How to become a School

[lila bailey]

Stian is absolutely right that we need to figure out soon what it means to be come a school, and whether there needs to be anything formal or official to go along with that designation.  So I am starting this new thread so we can start hammering this out.

We had a thread a while ago about the minimum responsibilities of schools which I moved over to the working group wiki page for further refinement. But the question is, do you need to meet all the criteria (which are still TBD) before you can officially call yourself a "School" or can this designation also apply to a group that has a stated desire to start a school and is actively working towards that goal?

Personally, I think being able to call yourself a School within P2PU should mean something specific, and not just be simply some folks who wish there were more courses about Topic X.  But I'm not sure where we draw that line.  What do people think?

[John Britton]

I think it implies that the group behind it will take responsibility for building courses in that subject area and curating them.
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[Stian Håklev]

I think there is also some question about branding and the use of P2PU... I've seen some external websites about P2PU School of Math Futures etc, with logos and everything. I don't personally have a problem with that, it sounds like an amazing project, and I am sure it will become an official school once the process runs through. However, nothing stops anyone from setting up a website with "P2PU School of Holocaust Denial", with logos and branding...

(Too be fair, no matter what we do, it's hard to fully stop that kind of thing, but maybe having some kind of policy would help - I don't know).

Stian

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[Philipp Schmidt]

I think the Schools working group should be the steward of this
process, and have responsibility for ensuring that everything called a
P2PU School is in fact one. The board can step in (Stian and Delia are
both in the working group - so they can flag things that look "fishy")
if necessary.

Since it's early days of Schools - let's try to be flexible. The
spirit of P2PU so far has been to "do" things first, to prototype and
experiment, and then figure out some minimal structures later and
encourage organic emergence (nod to Alison).

P

[Maria Droujkova]

I've been sending updates about School of the Mathematical Future in the Fall, first on the Community list and when this one formed, here. I quickly received feedback about changes and next steps. Community calls were also helpful.

My latest two questions were if it was ok to make the logo's background red to match the rest of Math Future theme, as Webcraft did with theirs; and if our proposed schedule works. I received answers quickly to both. In both cases, the content (logo, schedule) was made first and questions asked later. Joe and Dani posted questions and suggestions and received good feedback, as well. Here are the logos I am talking about.





I feel the fact Math Future people worked on outside platforms, rather than p2pu wiki, could be problematic. However, if you already have an active community, it's easier to form a task force, so to speak, on platforms where people are already registered (and know how to use), and then move to new ones.

It looks like now there is a choice to be made between the wiki-approach (post first, improve later) and the pre-screening approach to schools. Both have pluses and minuses. I find the history of Wikipedia rather illuminating here. Maybe it's possible to have the best of both worlds. For example, a school may need to have a descriptive page at the p2pu wiki before it can start using the logo. We talked about the minimal number of courses, as well.

Defining structures after there are enough good examples is a very solid design approach. It has different names in different fields. "Emergent methodology" is what ed researchers use and "agile" is the term from software development. I do not know how many examples of active schools are enough to build the understanding and then rich descriptions of necessary structures for forming them, but probably more than one.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[Alison Jean Cole]

I'd really like to nod towards SoSI and Math for how we define schools in the future. Both have been brewing for a long time, both groups of people have worked hard outside of P2PU to get people involved and then bring a robust deal to the P2PU table. Math Futures has formed more independently, and that's ok because Maria and Joe have been valuable members of the community and have kept us in the loop. They have also pursued formation without preemptive funding from us, and though both schools will apply for grants - they have not formed solely on the basis of receiving money. It is secondary to their cause, which is an indicator of the right motivations. This is why I am skeptical about "advertising" these funds. I think it would be more strategic to preserve funding for schools that self-identify (like Math Futures and SoSI) and offer them a chance to apply. 

Some ground rules on when a school becomes a school will be challenging to set. SoSi and math Futures are indeed schools - they have identified themselves as such without a formal process of approval. I wonder if they could chime in and offer their idealized formal structure - i.e. what would have been most helpful to them to feel validated throughout the process of formation?


