CommonSpaces: an approach to web learning based on OERs, mentoring and collaborative learning

Currently, the internet is full of freely accessible resources (i.e. OERs) that can provide excellent learning opportunities. However, these resources are usually not well organized, and for many users it is often difficult to use these dispersed sources of knowledge in a coordinated way. The project CommonS aims at building a space - called CommonSpaces -  dedicated to communities of practice in which participants learn through the cataloguing, re-use, adaptation and sequencing of OERs into so-called learning path.We define a Learning Path as an organized set of interconnected OERs (aggregated and created by communities of users) that can be created by users both to organize their learning experience and to provide consistent learning sequences for others. In this paper, we briefly present the rationale and the foundational concept of the project. Then we discuss the features of CommonSpaces in its first prototype version  and describe the preliminary findings from a pioneering experience of collaborative learning carried out by means of CommonSpaces. We conclude discussing the ongoing collective modeling of the final version of CommonSpaces and its future directions.