This week at P2PU // 17 July – 23 July 2010

INTRO > Stian had the excellent idea that we needed community updates – an informal stream of consciousness on what’s going on at P2PU. The answer is usually “lots is going on” which is why there never seems enough time to report on all of it. So, the idea is to crowdsource what’s happening at P2PU each week. If you are doing something you want in the update – make sure it’s on the community list, or let me know by email. I will compile everything into one manageable update email for Friday. You can then print it out and read it slowly over the weekend. We’ll also post it on the blog. The updates will be short, and with musical themes to guess. This week’s theme is easy to guess.

NEXT ROUND > We are working frantically on new courses. The timelines are written (pencil -> calendar = 15 September 2010), the watches are wound, and the shoelaces tied. We just sent out the call for new courses, but are also talking to people and organizations
individually. There is a chance we’ll have a first prototype course with the Hacks/Hackers community (an awesome group of computer geeks and journalists) and our fingers are crossed to have our very first art history course (with a big twist) as well. Call for courses: http://blogs.p2pu.org/

WEBCRAFT > The School of Webcraft continues to grow at amazing speed. Pippa, who is shaping the curriculum and leading on course development reported that 17 course proposals were submitted by the deadline, but deadline or not, people are still adding more. We are up to 20 course proposal as of today. Check them out and leave your comments at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/courses

ORIENT YOURSELF > Alison came on board to design our all new orientation process and signed up an amazing group of experts to help
her. Discussions happen on the http://groups.google.com/group/p2pu-orientation mailing list, and people from UC Berkely, and University of Cape Town have already agreed to help with the seminars. The materials are on the wiki at http://wiki.p2pu.org/orientation and it would be great if the organizers of past courses could have a look and add their thoughts. We also redesigned the course proposal process, see here http://wiki.p2pu.org/Create-a-Course.

GANG > The gang is gone, long live the gang … ah … community. During the past year, a lot of the discussion about p2pu and its future has taken place on the gang list, which was for people with skin in the game. The gang stars (yes, it’s corny, but also crazy and cool – but in an insider joke kind of way) are an awesome group of people from all over the world who act as the stewards of P2PU. They will continue to do so, but we are throwing open the doors of perception and invite everyone to join the p2pu-community list. See for yourself at http://groups.google.com/group/p2pu-community.

MEETUP > John set up a bunch of meetups, so there is no excuse anymore to not come out and play. Join us for free Wifi (hopefully), cheap drinks (maybe), and stimulating conversations (ha ha). Lila even offered to host the San Francisco meetup at her house. Little does she know. http://www.meetup.com/p2pu/

PAPER > In case you forgot to pick up your local copy, P2PU was recently mentioned in the online edition of The Hindu, an English language newspaper with a circulation of 5,2 million readers. That’s a lot of people and pretty big news for us and we noticed a nice spike in sign-ups from India, which is wonderful. Get your fix at http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/11/stories/2010071160251400.htm

TUNES > Staying with this week’s musical theme: “You know we’ve got to find a way – to bring some lovin’ here today.” Have great weekends! Watch this -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KC7uhMY9s

I am currently listening to the Introduction to Sociology course from the Virtual University of Pakistan, whose video lectures I described in a previous post. The course is taught by Dr. Muhammad Anwar, and curious to find some information about him, I googled his name. I came across this discussion about his course, where former students are praising him highly. Tauqir Mehmood Wattoo said:

i have to tell my forum fellows just one thing that i have been a student of dr anwar. he is an authority in sociology and specially in social research.

those choosing sociology must go through these lectures.

Raz replies:

I second your opinion. I didn’t know about Dr. Anwar’s expertise over sociology. It was my good luck that I gave a try to VU lectures and these lectures proved very helpful. After going through Dr. Anwar’s lectures I strongly believe in the comments which Tauqir Mehmood Wattoo has passed for him. This was purely my good luck that I got these lectures without knowing him.

I placed an ordered with VU for lecture notes and CDs on Sociology, Mass Communication, Pakistan Affairs, and Islamiat. Due to shortage of time I could best utilize only sociology and Pakistan study lectures and had a quick review of Islamiat. I utilized Mass Communication CDs and lectures back in 2008 but for 2009 attempt I was running short of time so I could revise only selective topics in a period of two days. Few of these topics were like, Public Relations, Advertisement, Journalism history, and Ethical standards.

