P2PU Blog

Do you consider yourself a pretty dab hand at the poker table? Or do you have a particular interest in neuroethics and biolaw? If so, p2pu wants you!
We’re looking for people who might be interested in remixing, or reiterating the Poker and Strategic Thinking and Neuroethics and International Biolaw courses that were run in the pilot phase at p2pu. You don’t have to have taken the courses, although previous participants are welcome to submit proposals too. Proposals can be for the second round of courses (starting in mid-February 2010) or the third round (starting in March 2010).

If you’re interested in being involved in either of these courses, please take a look at the orientation page on the p2pu wiki, or drop us an email: thepeople [@] p2pu [dot]org.

Image: Remix Skewl by Gideon Burton on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

Things are hotting up at P2PU and the second round of courses are nearly ready to be made public. Course organisers and their mentors have been working feverishly to get courses designed and start gathering materials, and in the next few days, the community will be reviewing the proposals and helping shape them into some really special learning opportunities.

While we can’t quite let the cat out of the bag yet, we can let a couple of juicy details slip out:

• There will be 13 courses this cycle, ranging from favourites from last cycle, like Creative Non-Fiction and Cyberpunk Literature to exciting new options like Introduction to Economics & Finance to the intriguingly named Mashing Up The Open Web.
• Not all the courses are going to be in English… in fact, P2PU is proud to announce the first batch of Portuguese courses will be running in Cycle 2, organised by our friends at the Casa de Cultura Digital in Brazil.
• Anyone interested in taking a course will be able to sign up from the 12 February 2010.

Does that whet your appetite? We thought it might. Keep an eye on this blog, the p2pu website and Twitter  for more exciting announcements and updates.

The P2PU community has spoken, and we’ve chosen the top three tweets to round off the first P2PU Twitter competition. While everyone had great things to say, @MiNutrition, @jcoffis, and @gastorres took the cake (or pieces of it) for best tweets in response to, “Twitter competition! What does #P2PU mean to you, in 140 characters? 3 t-shirts and eternal fame as prize! http://bit.ly/6VhCcR.”

@MiNutrition: You teach I learn. I teach you learn. Peer to Peer. For
Learning. For Life.

@jcoffis: Connect, Learn,

@gastorres: #p2pu is knowledge unleashed!

The winners will be contacted and sent a P2PU t-shirt! You, too, can own one and support us by visiting this page. Or you can wait for the second P2PU Twitter competition.

Update: If you’re one of the winners, please drop us a mail, so we can send you your t-shirty goodness.

Are you a twitter poet? Are your tweets a picture of 140-character perfection? Can you say more, with less?

If so, we want your skills. On the 12 of January, we’ll be running the very first P2PU twitter competition – all you have to do to win one of the three t-shirts up for grabs is let us know, in 140 characters or less what the Peer 2 Peer University means to you. Add the #p2pu hashtag and prepare for t-shirt greatness. It really is that simple. Oh, and tell all your friends.

pic: tweet by Wonderferret on Flickr CC BY 2.0

Are you a future P2PU gang member who is interested in organizing an MIT OpenCourseWare Physics course for p2pu.org? Or do you have a friend who might be? Please get in touch (leave a comment below, or tweet @p2pu)!

For it’s next round of courses P2PU is experimenting with “traditional” OpenCourseWare materials. Since we all flunked out of Physics in high school (that was a joke!), we are looking for one or two physics geeks that might find it interesting to organize a P2PU course around the following materials:

Physics 1 (MIT OCW 8.01 – Classical Mechanics)

• MIT OpenCourseWare
• Wired article about the course

It’s an amazing course with great videos and lots of useful materials, but it would require some re-designing to make it fit into the P2PU model:

1. The course uses a (gasp!) closed textbook, which would have to be replaced by open materials.
2. It’s too long to fit into 6 weeks and the course organizer would have to change that – either by reducing scope, or stretching it over 12 (or 18 weeks).
3. Since this very much looks like a traditional course, participants are likely to expect a traditional course and not the self-motivated social learning that makes p2pu special. the organizer will have to manage those expectations. This also means, that a strong Physics background would be helpful.

It’s a big challenge, but the stakes are high. If we can make this work, there are hundreds more prospective courses and thousands of peers to learn with.

Another way of seeing P2PU’s role – as drawn by Alison Cole:

Last month, on the third floor of an office in Berlin, the Peer to Peer University suddenly developed a face. 14 people, from all over the world, who had been working together on the pilot phase of the project had a chance to meet, talk, argue, solve problems, make grand plans and stay up way too late, planning to take over the world and change education forever.

While it might just sound like all we did was have fun and think big, in fact the group managed to achieve what is rarely managed in international workshops. We met (many for the first time), we evaluated the pilot phase of P2PU, and, most importantly, we planned.  We left Berlin after four days assured that the next phase of P2PU’s life is going to be as exciting, dynamic and important as the first phase was.

