We are promoting the concept of "participatory learning" as part of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative, and as one of the three prongs of HASTAC (the other two emphases of HASTAC being creative technology development and critical thinking: we believe all three should be integrated and part of contemporary intellectual and social life and learning).

Because so much of our formal education today is based on a model of individual achievement of test scores, of filling in the right answers on standardized tests, in certifying and passing boards and so forth, a term like "participatory learning" needs definition. We've all but forgotten that for most of human history, learning was a process, it was collective, it was collaborative. It is really only since the nineteenth century that formal education has become a regulated and specialized certification process as much as it is a learning process.

What the Internet offers is a way to promote a more organic (funny term for the digital!) form of participatory learning. In participatory learning, one learns through and by interaction with others, in a process where each person builds upon the other--available to anyone anywhere who has access to the Internet (whether via a fancy laptop of one's own, the $100 laptop, a cell phone, or what is available at a local library or community center). In participatory learning, the process is as exciting as the result because many different kinds of people, with different specializations and skillsets and experiences, can contribute together. They can each contribute a part that is then elaborated by someone else and then taken over by someone else who runs with it, until the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts, and where each person learns by contributing.

Wikipedia, the largest accumulation of knowledge the world has ever known, is an excellent example of participatory learning in action. Through blogs, wikis, social networking tools (Facebook, MySpace), multimedia sites (YouTube, Flickr), and many many more, anyone in the world with even a little access can be a citizen journalist, reporting on pollution (see The Daily Polluter, a publication online by one of our DML I winners: http://www.dailypolluter.org/), assessing the truth or lies or inconsistencies of political candidates or trying to chart who contributes to their campaigns and where their money might be going (http://www.followthemoney.org/), or using online multiplayer games where students and youth can work out national policy and put idealism into practice for peace or humanitarian rescue instead of point-and-shoot "fun" (http://www.virtualpeace.org). Howard Rheingold is creating a whole series of vlogs illustrating social media at work as learning tools to promote participatory media. You an view those at: http://www.smartmobs.com/2008/05/30/what-im-doing-on-the-social-media-cl...)

Participatory learning underscores the processes by which we can learn together. Wikipedia is the most amazing (and it truly is amazing) collective participatory learning project the world has ever known. But there are so many other examples and we are building more and better tools to promote this accretive, cumulative, process-oriented, problem-solving mode of participatory learning all the time. There are also an infinite number of blogs and wikis out there for those suffering from (and who have accumulated their own wisdom for handling) chronic diseases, for home schooling, for fandom, or for advocacy.

Another example from our DML I Winners: Self-Advocacy on Line (http://www.selfadvocacyonline.org/ ) is a website and online newsletter and networking site for those making advocacy for change for people with disabilities. And lots of youth meet on line for fun, social life, and, not incidentally, learning too in virtual environments or in online multiplayer games. Games for Change (http://www.gamesforchange.org/) is dedicated to community activism and social change mediated through participatory learning communities on line and RezEd (http://www.rezed.org/) is a hub you can visit to find out about learning and virtual worlds).

The point is that, yes, we learn from experts. But we are also all experts in some things and, in participatory learning, we share our expertise and we improve it by interacting with those who have different expertise and differences of opinion. Ideally, participatory learning is to formal education what community action is to the machinery of organized goverment. One does not contradict the other. Rather, the former (participatory learning like community action) takes the principles and makes them real, interactive, and important in daily lives. You don't need to be a certified teacher to share your knowledge just as you do not need to be a politician to care and take action in your community.

Lots of interesting people have written about the various aspects of participatory learning and how transformative it can be, and everyone has catch-phrases: The power of organization with organizing (Clay Shirky), convergence (Henry Jenkins), Web 2.0 (Tim O'Reilly), the long tail (Chris Anderson) smart mobs (Howard Rheingold). The bottom line is the idea that, together, many people who may not even know one another, can use digital tools to create learning communities where they foster and improve and contribute to ideas, solve problems together, and find solutions to either small issues or enormous ones such as global warning. In participatory learning, you don't need a degree to contribute, all you need is expertise, ideas, and a shared commitment to furthering a goal or an ideal. You can even work together to customize, build upon, and improve the very digital tools you use to learn from as part of the process of learning.

A recent NY Times article ("If You Have a Problem, Ask Everybody!") talked about all of the quite amazing work that groups are able to concentrate on and do together, solving problems previously thought unsolvable through collective contribution of their knowledge. This NY Times article emphasizes the importance of many minds thinking together. In this case, even practical problems are being solved by participatory learning and so are some of the most thorny, recurrent problems in modern science, social science, and the humanities. Participatory learning is the future. And, if HASTAC has anything to say about it, it will also become a major part of the future of higher education.

I really like the idea that someday the Nobel Prize might go to "ordinary people" who, collectively and by participating together--through what we are calling "participatory learning"--may well come up with a cure for cancer or a better understanding of protein folding or some other major breakthrough in modern science.

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Special thanks to Flickr member Will Lion for posting this image. For more of his photostream and full documentation, please click on the photograph. The image from Second Life is from "Holy Meatballs," part of the RezEd project. The third image is from the South Bronx Fab Lab project where garbage from Manhattan, dumped in the South Bronx, is refabricated into saleable, recycled merchandise, using state of the art computer fabrication methods and then old fashioned hand-craft and industrial fabrication. Participatory learning takes as many forms as your imagination!