Most of the sociology MCQs in 2009 were covered from these lectures. While attempting sociology paper I was of the view that paper has either been set by Dr. Muhammad Anwar or by a person whose approach is similar to that of Dr. Muhammad Anwar. His lectures enrich us with best terminology in sociology which is an added advantage while attempting the paper.

I purchased following two lecture notes on sociology:

1) Introduction to Sociology (SOC 101)
By Dr. Muhammad Anwar
2) Research Methods (STA 630)
By Dr. Muhammad Anwar

Though research methods lecture Notes by Dr. Muhammad Anwar were very useful but I attempted Research Steps question (2009) from Shahnaz Arifullah and K. M Bhatti’s book (Research Process Simplified) in combination with Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick’s book ( Mass Media Research). This combination made my answer very effective.

Two main benefits of VU lectures:
1) To the point and time saving
2) Standard language (Most suitable terminology), Standard approach, generally acceptable stance, free from biasness, and nearly official stance on major issues. (The most beneficial for us to save ourselves from any risk).

Further down, I found out that the textbooks for this class (and all other classes) are available as well!

Assalam-o-allaikum Brother Khoso

The complete VU Library of lectures and Handouts is available at the following link
http://vulms.vu.edu.pk/Library/library.aspx

[...]

I went to that site, and indeed found a 120 page book in English for the Introduction to Sociology Course, and many other courses had both textbooks and PowerPoint slides. I was thinking about extracting all these links, and inserting them into my index, however the interface does not offer any simple way of extracting all the links.

The above postings are from the site CSSForum: Civil Service of Pakistan, a very active forum where users help each other prepare for the civil service exams. They have forums for all the obligatory subjects, and in the sociology section you can find interesting posts like Great Muslim Scientists and their Contributions to the Field of Sociology, discussion of Marxist theory of labor, or a question about the contributions of Ibn-e-Khaldun to the field of sociology. I found it very interesting how the students were actively helping each other prepare for these different exams, and selflessly sharing resources and experiences.

I also found it very interesting to see past exam papers, for example the 2010 bilingual exam on Islamic issues. Students have to give written answers to questions such as “Keeping in view today’s International Political System, can Shariah be adjusted in the Islamic Societies”, and “Keeping in view the requirements of Global Society, determine the freedom and limitations of a Muslim Woman in the light of Islamic teachings”. It would be very interesting to see samples of how the future government bureaucrats of Pakistan answered these questions! There is also a section called “Everyday Science“, which is wonderfully eclectic. Here is a small selection:

Question # 02 : Write short note on the following by giving their exact life span and contributions to the field of science. ( Accurate fact will be appreciated) (10)

a) Al- Beruni
b) Ibn- al – Haitham

Question # 03: What do you know about hereditary disease ? Comment how they are transferred from parents to offsprings ? (10)

Question # 04: Write briefly any five of the following: (Answer in three or four sentences) (10)

a) Plaster of Paris
b) Reflex Action
c) Pace Maker
d) Swine flue
e) Microwave oven
f) Internet
g) Voltage Stabilizer

Question # 05:
A) What is global warming ? Is there any a sunny side to global warming ? If yes , explain. (5)
B) What makes the seasons happen ? (5)

Question # 06: In which region of the world , the following animals are found? Give two main characteristics of each. (10)

a) Blind dolphin
b) Kangaroo
c) panda
d) Kiwi
e) Penguin

Question # 07:
A) In which organ these parts are present in animals or human body ? (5)
B) Describe the function of each briefly : (5)

1. Coronary artery
2. Sino- Auricular Node
3. Aortic valve
4. Auricle

Question # 08: Differentiate between the following pairs:

a) Hydrometer and Hygrometer
b) Perimeter and Telemeter
c) Isotopes and Isomers
d) Flying mammal and Bird
e) Vertebrates and Invertebrates

Question # 09:
A) What are pesticides? Explain how these are dangerous to human beings?
B) What do the following scientific abbreviations stand for?

1) STP
2) LORAN
3) SONAR
4) MAF
5) MeV
6) MASER
7) AWACS
8) CCTV

I wonder how the average American civil servant would have done on this exam.

I think formal and informal OER can have a huge positive impact on international understanding, and to me, this is a prime example of what Mike Caulfield called OER as transparency.

