Fwd: Article about P2PU to Brazil
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Carolina Rossini
Nov 20, 2009, 4:43:29 PM11/20/09
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From: Stian Håklev <sha...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: Article about P2PU to Brazil
To: Rita de Cássia Bovo de Loiola <rlo...@edglobo.com.br>, p2pu-gang <p2pu...@googlegroups.com>
Dear Rita,
Thank you very much for contacting us. I will try to give some brief answers to your questions below, and I would be happy to talk to you on the phone to discuss these questions in more depth. If you give me your phone number and a time, I could call you through Skype. (I am based on Toronto, Canada).
Just to clarify, Neeru Paharia is one of the five founding members of P2PU, but her project AcaWiki is entirely separate from P2PU.
Initially we want to have all the courses start on the same date, because it makes it easier to administer, and also to get the word out to potentially students. We choose six weeks as an experiment. You need a certain amount of time to build a community, and get immersed in a learning experience, but at the same time, we don't want to scare the students off by having to make a too long committment. We might re-evaluate this model as we go along, but for now we are keeping to six week courses. We are planning to launch the next batch of courses in the end of January.
As for the content, the courses are open to everyone, no matter what their educational background is, but if you look at the topics and contents during the first iteration, it's clear that most of them were similar to graduate level courses. We are very interested in offering also more basic undergraduate courses in the future, since there is a real need for this, but it is challenging to do this in a way that keeps both the students and the course organizers' motivation. We have some ideas, and will try to experiment with this during the January courses. For example, we will try to link to MIT OpenCourseWare materials, and Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, as well as design the courses to be more project-centric.
We certainly learn a lot from the tradition of the Open Universities and distance learning, but our courses are quite different. Since we are not part of a university, we are free to offer courses on a wider variety of subjects. Since we do not offer accreditation, and cannot threaten with expulsion or low grades, our courses have to be very positive experiences for students to stay in. But basically the students and the course organizer together make the course - you cannot just sit back and listen to the teacher, everyone has to participate to create a learning community. In some sense, we are more similar to a book club or a study group, than a traditional university course.
Of course, it's also important that all the material we use for courses should be freely available, and in fact all the communication that happens within courses will be available to everyone outside, so that even if you are not a member of a course, you can still read everything they read, and follow all the conversations.
We are also developing a new tech platform, hopefully ready to January, which will allow us to experiment with new ways of peer-assessment, building a reputation in the community, and a portfolio, and seeing whether that might in the future be as useful as formal credit in landing a job, etc.
That sounds logical. Yes, in fact there is a lot about P2PU that harks back to the earlier days of universities, and even pre-university learning, where people who wanted to learn would gather together in a completely open fashion and question ideas and share their insights. You never heard about Plato or Socrates having a copyright on their books, or excluding students who didn't attain a certain grade point average - ideally through the internet, these kinds of open and inclusive learning conversations can be reanimated, and we can play part of that.
That is correct.
Hope this is useful, and looking forward to talking to you on the phone for clarifications/further questions.
best
Stian
--
http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters
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From: Stian Håklev <sha...@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 8:17 AM
Subject: Re: Article about P2PU to Brazil
To: Rita de Cássia Bovo de Loiola <rlo...@edglobo.com.br>, p2pu-gang <p2pu...@googlegroups.com>
Dear Rita,
Thank you very much for contacting us. I will try to give some brief answers to your questions below, and I would be happy to talk to you on the phone to discuss these questions in more depth. If you give me your phone number and a time, I could call you through Skype. (I am based on Toronto, Canada).
I'm sending this e-mail to Neery Paharia because, for what I read, it started with AcaWiki, from Creative Commons.
Just to clarify, Neeru Paharia is one of the five founding members of P2PU, but her project AcaWiki is entirely separate from P2PU.
- How did it begin? And why did you want to do this project?
The five founding members (Stian Håklev, Philipp Schmidt, Delia Browne, Joel Thierstein and Neeru Paharia) got to know each other through meeting at a number of conferences about Creative Commons and open education, and we began to discuss what the future of the university might look like - what new possibilities we had to completely rethink university education given the vast online libraries now available, the large amounts of open educational resources that had been released, and the new ways of communicating and collaborating online across the world. We decided that although many parts of the university were the result of historical demands - big brick buildings, huge libraries etc - there were many valuable things about the learning structure provided. For most students it is quite difficult to just study something by him or herself without any guidance or support. First you need someone to choose and sequence the learning material (if I want to learn about anthropology, and I decide to just google anthropology and start reading the first hit, that might not be very useful), a co-hort that moves through the material at the same pace (so that when I have read an article, I can discuss it with other people who have read the same article), deadlines (because we all need motivation), feedback, evaluation, etc.
