How Education Ecosystem is Changing the Online Learning Landscape
Online learning has been around in different forms for over 60 years, but it has become more prevalent in its constantly evolving state than ever. From the crude, elementary days of “distance learning,” where mail-order courses were all the rage, to today’s MOOCs and PBL (Project-based learning) taken by millions of students globally, learning for the masses on-demand is no more a thing of the future -it is now with us!
The online learning industry is expected to grow to $350 Billion by 2025, mainly due to the application of flexible learning technologies in the sector. Education Ecosystem (LEDU) is a startup in the online education space that is revolutionizing the industry by using blockchain to incentivize learning. The platform uses project-based learning and targets intermediate tech professionals and college students. By targeting intermediate tech professionals, Education Ecosystem is plugging the skills gap brought about by the rapid deployment of new technologies and increased demand for the skills accompanying the technologies.
Education Ecosystem and project-based learning
On the platform, intermediate and professional developers can discover and learn new technologies and practice them out hands-on using free and real-world practical project examples.
The viewers use the practical projects on the platform to learn how to build real-world products in the fields of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, game development, cybersecurity, data analytics and programming.
The content on the platform is organized in projects. Every project consists of a livestream channel, a video channel, a live chat window and a Git repository. These projects are created with the sole intention of equipping viewers with practical skills. The projects are fully narrative, structured, contain well-drafted project descriptions and have project resources which can be downloaded or cloned using the Education Ecosystem Git repository.
The platform’s viewers learn by watching projects created by their peers in the areas of; data science, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, game development, and programming. Each of these six topics contains its own sub-categories. The platform is powered by LEDU tokens and each positive activity a viewer, project creator, site moderator or API developer completes is rewarded with LEDU tokens. The Education Ecosystem Token Utility Model shows how LEDU tokens are used on our platform.
The completion rates for online courses are often low compared to other forms of learning. One of the main reasons for this is that learners have little incentive to start or finish learning. This is even though many online courses are free or have some free components. For those that are not free, the cost involved is very low compared to the cost of a course in a physical class. Education Ecosystem uses tokenization to incentivize students to complete projects and be rewarded with tokens for the progress they make. The more projects a learner completes or, the more high-quality projects an expert creates, the more tokens they are rewarded. The token earned on the platform is a repayment that functions as a payment mechanism and reward token for ecosystem participants’ positive behaviour. This means learners to get paid for learning by taking up projects and instructors (who are referred to as project creators) get an incentive for teaching.
The Project-based learning model is a great teaching method providing benefits to learners as well as project creators. Evidently, on Education Ecosystem, learners can focus on a project at a time, thus providing them enough time to analyze a problem and a suitable way to approach it.
Elliot Minns, a US-based creator on Education Ecosystem, was attracted to the platform by the size of the audience he could reach. “My main goal on Education Ecosystem is to build projects that people are most interested in, learning with the community and explaining the process for future viewers, tackling complex and current trends in Software Engineering. My best project is
Through Project-based learning, learners gain invaluable experience in handling a project from start to finish. The model allows analyzing a problem from a practical perspective to developing a workable solution. Project-based learning upskills learners for their professions by learning from experts who have vast practical knowledge in specific areas.
Originally published at https://campuspress.yale.edu on April 7, 2021.