Stian

We just submitted the following proposal to the Open Ed 2010 conference (submission deadline is tomorrow). P2PU and OpenEd go way back, and the conference has a very special place in our heart. In 2008, we ran a workshop on P2PU (run by Joel, Stian and myself – and John Britton who came on board back then) that turned out be be the key milestone where we switched gears from “wouldn’t it be nice … ” to “ooops, we made a public commitment to actually do this”. At Open Ed 2009, we announced that our pilot phase courses were ready for sign-up and lots of people signed-up. And we hope that in 2010 we can reflect on the things we learned since then, and discuss some of the challenges we encountered – and our ideas on addressing them – with the amazing Open Ed family. We are running our P2PU community meeting just before Open Ed in Barcelona this year, so there will be lots of P2PU gang-stars at the conference. Here is what we submitted, fingers crossed.

Abstract (140 characters or less)

Using data from two rounds of P2PU courses, we report on progress, challenges, and possible implications for the future of higher education.

Full proposal (500 words or less)

The Peer 2 Peer University is a grassroots education project that organizes learning outside of institutional walls. Leveraging the internet and educational materials openly available online, P2PU provides the social environment necessary for meaningful learning and mechanisms for validation of achieved learning. P2PU is teaching and learning by peers for peers and it is run and governed by volunteers.

P2PU launched its pilot phase of 7 courses during Open Ed 2009. It has since created a web-platform to host more courses, organized a first round of 15 courses, and developed strong partnerships with a number of organizations to improve its peer learning methodology, explore alternative certification mechanisms, and better understand an OER future that goes beyond content.

In this session we will report back on the current status of the project, the progress we have made during the last year, ask for feedback and input from the community, and discuss the possible implications of projects like P2PU for the future of higher education. We hope that sharing our thoughts and experience informs other efforts with similar visions, and encourages more participation in order to help us address some of the key challenges together.

We will use data collected during the pilot phase (7 courses in English) and the first round of courses (15 courses of which 3 in Portuguese) and add our personal experience in the P2PU community to reflect on a number of points that we consider relevant to the open education movement:

• Meaningful peer learning – There is a tremendous opportunity to connect findings from learning research to open peer learning communities like P2PU. Some of the challenges we encountered in the first rounds of courses include participant retention and motivation, establishing supportive social dynamics in small groups of learners, and developing assessment mechanisms for open peer learning.
• Open Governance – P2PU is run and governed by a community of volunteers, referred to as “gang-stars” and supported by a small number of staff and contractors. Broadly following inspiration from open source software communities, most aspects of P2PU, including strategy development, communications efforts, and design of new technology features, are driven by community input and support. We will share our thoughts on the meaning of leadership, authority, and management in open communities like P2PU.
• Validation / Certification – Learning for learning’s sake is a luxury for most people. P2PU is partnering with the Mozilla Foundation to establish a model for alternative open certification for web developers. Using this pilot we are attempting to implement robust peer assessment and validation mechanisms that allow participants to signal their achieved learning to others, in order to get jobs, enrol in formal education programmes, or for personal enrichment.
• Sustainability – P2PU received start-up grants from two foundations. In order to sustain the core expenses of the operation and support its volunteer community, a more reliable long-term solution is required. We will share our ideas for monetization of certain aspects of the project.

Although I had been aware of open movements for much longer, and gradually gotten interested in the open education movements, my real involvement started with David Wiley’s Intro to Open Ed in 2007. I learnt a whole lot, not the least about the translation of MIT courses into Chinese, and the production of Chinese “OCW” courses. I used this idea to apply to an MA in comparative education, wanting to look at what kind of cultural issues translating MIT courses to Chinese would entail. I ended up studying the courses produced by Chinese universities instead, which has been a very exciting journey. I’ve given a few presentations on this (all here), and should really be finishing my MA right now, rather than participating in this course.

Just before I started that intro to open ed, I attended iCommons in Dubrovnik, where in addition to finally seeing and meeting people like Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Joi Ito and many others, I attended an amazingly well facilitated education track. That’s where I met Philipp, Neeru and Delia, and where we began to slowly lay the plans for what would become the Peer2Peer University. Fast forward three years, and P2PU was just mentioned in the New York Times this week, we have run two cycles of courses, the latest with 16 courses, including 3 in Portuguese, and had an amazing community meetup in Berlin, as well as met and partnered with lot’s of great, inspiring people. And to figure out how we can do this kind of open teaching and learning online even better, I’m starting my PhD this fall, at OISE and KMDI.

So this course is a great opportunity for me to reflect on what has happened, and what will happen. One of our early thoughts with P2PU was to experiment – we acknowledged that we could continue going to conferences and present ideas and theories around open online learning for several years more, but we wanted to actually do it. Inspired by all the other great people in the open ed movement, who are doers as well as thinkers. And sure enough, we have learnt incredibly much, and discovered so many new problems and issues, as we’ve moved along with our project.

Is this kind of a learning experience really available to everyone, or only very highly educated people with self-confidence and metaskills in abundance (which I think will characterize most of the people participating in this class, as it did with Wiley’s original class)? What, if anything, can we do to make it more accessible? What is the role of the teacher, and how much can we reduce the “load” on the teacher, to make these kind of courses scaleable as free courses (or will that never be achieved – will we always need government subsidy or tuition to maintain really high quality teaching and learning?) What kind of organizational models work best – for different kinds of learners, for different kinds of courses?

In our first cycle, we offered a wiki and a WordPress multiuser installation. Even within this limited framework, courses organized very differently. Some used only the wiki, some let everyone start their own blog, some had everyone blog on the same group blog, some used the wiki for collaborative writing in small groups, and then had the groups post the finished result on the blog, to be critiqued by other groups in the comments. Some of these courses were more successful than others (but – other than retention rate – how do we measure success, if every student coming in has a different background and a different purpose with taking the course?).

Then, stepping back from the microlevel focus on courses (although I am intensely interested in that, and I will certainly be following this course, not only to learn from the content, but also see what I can learn from the form and the organization of the interaction), what is the future of the university in society. (I will admit that I am biased, and mainly focused on post-K12 education, although certainly interested in what comes before). These two years at OISE, I’ve been doing Higher Education, and we have done readings about the history of the university, the precursors in ancient India, the shuyuan’s in China, the Muslim seats of learning to the different European models that developed – the French and the German – to the different sociological roles that universities, professors, students, graduates have played. I think that this is all crucial background information, if we want to assess the future of education.

If we want to replace universities, we need to understand the role of universities in society – and there is not one answer to that question, but many. And we need to keep an international perspective, because the world is growing increasingly globalized. We need to keep in mind much of continental Europe, where higher education is still essentially free, there is much smaller difference between types of institutions, and it’s much easier to gain entrance. India, which is chafing at a 5% enrollment rate, with a much higher population that would qualify for, and could benefit from higher education, or China, which exploded it’s enrollment rates from 4 million to 30 million over 10 years, and went from 5% enrollment to 25%, with 40% projected in 2020.

Anyway, I whole-heartedly look forward to this course, and am excited to be doing it. I’ve also succeeded with something I’ve always wanted – to create a hybrid course. I invited a number of other people at my institution, who are interested in these kinds of issues, to take the course with me, and for us to meet once a week to discuss the topics of the course live. We’re a neat group, including one professor of online learning, one lecturer in computer science, and several students from different departments. Time will tell if we will all manage to keep up with the course load, or if some will fall off, but I’m very excited – also to use this course as a bit of a lever, to induce people at my institution who don’t usually talk together, to do that.

Let the learning begin!

Stian
Thanks to  Tiagø Ribeiro, U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograph-World-Sense-), Musée McCord Museum and Nationaal Archief for the photos.

I have been very interested in the work of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) for a long time. It’s one of the mega-universities in the world, perhaps the biggest, with close to two million students. I wrote a very excited post earlier about how they have opened almost all of their educational material, and I continue to believe that this is one of the most under-reported OER stories. Therefore, I was very excited to be able to meet with Dr. Uma Kanjilal, who is head of the IGNOU eGyankosh, and Dr Sanjaya Mishra, to learn more about their future plans for eGyankosh, share some of my ideas, and also discuss the Peer2Peer University.

I am planning to write more about what I learnt later, but for now, I wanted to share the presentation that I gave to a group of people at IGNOU. I focused on three areas: The purposes of OER, the value of openness, and the Peer2Peer University. It was an honor to share my thoughts with such an engaging and intelligent audience, and I really hope I get a chance to go back and spend more time with IGNOU in the future.

The presentation below has been synced audio+slides, so you can listen to the audio, and the slides will turn automatically. You can also download the MP3 directly.

Stian