"The wisdom of crowdsʺ or how to create and use potential of users for co-designing the profession

The article presents the results of the project work in which we were developing a website for the field. In the first part of the study we were interested in an overall trend in students' and employees' use of websites in the field of special and rehabilitation education. In the second part, we wanted to obtain the users' opinion on a newly created browsing scheme. At the same time, we were interested in general opinion regarding the users' needs and their suggestions on what to include in the website. A hundred and fifty-three people took part in the research: students and employees from the Department of Special and Rehabilitation Education of the Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, and experts within the field. The data were collected between May 16th and June 30th with the help of a questionnaire and a web-based questionnaire »1ka« (EnKlikANKETA). The people interviewed demonstrate the desire for a website on their area of expertise. Most of them use online sources at least once a week. Most often, the users search for academic literature, examples of good practice (eg. ideas for activities, adjustments) and papers, graduate, postgraduate and doctoral dissertations. People who took part in the research say that they sometimes find useful resources in the Slovene language. Their criteria for evaluating the usefulness of particular websites are diverse. The most commonly listed are quality, knowledge of resources, recommendations of others and previous experience. Their expertise is never or rarely shared on-line. The users rarely register and this discourages them from surfing the web any further. We have obtained useful information and suggestions from the potential web site designers and users, which enabled us to confirm and upgrade the envisaged website elements. With the emerging website we wish to endorse two theoretical terms »the wisdom of crowds« and/or »science of the open enterpiece«.