How Readocracy quantifies learning, and why it counts more than usual
“How do you verify attention?”
Readocracy’s patent-pending attention verification is different in two key ways:
1) Most analytics tools for content are quite superficial: they don’t check the quality of your attention. A view is a view, time spent is time spent. Readocracy checks your patterns of behaviour on the page to asses your likely depth of focus as well. Are you skimming, or actually focused? Or neither? Which parts got deeper attention?
2) There is no consumer-facing analytics tool (and few in general) which takes the content itself into account, i.e. what were you looking at, and do your patterns of behaviour on the content make sense? Readocracy uses sophisticated page parsing to map a piece of content, and AI to analyze and understand what you’re giving attention to. Different types of content require different types of attention. Looking at a picture of a person doesn’t require the same attention as a dense paragraph. These differences are important.
These things make Readocracy extremely hard to game. Go ahead, zip to the bottom of this page, or randomly scroll up and down. Not much will happen.
More than just attention
It’s important to acknowledge that there is a difference between likely knowledge and applied knowledge. Just because you read something doesn’t mean you understand it. However, it is an overwhelmingly strong indicator that you are far more likely to than somebody who didn’t pay attention to the content at all. The more content you consume on the subject, the higher the probability this is true, exponentially so. Verifying your attention is how we help people show their likely knowledge.
However consumption is only half the story. Contributions are how Readocracy also verifies your applied knowledge. Based on how your recommendations and notes are appreciated by others familiar with a subject, and especially your Contributions to Discussions, Readocracy also valides and shows your applied knowledge.
Not everyone learns the same way
Are you a fast reader? A slow reader? Do you prefer to learn visually? Perhaps you’re an auditory learner? Or through discussion? Readocracy allows for all of these possibilities. It allows you to verify attention to articles, but also videos, and podcasts (currently manual adding, soon full live verification). You can also calibrate your account based on your reading speed. If discussing material is important to you, Readocracy’s Discussions and Contributions credit system are made for you.
The importance of a transcript anyone can see
There is one fundamental issue that has plagued self-directed learning, and the certificates it generates, since the first time somebody tried to make it count: “why would anyone trust this, or believe this is worth anything?” This invariably created a bottleneck in society for what learning is deemed worthy: the schools and workplaces that had the authority, time, and resources, to certify it.
Readocracy, for the first time, leverages the unique nature of the Web, to produce credentials that are self-evident: you can see for yourself what was consumed and then see how it’s tracked for yourself, like you’re doing right now, and also what was contributed and if it was appreciated by people with relevant knowlege. All transparently, for anyone to see.
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