Commissioning learning resources : a platform for community driven curriculum

The reliance on prescribed or national curriculum in schools is causing an ever enlarging gap between the knowledge and skills the schools are developing on one hand, and the students’ interests and career opportunities on the other. Building on previous work on using the notion of commissioning for location based services and video bootlegging, we propose using the concept of commissioning (as used in Digital Civics research) in the context of education. The commissioning platform is built around developing learning resources with the aim of making it possible to both commission community relevant projects to schools, and for schools to commission the community to help in different learning projects/activities. The aim is to develop a platform that can help build a community driven curriculum that is more relevant to students’ future opportunities, more engaging and motivating for students, and one that helps strengthen the partnership between schools and their communities. In this paper, we introduce the general concept of using commissioning in education along with some possible usage scenarios.