The document outlines a crowdsourcing initiative for creating a written UK constitution aimed at fostering civic engagement and deep learning through community participation. It emphasizes the challenges of building a cohesive learning community and the innovative use of social media to facilitate open and informal democratic problem solving. The project achieved significant participation, with over 1,500 users contributing to a collaboratively written constitution, demonstrating the potential of social media to redefine learning and civic engagement.

1. How Crowdsourcing the UK Constitution
Built a Learning Community
Peter Bryant @peterbryantHE
Head of Learning Technology and Innovation
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Crowdsourcing democracy and learning in a messy, fragmented world

2. The PROPOSITION
• Deliver a written constitution that was crowd
sourced by a representative community
• Ensure that it clearly represented the will of the
people
• Do it before the May 2015 election
• Make sure it was civil and engaging
• Provide an educational experience that did not look
like or work like a course in constitutional law

3. THE
CHALLENGE
#1

4. BUILDING A
COHESIVE
COMMUNITY

6. ‘…it’s through participation in communities that
deep learning occurs. People don’t learn to
become physicists by memorizing formulas;
rather it’s the implicit practices that matter most.
Indeed, knowing only the explicit, mouthing the
formulas, is exactly what gives an outsider away.
Insiders know more. By coming to inhabit the
relevant community, they get to know not just the
“standard” answers, but the real questions,
sensibilities, and aesthetics, and why they
matter.’
BROWN, J. S. Learning in the digital age

7. THE
CHALLENGE
#2

8. Modern
pedagogy/
civic
engagement
is often…
SEQUENTIAL
SCAFFOLDED
ALIGNED
STRUCTURED
STRATIFIED

9. LEARNING
EXPERIENCING
LIVING
ACQUIRING
CONNECTING
RARELY ARE
LEARNING
SHARINGCONNECTING
CHANGING

10. What if
Informal
Community led
Non-linear
Democratic
Problem solving
Collaborative
Chaotic
Aspirational
Emancipatory
Open
engagement
couldbe…

11. ALL
AT A
MASSIVE
SCALE

12. USING
SOCIAL MEDIA

13. Combination of learning approaches
Integrating participatory practices
Engaged individuals and groups
No readings, no course,
No lecturer, no teacher, maybe a guru
No sequence, enter at any time
Learning was an expectation
Learning through practice, debate and citizenship
What we built
https://www.flickr.com/photos/leolondon/451273331

14. Where we finished
over 1500 users;
over 725 idea submissions;
over 125000 idea views;
over 10000 comments;
over 25000 votes cast;
an 8500 word constitution;
from more than 1m words written.
Over 75% learnt something and 88&% were influenced by the community
Participation went up across the project not DOWN https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephen_downes/1470015134

15. RE-DEFINING MASSIVE
IMPACT
RIPPLE
POWER OF ANALYSIS
EXPERIENCE

16. https://www.flickr.com/photos/balleyne/2668834386
RE-DEFINING OPEN
OPEN ACCESS
OPEN PARTICIPATION
OPEN ACADEMY
OPEN ENGAGEMENT

17. RE-THINKING PARTICIPATION
EMANCIPATION
AUTHORITY
FLEETING CONNECTIONS
IDEATION
HACKING

18. ‘Social media has facilitated a complex, co-created and immediate form of
learning response, where content and openness challenge the closed,
structured nature of modern higher education. Social media has had
significant impacts on the way learners connect with people and with the
knowledge they require in order to learn across a variety of contexts. Social
media support more than user interactivity, they support the development and
application of user-generated content, collaborative learning, network
formation, critical inquiry, relationship building, information literacy, dynamic
searching and reflection.’
BRYANT, PETER (2015) Disrupting how we ‘do’ on-line learning
through social media: a case study of the crowdsourcing the
UK constitution project.

19. What happens when you empower a community to learn and
engage in social change?
Does this build an informed digital citizenry?
Can this be more than civic engagement? Problem solving,
capacity development or change?
And that’s what is next…