Crowdsourcing in Higher Education

Pervasive application of crowdsourcing techniques in Higher Education institutions improves the students’ performance by using collaborative projects to enhance each student’s skillsSkills , optimizes the lecturing process effectively sharing and pooling study materials, and also improves alumni financial situation by supporting tuition crowdfundingCrowdfunding . In this chapter, we describe four key areas where the application of crowdsourcing techniques plays an important role in the performance of the alumni in Higher Education institutions. The proposed “crowdteachingCrowdteaching ” technique optimizes lecturing enabling sharing and exchanging of lecture notes following the different curricula of Higher Education studies. With “crowdlearning,” the students learn by execution on collaborative projects where different students share (effectively teaching each other under lecturer supervision), learn the required skills required to carry out the targets of the project and solve the proposed problem. In relation to obtaining funding, with “crowdtuition” the students’ tuitionTuition fees can be funded via crowdsourcing methods and also “crowdfunding” can be used to obtain laboratory and classroom material or students’ learning stays abroad. Using these crowdsourcing methods, the students can find help to pay the university taxes and also interact with other students for a deeper learning process. Applying crowdsourcing to education enables the optimization of the institutions’ budget and a more efficient use of time for learning which in the end leads to student’s better results.