This is a bit different to my normal blog posts, but here's an email interview I conducted recently. Kate Graham of the eLearning network, Ascot Communications, and about a million other projects has her fingers in so many pies it's a surprise that she has any left to work her smartphone. What isn't a surprise is that she has taken on yet another role, this time as communications director of mylearningworx, apparently the UK's first crowd-sourced online learning resource (see the foot of this blog post if you want to have a play around with the beta version). Here's our recent exchange.

Abject frustration is not far from the mark. There has been a chasm between the ways that learners can acquire new skills online. On the one hand we have the LMSs and formal elearning, founded on the demands and feedback of corporations, but not the learners themselves. On the other, we have zettabytes of knowledge on the Internet, but it's next to impossible to make sense of it and validate it using simple social media tools designed for chatting and recreation. We believe that crowd-sourced elearning can absolutely fill that gap by taking the wisdom of the crowd but then organising it, filling in the gaps, validating it and then sharing it with the world.

What's different about mylearningworx? What sets it apart from other online resources?

As far as we are aware we are the only crowd-sourced learning people-focused specifically on the UK consumer and SME marketplace – seeking to supply UK solutions to UK training challenges. There are some initiatives in the education sector, and some excellent US sites, but nothing that really caters for UK demands. 

Do you think you're going to be fighting for visibility with other channels/resources such as YouTube?
Not at all. YouTube is fantastic at doing what it does. But we do something else entirely. YouTube is all about entertainment and finding quick fixes for challenges, usually ones you are already facing. mylearningworx is about acquiring a deeper skill and understanding. YouTube videos are typically less than 15 minutes. Our courses are often more than three hours and many will be certificated. A good way of thinking about it is that going to YouTube can be a useful step on the way to discovering what you want to know. Mylearningworx gives you the entire journey.

You have quite a wide variety of subjects to cover. Is scaleability going to be a problem, or does its crowd-sourced nature make it self-sustainable?
Mylearningworx is really no different to any other community of people. It needs leaders, talented people, generous people and other contributors to make it work really well. One of the most important parts of this community will be the elearning authors and producers – our 'worxsmiths' as we call them. Our role is not just to supply the web tools and software – it's also about working and encouraging people to make it all happen.