ALISON
p2pu.org/users/alison

[Maria Droujkova]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 1:58 PM, Alison Jean Cole <alisonj...@gmail.com> wrote:

Some ground rules on when a school becomes a school will be challenging to set. SoSi and math Futures are indeed schools - they have identified themselves as such without a formal process of approval. I wonder if they could chime in and offer their idealized formal structure - i.e. what would have been most helpful to them to feel validated throughout the process of formation?

Discussions during weekly calls and in email groups, as well as a few chats I had with individual people, provided enough support. Together with existing structures and examples on the P2PU site and Webcraft sites, of course. The math communities involved aren't completely new at this game, as well, which probably helped - for example, we are used to flat (peer) tools for validation.

I like checklists, and maybe a few more can be created:

• Your proposed school can use P2PU logo when...
• Your proposed school gets its own line in the drop-down course creation menu when...
• Courses from your school get special/separate place in P2PU "news blasts" when...

I don't know yet what other milestones/quests/badges/achievements can there be for schools, but I am sure there can be more. Maybe some can be based on attracting X active students, or finishing Y successful courses, or obtaining an outside grant, or presenting school's work at conferences and journals. OSQA has fun badge names for inspiration.

Cheers,
MariaD

[Joe Corneli]

> I like checklists, and maybe a few more can be created:
>
> Your proposed school can use P2PU logo when...
> Your proposed school gets its own line in the drop-down course creation menu
> when...
> Courses from your school get special/separate place in P2PU "news blasts"
> when...

That sounds good to me - in particular I think it would be good to
create a "beta" or "incubating" or "probationary" status in addition
to the on/off switch of "X is a school (or not)". This would allow
schools to form without having any strongly implied affiliation with
or endorsement from P2PU -- however, anything group that calls
themselves a "P2PU school" without having first secured beta status
could be safely ignored (or else issued a takedown notice in the worst
cases!).

[Joe Corneli]

Hi Alison:

Your comment

> I am skeptical about "advertising" these funds. I think it would be more strategic to preserve funding for schools that self-identify (like Math Futures and SoSI) and offer them a chance to apply.

prompted me to think of something that might go even one step further,
which would be to allocate funds through a community-driven
consensus-based process, rather than through a competitive application
process. Instead of having a general call for proposals for those who
might want to start a school, have something more like a slush fund
available to people who are already doing work in support of P2PU's
mission and who need some funds to carry it out better.

To see whether that is a good idea at all I think it would be nice to
see a few brainstormed ideas from all involved about just how the
money might be usefully spent (either for current schools or possible
future ones that might come along). We've been talking a lot about
process but I'd rather like to see some concrete (if tentative)
proposals that would indicate what the "demand" for funds looks like
or might look like.

Joe

[Alison Jean Cole]

+1 Joe's comments

ALISON
p2pu.org/users/alison

[Stian Håklev]

We might want to think about this in terms of language communities too... although I guess it's no real problem - we're happy to add any translations of the website that people are able to provide, and hopefully in the future we can add tags, so that even if only have one French course, we can tag it as French and people can easily find it... So it's not so necessary as at for example Wikipedia to have an incubation period/ requirements for forming a language community?

Stian

[Pippa Buchanan]

Thumbs up for Joe's suggestion and Thumbs Up again for Stian's comment around language communities.

There should be a way for individuals to run a language specific course, but how that person operates (presumably they'd be bilingual with English as a second language) is very different from how a language community would operate. How we define a language community should be explored in more depth and those responsible should look to the Schools discussion for some input.

[Philipp Schmidt]

This is an interesting idea, but I would not want it to put the
micro-grants on hold while we are experimenting.

I think Lila's proposal is baked enough and there is rough consensus
that it makes sense to move forward with it.

Joe: If you want to take the lead on the slush fund idea, I'd love to
see what kinds of responses you get (in a separate thread?) and if it
looks promising, then we try to find money to support it. In the
meantime, if people have concrete ideas for activities that requires
financial support - they can wrap them in a micro-grant application.

Best - P