Self-Directed Learning in the Age of Open Source, Open Hardware and 3D Printing

Background

Throughout human history, skills, stories and knowledge have passed from one generation to the next, communicated verbally or through information recorded in manuscripts, paintings and other media. However, until the development of the printing press, and the subsequent later mass production of books, the sharing of knowledge was limited to those able to access and interpret it in its verbal or visual form. This often limited skills and ideas to specific communities, being spread slowly through travel and trade, and easily lost if a community were conquered or otherwise displaced. Shifting to the present day, knowledge must still pass from generation to generation; however, new tools are increasingly allowing information to be communicated in new ways, none more transformational than the Internet. Viewed broadly, within the macro concept of human evolution and the capacity for humans to educate each new generation, the concept of online education and the Internet is an incredibly new concept. Beetham and Sharpe (2013, p. 46) describe: