Re: p2pu Course Design Orientation: How is your course going? Let us know! (discussion comment)
Maria Droujkova
holtzermann17 added a comment to How is your course going? Let us know! "Recruitment should happen among lurkers, but also from larger networks - and
for that later one, we need the course to be plugged and visible and alive in
larger networks."This so well sums up my thought about why mathematics may be easier to learn
in a "problem-solving space" than in a "course". Such a space should
accommodate both casual, incidental learners and dedicated, high-achievers.There may be ways to usefully blend the nonlinear networked space and the
structured course, and use them to energize one another.... But isolating
people in a course seems to be precisely the wrong move, at least in the
online informal learning context.
Joe, I am taking this to the School of the Mathematical Future list.
What is the significance of having a COURSE as opposed to an ongoing-forever working group?
I think it forces the introduction of tasks with deadlines, since courses have ends. I also want it to include time and effort commitment, but that one does not always work even in high-stakes, paid-for, face-to-face college courses. In online courses, the commitment is very slight, but it does exist.
I think online courses must include large (hundreds or thousands at least) networks where they are situated, such as Classroom 2.0 for those of the Math Future courses that use Elluminate, or #mathchat for Colin's course.
Should we connect with Open Study for the next round?
Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
Make math your own, to make your own math.
Joe Corneli
>
> I think it forces the introduction of tasks with deadlines, since courses have ends. I also want it to include time and effort commitment, but that one does not always work even in high-stakes, paid-for, face-to-face college courses.
I don't think those things are necessarily *opposed* to
ongoing-forever study groups, since I can imagine such things easily
being introduced into such groups, too, for those who want them.
> Should we connect with Open Study for the next round?
To my mind a bigger problem than "what tool to use" is what people to
invite, and given my experiences in the last couple of rounds, I might
just as soon wait for people to come to PlanetMath to learn (because
they want to).
The one way this *might* connect with SoMF would be if we wanted to
put in an application for funding from P2PU to get some help improve
the usability of PlanetMath. I don't know if this is something that
P2PU would "believe in" or not. But personally, I think PlanetMath
will have more of the key ingredients than OpenStudy (but more likely
in August than in April!).
Maria Droujkova
The one way this *might* connect with SoMF would be if we wanted to
put in an application for funding from P2PU to get some help improve
the usability of PlanetMath. I don't know if this is something that
P2PU would "believe in" or not. But personally, I think PlanetMath
will have more of the key ingredients than OpenStudy (but more likely
in August than in April!).
As you proposed earlier, this can be the SoMF grant to P2PU, since no other organizer wanted to start any money-related projects. I think if we figure out connections well, it will be very relevant.
Why is it better for the purpose than OpenStudy?
Stian Håklev
Joe Corneli
topic-specific user community, but qa.p2pu.org doesn't have the
visibility or the numbers to compare.
(2) OpenStudy vs PlanetMath.org. OpenStudy doesn't appear to be
creating a particularly valuable *knowledge* resource. Their plan
appears to be something like: let's put a lot of peer learners
together in one space and then allow them to help each other. The
problem is that while people are an important resource for many
aspects of learning, they are not the only resource. OpenStudy seems
to have at least some intuition about this and would like users of
their service to be able to connect readily to resources of places
like PlanetMath. OK, but PlanetMath can also provide a massive
topic-specific user community, moreover, one that is closely
integrated with shared peer-produced knowledge resources. "Math for
the people, by the people".
As Stallman has said about Microsoft: it's just fine if they decide to
use some free software, and we should say good, we're happy for you.
But the question we should be asking is what are they *doing* for free
software. OpenStudy's idea of "open" is essentially the
minimal-possible understanding, which basically rules out any kind of
collaboration apart from "discussion".
(3 - Bonus!). p2pu.org X PlanetMath.org. Dropping the "qa" part and
thinking about p2pu.org in general: it seems to me that P2PU courses
(in mathematics at least) can and should have major components that
happen "elsewhere". One useful thing to do here would be for
PlanetMath (or whatever other service provider we consider) to have a
way for P2PU users to authenticate themselves, so that contributions
or problem solving history etc. can be piped back to their user
profile on another site. There are likely to be a bunch of other
cool ways to team up here... hm... to ponder!
Joe