So, What Worked?
Most of the first day of the workshop was taken up discussing what about the first phase of the P2PU experiment had worked, and why. Some courses struggled to keep participants involved, others found that the amount of reading was too much, and others found accessing relevant resources a difficulty. All these issues, and more, were re-framed as questions, and added to a Wall of Ideas, which helped to shape the agenda for the next three days.

The Wall of Ideas

By the same token, the successful elements of the various courses were highlighted, and the group used these examples to help build a plan for future iterations at P2PU. Some were defined as tools (for example, synchronous and asynchronous chat) and will be included in the new website that is being developed for the project. Other elements will be included into the plans for helping new P2PU participants to develop and plan their courses.

In typical P2PU style, no ideas were considered unworthy of being noted, flagged or discussed. The Open Spaces workshop methodology allowed everyone to be heard and share their ideas, and through the collaborative process, the issues that the group felt were most urgent, relevant or necessary naturally emerged and could be discussed and agreed on.

But what did you DO?
Well, quite a lot actually – we worked really hard. We’ve planned the next phase for courses. We know how we’re going to help new course organisers plan and develop their courses. We know that we want to grow, and have an idea of the kinds of partnerships we would like to develop. We decided on a licensing policy for the resources we produce. We have a plan for a new website, which is grand, and we have even grander plans for the future. We also realised that we all like and respect each other, and that we see the world in similar ways, and that the potential in this project is enormous. We know now that the sky is the limit.

So, What’s Coming Next?
Well, you can expect great things from P2PU in the next little while. Among the most exciting announcements are:

A new website and social platform
An orientation process for new course organizers
A CC BY-SA licensing policy (and a compendium on how to choose a
license for your open education project)
Aset of core values that the community subscribes to

P2PU is also preparing a research workshop on alternative accreditations in early 2010, and building relationships with other
organisations to explore avenues in research, assessment, and sustainability.

We’re really excited to share all of these new developments with all of you  – so please keep an eye out.

If you’d like to read some of the more personal responses from workshop attendees, have a look at Jane Park’s awesome, and moving post on Opinions on Open, or her great blog on Creative Commons.org and Nadeem Shabir’s very thoughtful and articulate piece on the Talis Education Blog.

The delightful Jane Park, also made a wicked video during the workshop, which you can see here, here or here

Picture credits: Change by kiyanwang on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Wall of Ideas by johndbritton on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

The sails were set and on 9 September 2009 P2PU got on its way and launched a first set of 7 courses. We have been stingy with updates, so this one is a little bit longer than usual – so much has happened. We hope to send you more concise updates more regularly in the future.

Who signed up?

227 people completed the sign-up form for our 7 pilot courses. A little more than half are based in the US, but we have had sign-ups from 35 different countries. We ended up accepting about 90 students into the first round of courses, but kept everyone’s contact details on file for the next round. A few nice graphs and maps of our sign-up cohort can be found here: http://p2pu.org/Application-Statistics

Getting credit where credit is due

The first P2PU student managed to get official credit. Tom Caswell writes: “I am a lifelong learner, but I am also a full-time PhD student at Utah State University. (BTW, I was able to get independent study credit for this course through USU.)”. And participants in the land restoration course are taking the course as part of their formal studies. Looking ahead, Chris Geith is doing amazing work linking us to various organisations that might be able to accept P2PU students for assessment and accreditation in the future. Thank you Chris!!!

Our good vibes are popular

We received over 11,000 visitors to our web-site during the first 4 weeks. And more than 300 people have bookmarked our site on del.icio.us. 11 even bookmarked the old concept document (all of you of course). We haven’t finished analysis of our first participant survey yet, but more than half of the respondents said that they liked the “good vibe” of the project.

We are having loads of fun while everyone is learning – quotes from course organisers and participants

“It was a great chat, very interesting, and fun. People are really engaged and we had some really nice themes that came up. And they’re all really nice to each other too. … And jeez but they’re all frikken smart and know their stuff. I’m super impressed with them all. They totally underestimated their own levels of expertise.” Bekka Kahn (Cyberpunk course)

“Just sharing some thoughts: I don’t know what were your expectations, but I must confess that I’m impressed and delighted with students’ level. Their contributions are amazing: very informed, intellectual, always pointing a distinct angle from which to analyse problems… I am Learning with them, and I think this is the whole point… Thanks for the opportunity, Guys!” Ana Rosa Amorim (Neuroethics ccourse)

“It’s kind of like self-study, but you have someone to hold you accountable .” (Participant in the copyright course)

Riding the waves

Some of us received Google Wave accounts and we are experimenting with it as part of a P2PU technology solution. If you have contacts into the Wave community or are interested in Wave development in education, let us know.

P2PU goes Berlin

We are using our Hewlett Grant money to bring all the course organiser volunteers to Berlin for a P2PU workshop from 11-15 November. If you are around, drop us a note, we’d love to meet you in person. 9 November is the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall in case you needed another excuse.

The P2PU Team!