New learning network paradigms: Communities of objectives, crowdsourcing, wikis and open source

This paper analyzes the new learning and network collaboration paradigms, their motivation and consequences. The origins of these practices are traced to the development of the Internet and the impact of globalization. The paper analyzes their advantages and the factors which have led to their development. Three contexts or diverse points of view have been followed: academic and scientific, business and social. The paper aims to develop and propose a taxonomy of these practices according to certain variables related to communication, social interaction, information, intellectual property, knowledge access and values. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.