This page contains the current version of the P2PU Concept Document. Most of the contents in the document have been pulled out for different sections of the web-site, but for those who want to see the whole concept in one document, here it is. It's a DRAFT, contains notes on missing pieces, and will change over time.

 

Content

Need a paragraph that describes how we link to the content communities like AcaWiki and Connexions etc.

Course Design and Facilitation

Sense-makers and tutors work together to design courses and facilitate them. Their roles can overlap, or one person could do both - there are no hard and fast rules - but thinking about the roles they play separately helps understand how P2PU will work.

Sense-makers are experts in a particular field. They will often, but not necessarily, be teachers or professors at academic institutions. They are able to identify the key readings, the big questions, and the amount of content that can realistically be covered in one course. For sense-makers the P2PU offers an opportunity to do what they feel passionately about - teach the things they know. Since the potential student base is huge, even niche topics are likely to find a sufficient number of students. The P2PU makes it possible to teach in the long-tail of courses. And since tutors provide support and do most of the work, sense-makes do not need to invest huge amounts of time or effort.

Tutors help develop new courses and guide learner communities through the materials. Tutors will be interested in teaching or learning a particular subject. They will embrace the opportunity to spend some time working together with the sense-maker, a recognised expert in the field. Tutors could be graduate students or have worked with a particular sense-maker before, but this is not necessary. The P2PU reputation and network helps them contact sense-makers, who might otherwise be difficult to reach. The P2PU provides support for these tutors, either in the form of a short training course (like a P2PU course) or by making templates and checklists available that make it easy to get started.

As a reward, they will have special "tutor" profile pages showing the classes they have taught. Tutors can collect ratings, so that they become popular and people want to take courses led by them. It may be that for very good tutors, there could be some kind of financial reward built into the system in the future.

The P2PU will connect courses and tutors. In areas where we have a need for courses we will use our network to recruit sense-makers and offer tutors the chance to work with these experts in designing and teaching a course. Likewise, we assist tutors who know what topic they are interested in and who they want to work with by giving them email templates and references and use our existing network of contacts of sense-makers to introduce them if possible.

Community

Groups of learners study together. Since small groups are better at building community, each cohort has at least 8 students (and no more than 14) Providing a cohort of other learners to take a course with provides a sense of community, creates support structures, and accountability for taking the course.

Each group starts on a certain date, ends on a certain date. Within those dates things are more flexible. Some groups might decide to have regular scheduled online meetings (using IM or skype), others might prefer asynchronous threaded discussions.

Commitment

There is nothing more discouraging than starting a course with 20 other people, 15 of whom drop out after the first two weeks, because they realise they don't actually have the time to participate.

In order to ensure that students are motivated and committed, they have to overcome a little "obstacle" in order to join a course: pay a very small sign-up fee and submit an application. The sign-up fee takes into account purchasing power inequalities especially regarding developing countries and for those who can't pay, it will always be waived. The P2PU only safe-guards the money, and students decide how it is spent after they complete the course. They can choose to either donate it to charity (selecting from a list of charities), use it for the next course, pay it out to the tutor, donate it to the P2PU, or use it to cover the cost for an external test/exam that would award credit for the completed course. To apply for a course, potentials students write a few paragraphs  about themselves and respond to a course-relevant question.

Peer Learning

P2PU will experiment with a variety of methods in learning, depending on the preference and style of the tutor and the topic that is being learned. Different subjects lend themselves to different study styles, and in some fields more high-quality open materials (e.g. video lectures or interactive exercises) are available than in others.

Different from a large college classroom, where information is given uni-directionally, the P2PU learning experience is based on interaction between peers in small communities. The tutor's job is not to teach, but more that of a party host, who keeps everything moving along, pulls people into the conversation, and makes sure all voices are heard. Student groups are kept small to create a stronger sense of community, which provides additional support mechanisms, and motivates students to keep going.

