Abstract:

The sharing economy (SE) is changing the rules of the game within many industries. Rooted in values such as access or community, the SE is offering a more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional companies. By combining these social, economic, and environmental factors with a series of external factors such as the generalization of the Internet and the economic crisis (Mi et al., 2019), this model has found the perfect ecosystem to expand
According to the Honeycomb (Owgang, 2016), platforms operating under the SE regime can be found in a multitude of industries, including the learning one. Within this industry, platforms are classified into instructor-led (IL), peer to peer (P2P), and book sharing (BS).

Within these groups, platforms such as KhanAcademy (IL), Skillshare (P2P) and Chegg (BS) can be found. With almost 10 years of experience and millions of users all around the world, these platforms offer a new type of education, more specialized and under demand, allowing previously marginalized groups to access it. Due to their popularity and journey from their inception to today, their teaching/learning system is refined, and their results are proven (Audsley et al., 2019).

Due to the sanitary crisis caused by Covid-19 all over the world, and the lock downs declared by Governments, educational institutions have been forced to adapt their teaching to the online method. Given the inexperience of most of the organizations, complaints have been received from all the parties involved due to the low quality of online teaching and the lack of means available to the educational community.

Although the situation seems to be more under control now, many educational institutions are maintaining part of their activities online. During these months of forced adaptation, institutions have modified and upgraded their processes as problems arose (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2020), but if this new mixed method is going to perdure, institutions need to be more proactive, rather than reactive, in adapting their methods.

Among different alternatives to improve these methods, educational institutions could turn to learning-focused platforms operating within the SE to analyze their methods and processes. Courses offered within these platforms are prepared to manage big numbers of users and information exchanges, at the same time as they deliver, successfully, knowledge. Therefore, educational institutions should be able to adapt these methods, take advantage of the experience acquired by platforms and find a better way of combining on-site and online learning.

By offering this option, the SE can contribute to achieve a better education by providing the means and the accumulated knowledge by platforms. The global advancement towards a more flexible, connected, and collaborative lifestyle is applicable to learning as well, challenging traditional teaching methods, and presenting an opportunity to adapt them to new tendencies.

Keywords:

Sharing economy, distance learning.