It seems reasonable to claim that since Q&A is about learning, Aardvark’s network-based Q&A site can be described as a type of learning network. The less obvious but, in my opinion, more interesting claim is that the design of learning networks can (and should!) be viewed as a social search problem. Illich argued this, Meetup demonstrates it quite nicely, and Grockit is moving in that direction, too. In an email exchange published last year, I suggested that the future of AI in Education will have a lot to do with social search:

I think the AIED systems of the future will be less about teaching directly, and more about providing guidance: when and how a student would benefit from working with someone else (perhaps a teacher, tutor, or peer.) When I get stuck solving a particular type of problem, who (that’s online and available) can best help me understand it? A good system will have predicted the frustrating challenge, and will have already lined up the person best-suited to explaining it to me in a way that I will understand. After I’ve demonstrated that I mastered the necessary skills, who can I then explain it to, both to help them and to clarify it for myself? A good system will be able to seamlessly coordinate this process. Through these interactions, the system will unobtrusively be learning more about me — both as a learner and as a peer-tutor — in order to improve with time.

Downright Aardvarkian.

I’m happy to announce that Grockit will be offering its paid summer research internship program for the summer of 2010. This is the second year that we’re doing this (thanks again, Angela!), and I think it’s a great opportunity for doctoral students to apply their own research experience to a system that a large (and growing) community of learners uses everyday. It’s worth mentioning that Grockit has a large and interesting set of educational data, a variety of research interests, a very talented team, and a fantastic work environment. I just posted details about this program (with an application form) on the 2010 Summer Research Internship, and I encourage you to check it out.

I wanted to share a few thoughts on why we’re offering this, what we have in mind for the program, and why you (or perhaps someone you know) should consider applying.

Grockit, as you may know, is a San Francisco-based web startup building a platform for — and a community around — synchronous collaborative learning games. We strive to provide our growing global network of learners with a smart platform informed by peer assistance and adaptive support. Towards this end, we’re constantly exploring new ways to support collaborative learning online, and we’re frequently examining and applying techniques for analyzing the learning data that we’ve been collecting. One reason that we’re offering this program is to expand on the ways in which we pursue these goals.

Two of the challenges in studying computational systems for peer learning — both of which I faced in completing my own graduate work — is that these systems can take quite some time to build, and it can often take even longer to cultivate a sufficiently large community of participating learners. As a result, the time required to get from hypothesis to data analysis can be (or at least can feel) quite long. At Grockit, we’ve been making good progress with regards to both challenges, and hope that this internship will provide an enterprising graduate student with the opportunity to speed up this process for their own research questions.

In addition to the research opportunity, we’re offering a program stipend, an accommodation stipend, and a travel stipend. You’ll also get a healthy breakfast and lunch cooked in the office every weekday and the chance to spend your summer in vibrant San Francisco. So if you are a doctoral student studying in a university in the United States and interested in applying for a summer research position with us, I’d encourage you to submit an application.

The deadline is March 1, 2010, and you can apply today.

Just a quick post to let you know that several hundred great new ideas on how we might reimagine learning have just been submitted to the Digital Media and Learning competition. This week only, you can contribute to the conversation by adding your own comments. Be sure to check out QuestionLab, which is a proposal outlining how we can leverage Grockit’s platform for live collaboration to create a new game that actively engages learners in asking questions and sharing their work with the world, in concert with our friends at Connexions.

I’d love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment about QuestionLab on the DML site!

Update: The public viewing/commenting period is now closed. For the curious:

QuestionLab: Using inquiry to power a community of peer learning online

QuestionLab encourages inquiry and collaboration through social online games. By expanding on Grockit’s live web-based collaborative learning platform, QuestionLab complements the existing focus on students answering challenging questions with a new activity engaging small groups of students in asking/authoring their own questions, assessing peer responses, and sharing their work via automatic publication to the Connexions OER Content Commons.

While Grockit games are primarily built on instructor-written multiple-choice questions, QuestionLab supports student-written open-ended questions. Using a real-time collaborative editing environment, small groups write STEM-oriented questions of interest to them. Students are encouraged to draw on Open Educational Resources in composing these questions, and QuestionLab affords doing so directly from Connexions, a “Content Commons” of free and open-licensed educational materials. By attaching descriptive tags and estimating question difficulty, students shape which of their peers are later presented with that question.

Complementing this new collaborative inquiry activity is an expanded form of Grockit’s existing problem-solving game, in which students work alone, with peers, or with a teacher to research and answer questions. Students specify their topics of interest and a Grockit game is prepared based on those criteria. After seeing a question and submitting an answer, the group reviews and assesses past responses and can award points and achievement badges to past respondents and/or the question authors. All student work produced within QuestionLab will carry a Creative Commons license and we automatically be externally published to Connexions.

QuestionLab leverages several strengths of Grockit’s platform: its social and game dynamics that motivate engagement, its growing global network of peer study groups, and its popularity both in and out of school. By fueling these games with the products of student inquiry, peer-assessment, and open educational resources, QuestionLab creates a culture of participatory learning among a community of peers.