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Expert Labs is a new, independent non-profit effort that's trying at its most ambitious to improve the decisions policy makers make, by giving them the tools to tap into crowdsourcing in the same way that private companies do every day. We're part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the folks who publish the journal Science) and we're backed by the MacArthur Foundation.

Drawing from two years of experience offering the 'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' course in a distributed online environment, the National Research Council's Personal Learning Environment (PLE) project is expanding the model to courses outside the discipline of education. Specifically, Stephen Downes and Rita Kop - who have both offered Critical Thinking courses through more traditional online and offline means, are adapting this material to the distributed model. The purpose of this course is two-fold. First, the design of the course is based on an understanding of the skills and capacities required to effectively learn using a PLE. Second, the offering of the course is intended to test whether learners can employ a PLE environment in order to develop those capacities. Thus, combined, the objectives of the course are intended to demonstrate whether learning may be self-directed with a PLE, or whether an additional pedagogy is required prior to the use of a PLE. Research will form an integral component of the course.

Sunstein’s fear was that the Internet might lead to a more ghettoized, polarized and insular electorate.

Yet new research complicates this picture