrespective of its publisher to create a meta-resource which offers specific teaching while also giving students a sense of scope about what they are learning and how it connects to other subjects.

    The goal of this document is to outline begin laying out a format for maximizing the unique opportunities, and address the common challenges that learning on the internet holds. The key resource ultimately are the learned individuals willing to create curricula and fill them with vetted resources, and above all else I hope this document enlightens them to the opportunity for others they can help create.

curricula:

At its minimum a curriculum should be an ordered set of resources which lead its consumers from some prerequisite onward. The simplest one may just be a list of ordered topics with links to videos or web pages that explain each one, and tests of knowledge at the end in the appropriate form. In general, the more split up content is, the easier it will be to digest, and the easier it will be to find other material on the same topic. Long form material should be split up where appropriate to allow for student driven pacing. High quality guides could include things like original content, public domain textbook excerpts, input from experts, links to other guides, multiple resources for each topic, and anything else which enhances a curriculum’s effectiveness.

The basic structure of these guides allows rudimentary versions to get off the ground quickly; an expert need not do much more than list and order topics to begin the process. The bulk of the work to leading students to teaching resources is not in creating comprehensive, original material, but simply finding this material and compiling it. This alone eliminates much of the difficult work a self learner would have in preparing material, and also allows others to go in and refine the resources, structure, and add original material. I suspect for many subjects that finding existing and appropriate practice or test material may take the most work, or require original work.

Two key features should be that any curriculum should be in a format that is easy to create, edit, and share. Experts should be able to create modified versions without permission in hopes of constantly improving or accounting for niche end goals, and distribute them to those interested. A Wikipedia style format seems logical, but in the interest of accessibility for creators, a basic or rich text document, shared on Pastebin, GitHub, or Google Docs will be a great place to start.

Mission statement for the basic curriculum of an arbitrary subject:

    This curriculum contains resources intended to take students from [some prerequisite] to [some level of mastery] in the subject(s) of … . In it you will find free resources available off the internet which teach each concept, with each topic ordered so that the curriculum can be completed from start to finish, completed in parts, and begun from any topic within. Problem sets, questions, or other tests of knowledge are placed after subjects and allow you to test your learning.

Communities:

By nature of using only freely available online material, the challenge of social isolation in self learning has been addressed as much as possible from the standpoint of a dedicated curriculum creator. It is at this point that I hope to inspire people looking to learn from a curriculum created for this purpose, or shepard those that do, to explore the functions of a community built around a curriculum can have.

At its most basic level, my hope for a community would be for a group of individuals to form around a curriculum. My recommendation is to create sub communities topics in the curriculum, so that each topic can be completed independently of a definite schedule and so that people are allowed to get stuck and take extra time as needed. People could pass through each part at their own pace and as they advance help those in the previous sections, or go back as needed.

This community and its sub-communities could function like a microcosm of a traditional school, while taking advantage of technology to free students from costs, deadlines, high cost of failure and other challenges associated with traditional schooling. People who master the curriculum, creators of the curriculum, or publishers of the material in it could help directly those learning the subject.

Getting Started:

    If this guide has inspired and you possess any area of expertise, I urge you to create a curriculum for it. It does not have to start perfect, complete, or with high effort; choosing an end-goal, listing the topics which lead there, and collecting some material to teach those topics are all starting points which others can expand on. Share what you have and ask others to fill in or contribute, and share it again to that others can use what’s made. If you find or help create a curriculum you deem worthy, convince others to join you and form a community around it.