So we began to brainstorm about how these services could possibly be provided outside of an institutional context, free for everyone to participate, and scaleable so that everyone who are interested could benefit from this. We decided that the best way of answering this question was to simply try it, which is why we launched the first iteration of courses in September this year.
So we began to brainstorm about how these services could possibly be provided outside of an institutional context, free for everyone to participate, and scaleable so that everyone who are interested could benefit from this. We decided that the best way of answering this question was to simply try it, which is why we launched the first iteration of courses in September this year.
- I saw you have seven courses that began on September and finished in six weeks. Why did you choose this format? It works as graduation course or more like a post-graduate one?
Initially we want to have all the courses start on the same date, because it makes it easier to administer, and also to get the word out to potentially students. We choose six weeks as an experiment. You need a certain amount of time to build a community, and get immersed in a learning experience, but at the same time, we don't want to scare the students off by having to make a too long committment. We might re-evaluate this model as we go along, but for now we are keeping to six week courses. We are planning to launch the next batch of courses in the end of January.
As for the content, the courses are open to everyone, no matter what their educational background is, but if you look at the topics and contents during the first iteration, it's clear that most of them were similar to graduate level courses. We are very interested in offering also more basic undergraduate courses in the future, since there is a real need for this, but it is challenging to do this in a way that keeps both the students and the course organizers' motivation. We have some ideas, and will try to experiment with this during the January courses. For example, we will try to link to MIT OpenCourseWare materials, and Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, as well as design the courses to be more project-centric.
- I couldn't get if the P2PU is completely online or if the students and the "teacher" can really met personally. Is it necessary, at any moment?
So currently, P2PU works completely in an online fashion. Since students from across the world enroll, it would be impossible for them to meet. Some of the courses featured a "live" component, like a voice call or a chat, but this is not necessary - most of the communication happens asynchronously, with blogging, discussion forums, etc.
We are however interested in experimenting with ways of mixing online and offline components. There are different ways of doing this. One could be that each student chooses a project in their local community that they would like to work on while doing the course. Another could be that a group of several students in the same location decide to do a P2PU course - they could also meet offline once a week to discuss the course material. We are also interested in looking at how a hybrid model could help us reach more people in countries with very low internet penetration.
We are however interested in experimenting with ways of mixing online and offline components. There are different ways of doing this. One could be that each student chooses a project in their local community that they would like to work on while doing the course. Another could be that a group of several students in the same location decide to do a P2PU course - they could also meet offline once a week to discuss the course material. We are also interested in looking at how a hybrid model could help us reach more people in countries with very low internet penetration.
- I also would like to know what kind of students you had for this courses. Is it people that are already in university? Is it people that would like to learn about a specific subject? Can anyone from other countries follow the courses?
Your last question first, yes, anyone from any country can follow our courses. Of course, they have to know English (all our courses are in English - for now), and have some kind of internett access. Our first iteration was not widely publicized, so a lot of the course participants were actually people in universities already who had heard about us through open education blogs, etc. But there were also people who heard about us through a specific interest in a subject - for example Ana Rosa, a Brazilian who led a course on international neuroethics, put an announcement on several neuroethics blogs, and got many participants interested in the topic, who had never heard about the concept of open education before.
As we develop, we want to make a concerted effort to attract many different groups to P2PU. This ranges from retired people (who have a lot of time, and much to share), to the unemployed (especially relevant in these economic times), stay-at-home mothers and fathers, high school drop-outs etc. All of these groups can benefit from P2PU in different ways, and have different needs, which we need to take into consideration.
As we develop, we want to make a concerted effort to attract many different groups to P2PU. This ranges from retired people (who have a lot of time, and much to share), to the unemployed (especially relevant in these economic times), stay-at-home mothers and fathers, high school drop-outs etc. All of these groups can benefit from P2PU in different ways, and have different needs, which we need to take into consideration.
- And what did you think about this first experience? Did it reached your goals?
This was our first attempt, and we hadn't really defined any specific target for "success". One of the main purposes was to learn a lot from the pilot, and in this I think we succeeded very well - we did initial and exit surveys, and collected a lot of data - this meant that at the workshop in Berlin this past week, we all had a firm grounding in this experience, and could build on what had gone well, and what had not gone so well. Some courses were a lot more "successful" than others during the pilot, and we found issues of motivation (when students don't have to be in a class, it's easy to drop out if life gets too busy), and lack of time (the people who found out about us were typically in a full time job, and very active). We are actively working on improving our courses based on these experiences.