In practice, this means that the syllabus will each week consist of links to a number of readings or resources that are freely available online, as well as some guiding questions for discussions. After studying the material, the students will write answers to the reflection questions, and comment and engage with each others answers. Different subjects might lend themselves to different approaches, and different tutors might experiment with different communication methods such as IM or voice chat. Regardless of the communication medium, much of the collaboration is captured for posterity to enter into student's personal portfolio and accessible for future students who'd like to review what previous cohorts discussed. While courses are run in small groups, they do not exist as closed insular bubbles, but interact with the rest of the online world. All learning materials are completely open for others to see, but students who want to be an active part of a course have to join it. This will ensure a small but committed learning group of students that actively engage with the material, and each other. In addition, the learning trajectory includes active contribution to other knowledge projects, for example writing Wikipedia articles, making short films or using flickr photos for presentation. In such a participatory model, the quality of learning to a large degree, depends on quality and commitment of the students, which is why we are serious about creating and sustaining commitment among learners (see above).

Learning practices also involve not just engaging with, but refining the course materials themselves. During each iteration in which a course is taught, the course materials will be commented on and refined by the students, and the course evolves to become a richer resource available to all.

Finally, the governance model of the entire P2PU is participatory and does not differentiate between students, tutors or sense-makers. Similar to Linux or Wikipedia, community members who are willing to commit time and energy, can influence the direction that the P2PU will take.

Assessment, Recognition and Accreditation

Getting feedback and assessment is an important driver of learning. The P2PU enables and encourages various forms of providing review and feedback for formative assessment. Course groups and tutors are free to decide how to test each other - they can use a number of short questions that have predefined answers, write an open book exam, or have a discussion in which each student can ask one question and evaluate the answer. multiple choice, open book written exam, or an oral exam within the group. At the end, if they wished, they could make try to decide on a ranking. For some students competition is a motivator. In general, the P2PU encourages students to actively define their own learning goals - with the support of their peers - and then evaluate learning within those parameters. In all courses students are asked to write short feedback to each other, which can be kept private or shared with the whole group, using rubriks provided by the P2PU and tutor.

Portfolio

Recognition is the first step of accreditation. Each P2PU user has a profile page, which serves as a personal portfolio - it details their interests, shows which courses they have completed as students or tutors, and gives a measure of community reputation. The profile page contains links to work that the student has completed - for example a particularly popular essay that was written in one of the courses - and contain recommendations others have written. For tutors, the profile page contains all assessments they have received from their students. Users can control what information appears on their profile pages.

A P2PU profile page would be valuable in its own right, and soon begin to take on its own meaning of recognition for learning. P2PU students would be recognized as resourceful self-starters and group learners. P2PU tutors would be considered experts in their field. It may be that one day an employer would recognise an outstanding P2PU portfolio to be as valuable, or even more valuable, than a traditional university degree.

Formal accreditation

There are also pathways to more formal accreditation. Students who are currently enrolled in degree programmes can ask their institutions to recognise a P2PU course for credit. This process has already been tested in courses such as David Wiley's Introduction to Open Education. Students in different universities showed the course syllabus and the work they had completed to their professors, who awarded them credits towards their degrees.

For students not currently enrolled, universities around the world already offer recognition of prior learning (RPL) services to assess learning that was done in informal settings or in institutions in other countries. In many cases, the existing policies and regulations would allow students to ask for recognition of a P2PU cours. The details would have to be negotiated on a case-by-case basis.

In addition, some universities and private accreditation providers offer competency based degrees that do not prescribe students to take particular courses in a particular institution, but only to demonstrate that they have the required knowledge, like for example the Western Governors University. P2PU students could take exams with any of these organisations to get formal credits for the learning that took place in P2PU courses.

These possibilities already exist, but students are not aware of them, and don't know how to navigate the administrative hurdles. By collecting these experiences, and connecting students who are going through the process, the P2PU will create a knowledge base that will make it easier for future students. Universities are reluctant pioneers, and the ability to point them to a list of other institutions that have accepted P2PU courses in the past, will provide strong support for a student negotiating credits.

In addition, private companies are interested reputation based assessment and portfolios, that would allow them to accredit learning that takes place in open communities. The P2PU has already been approached by one company that would consider a formal agreement for credit if P2PU can demonstrate that its reputation and community models are robust. This will not be possible from the start, but we are currently connecting with researchers who study online reputation models and text based assements to see how such a process could be developed.

Logistics

Team

The P2PU concept was developed by 5 people with diverse backgrounds and skills, who live on 3 continents and span 4 time-zones, and who are comitted to seeing this idea become reality.

