Open Science... let's properly evaluate

Here's an interesting little article on games and learning in schools in the Guardian by Outer Hebridean blogger John Kirriemuir. John writes about teachers blogging "their good and bad experiences". If this is correct, then if sufficient numbers took to the cause and blogged their results, we'd have sufficient data that backs up the need for an educational revolution. (Our fingers are crossed here - much needed analysis, problem solving, and other higher cognitive skills learnt from games would be a coup.)



It got us thinking at Doing E-learning that the blogosphere should be an invaluable way of relaying empirical evidence on learning in organisations, especially around efficacy. A whole new community of web 2.0 L&D researchers could emerge off the back of analysing published data and findings.

This idea's been around for a number of years now in academia. Open Science - aka Open Source Science - is about making research data publicly available, and not 'hiding' it in costly journals. Surely it's only a matter of time with the mass usage of wikis and blogs until researchers publish their data openly, and build on web 2.0 philosophy.

It'll be interesting to see how the likes of the One Big Lab blog take off.