Crowd-authoring: The art and politics of engaging 101 authors of educational technology

Abstract

Large-scale knowledge sharing and social networking have become fashionable in academic circles, yet without systematic interest in a large-scale authorship approach. The present article addresses this by proposing what could be called ‘crowd-authoring’ – an approach in which a global group of academics work together to co-author a manuscript. It addresses the following question: To what extent is it technically and politically feasible to bring together an international crowd of academics to author an article? It reports on an experiment wherein 101 scholars of education and technology spread across the globe collaborated in three rounds via email to write a 9000-word manuscript. Despite the technical challenges and the political tensions among the authors, it was found that crowd-authoring could be put into practice. The recommendation is therefore that funding agencies should sponsor an intercontinental group of academics to form an ‘assembly of authoring’, the task of which is to constantly compose authoritative articles on a regular basis. Such an assembly of authoring could, moreover, be funded to develop into an ‘assembly of action’, with its members explicitly seeking to bring about changes and social interventions.