• Delia Browne - National Copyright Director for Educational Materials in Australia. Previously Executive Director of the Arts Law Centre of Australia. Advocate, policy-maker, activist. Based in Sydney.
  
• Stian Håklev - MA student in Higher Education at University of Toronto, background in development studies. Participated in David Wiley's Intro to Open Education course. Activist for open access to research and open education. Based in Toronto.
  
• Neeru Paharia - Previous Director of Creative Commons, and currently PhD student at Harvard Business School. Film-maker, illustrator, blues-guitar player. Based on the East and the West Coast.
  
• Jan Philipp Schmidt - Open Education implementer at University of Western Cape and United Nations University. Open Courseware Consortium Board member. Based in Cape Town.
• 5th team member currently waiting for sign-off from legal team at his organisation
  

Advisory Group

In addition, we have started working with an informal advisory group that we draw on for feedback. This group is growing, but the following people have already agreed to participate:

• Ahrash Bissel, Executive Director, ccLearn
• Christine Geith, Michigan State University
• Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation
• We are currently confirming the others ...
  

Volunteers

Finally, there already is a small community of people who would like to help with particular aspects of the project, including technology development or extending the idea into off-line learning groups.

Governance

P2PU follows the tried and tested meritocratic governance models of open source software projects where "skin in the game" determines who makes decisions. The initial 5 volunteers are committed to seeing the project through for the launch phase, but we want it to be an open space in which many others feel they can do what they feel passionately about - learn together and share knowledge. The P2PU is not hosted within one particular institution or organisation - it is designed as an open community-based project from the ground-up. If necessary, grants can be handled through the institutions in which the core team is employed, including two universities and a non-profit organisation.

Technology

The P2PU is currently considering different technology solutions. The P2PU will provide a platform that makes it easy to establish and teach courses, and store profile information, but it can also just act as a central hub that connects users who are posting on their individual blogs using educational content that is stored on other servers.

The P2PU is not a technology project, and doesn't want to become one - it will use hosted applications with a preference for open source software and only make adjustments and modifications if absolutely necessary.

Implementation

Getting Started

The P2PU will start offering its first round of 10 courses in February 2009.

The courses span a wide variety of subjects, including economics, creative writing, media studies, alternative energy, data visualisation and are put together by some of the leading experts in the field.

Scope and Growth

The P2PU will start with an initial set of 10 courses, running for 6 weeks, for a total of 100 - 150 students. We expect to break for 4 weeks after the first set of courses, to review our experience and make improvements to the model before starting the second round. During the first full year, we plan to run 4 rounds of courses, increase the total number of courses to at least 20, that are used by at least 50 learning groups, and reach 500 students (some students will take more than one course).

Because the P2PU rests on a volunteer model, there is no hard limit to how it could grow. If the community finds it useful, more courses will be organised by more people. We can only make predictions for future growth after having some experience from the first year.

Action research

The field of online learning and open / peer2peer learning and collaboration is in rapid development, both when it comes to technological platforms available and social models for organizing. We have been inspired by a number of very successful pilots and see the P2PU in the tradition of these pioneering courses. We will be continually monitoring and evaluating the progress, making many changes underways, and hopefully come up with new models of collaboration which not only benefit P2PU but also other projects in which communities of volunteers attempt to work together. We will actively promote and support research, especially action research, on the P2PU model, and make it a priority to share information and reflections with the larger community on a regular basis. The P2PU will look very different in three or five years from how it looked when we started it, but the only way to get there is to jump in and try.

Cost and Sustainability

The concept of the P2PU rests on volunteer contributions. As long as incentives exist for tutors to create new courses and teach existing ones, and for students to participate in learning communities, very little financial support is required to cover the organisational overhead and technical infrastructure.

We estimate that the total cost of the P2PU will always be less than 100k US$ / year, which can be raised through donations from users, or donor support.

To ensure a smooth launch, and reduce the workload for volunteers during the intense start-up phase, we are looking for US$ 50k to hire a community facilitator whose main responsibility would be to support the growing community of volunteer students and tutors. In addition, we are seeking US$ 25k to organise a 3-day P2PU implementation workshop in January 2009 to prepare the launch of the initial set of courses.