Education as a common — The Koios DAO part 2
See the first part of the article here.
We have a challenge. We need to figure out a way to create an open educational system that can keep up with these fast-moving developments and that incentives people to learn and earn. The possible solution: why not use these new technologies and incorporate them in existing foundations to benefit from both worlds: the strong (local) reputational foundations from regional universities, mixed with digital technologies’ open characteristics. A system that incentivizes people to learn, earn and share information, and build upon each other’s shoulders? And that’s why a consortium of ecosystem partners is experimenting with “Koios”.
Koios DAO
Started in 2019 from The Hague University of Applied Sciences, Koios is an open-source educational infrastructure with the aim of (1) facilitating education on fast-changing topics and (2) incentivize lifelong learning. We are working hard on this digital highway. It is with students, lecturers, researchers, field specialists, and multiple public and private ecosystem partners. The educational material, the digital learning communities, and various digital tools are readily and publicly accessible via www.koios.world. Via the use of tokens that enable the transfer of all sorts of value between peers does Koios aim to grow into an educational DAO: a decentralized educational infrastructure that connects the fragmented educational landscape and empowers individuals. A decentralized public infrastructure, by and for the participants. On-demand and for everyone, a lifetime long.
The platform
But how do you motivate, for example, educational institutions to make knowledge publicly available, or how do you incentivize students and citizens to learn for a lifetime? And there, blockchain technology introduces itself, which, among other things, is accompanied by tokens that represent different types of values within the educational ecosystem. The tokens enable us to create all kinds of micro-incentives which stimulate learning or sharing. Think of monetary incentives such as earning cryptocurrency for micro-tasks or other revenue models. But also think non-monetary values, such as micro-certificates, reputation mechanisms, voting rights, and even entire new governance models!
The first local experiments with the platform and tokens have been successful in large test environments (hundreds of students from the Blockchain and Trading courses). Motivation and contributions from students, teachers, and field partners are increasing significantly, and new digital knowledge exchange forms are emerging.
Koios eventually aims to be a fully digital extra layer, available for all the regional learning locations (e.g., universities). The Koios learning layer enables people to learn, earn and connect on a global scale. Sort of a Wikipedia for education. With micro-incentives. To compare:
- Face to Face conversation (physical) — Zoom (hybrid) — Virtual Reality (digital)
- Cash (physical) — Digital banking network (hybrid) — Cryptocurrencies (digital)
- Classroom (physical) — Coursera, Khan, Moodle (hybrid) — Koios (digital)
What’s next?
We are building and experimenting at Koios.world, where we apply new technologies in several different courses. Openly available online. Including micro-incentives and build upon various universities’ strong backbone for validation and didactical expertise.
Want to join a course or a part of the course? Would you like to earn money and reputation based on what you have learned? Visit www.koios.world, create your wallet, and start (l)earning 😊!
Want to join us in our mission towards education as a common, or receive the most recent updates? Follow us on Twitter:
