P2PU Blog

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.