Of course, just the fact that something like 350 people applied to follow these courses from a completely unknown organization, for which no credit was given, shows that this model generates a lot of interest and enthusiasm.
Of course, just the fact that something like 350 people applied to follow these courses from a completely unknown organization, for which no credit was given, shows that this model generates a lot of interest and enthusiasm.
- What are the differences between the P2PU and the online courses developed by universities all around the world? Is it the idea or the software used? Is there any software developed for the P2PU?
We certainly learn a lot from the tradition of the Open Universities and distance learning, but our courses are quite different. Since we are not part of a university, we are free to offer courses on a wider variety of subjects. Since we do not offer accreditation, and cannot threaten with expulsion or low grades, our courses have to be very positive experiences for students to stay in. But basically the students and the course organizer together make the course - you cannot just sit back and listen to the teacher, everyone has to participate to create a learning community. In some sense, we are more similar to a book club or a study group, than a traditional university course.
Of course, it's also important that all the material we use for courses should be freely available, and in fact all the communication that happens within courses will be available to everyone outside, so that even if you are not a member of a course, you can still read everything they read, and follow all the conversations.
We are also developing a new tech platform, hopefully ready to January, which will allow us to experiment with new ways of peer-assessment, building a reputation in the community, and a portfolio, and seeing whether that might in the future be as useful as formal credit in landing a job, etc.
- The idea is creating an entire graduation course online or only some specific courses?- And for accreditation, is it still a work the students do?
So far, we are only offering individual courses, and the topics are more dependent on what people want to organize, than on some master plan (although we have ideas for certain kinds of courses that we'd like to see more of, and we can try to push for that). In the future, it's possible that we'd offer some kind of a full degree program, but it's too early to say.
For accreditation, we are working along two paths. One is ways of gaining traditional formal accreditation, for example through recognition of prior learning, challenge exams, competency based exams etc. In fact, one student during our first iteration managed to get credit for the course he took - he is a PhD student in open education, and the course was on copyright for educators. He showed the syllabus to his professor, who approved it, and agreed to let him do the course as an independent study course.
The other part is that we would like to experiment with new ways of accreditation through peer assessment and reputation - much inspired by the open source communities and how people can get jobs in good companies, without ever having finished a Computer Science degree, because they can demonstrate the value of the work they have done in a commnity.
We have written an article about many of these ideas, which you can find here: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/641
For accreditation, we are working along two paths. One is ways of gaining traditional formal accreditation, for example through recognition of prior learning, challenge exams, competency based exams etc. In fact, one student during our first iteration managed to get credit for the course he took - he is a PhD student in open education, and the course was on copyright for educators. He showed the syllabus to his professor, who approved it, and agreed to let him do the course as an independent study course.
The other part is that we would like to experiment with new ways of accreditation through peer assessment and reputation - much inspired by the open source communities and how people can get jobs in good companies, without ever having finished a Computer Science degree, because they can demonstrate the value of the work they have done in a commnity.
We have written an article about many of these ideas, which you can find here: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/641
- Universities first began for sharing knowledge around a new information support: books. Do you think P2PU is the evolution of this idea, since you're sharing knowledge around the new information supports (Internet, videos, online documents)?
That sounds logical. Yes, in fact there is a lot about P2PU that harks back to the earlier days of universities, and even pre-university learning, where people who wanted to learn would gather together in a completely open fashion and question ideas and share their insights. You never heard about Plato or Socrates having a copyright on their books, or excluding students who didn't attain a certain grade point average - ideally through the internet, these kinds of open and inclusive learning conversations can be reanimated, and we can play part of that.
- Do you know anybody doing something similar (I ask this because I'm searching experiences like this all around the world to put in the article...)
We were very inspired by what has been called the "Wiley wiki model", which was started by David Wiley at Brigham Young University. There has been a number of courses taught in this way, but all of them were one-offs, nobody had created a platform to conduct a large number of such courses, which is what we are trying to do.
There is also some open courses conducted on Wikiversity and Wikieducator, although these platforms seem more oriented towards the community creation of learning materials (which is great, and which we would be happy to integrate into our courses). The University of the People is often mentioned in the same breath as us, even though their approach is quite different: for example, we use our large community to create a large variety of courses in every imaginable topic, whereas they are going for the assembly-line model of offering very high volume for just a few high-demand topics, like business administration. But I think what they are doing is also valuable, and I wish them good luck.
There are also a number of websites to connect teachers and students around a topic, sometimes for pay, sometimes not.
There is also some open courses conducted on Wikiversity and Wikieducator, although these platforms seem more oriented towards the community creation of learning materials (which is great, and which we would be happy to integrate into our courses). The University of the People is often mentioned in the same breath as us, even though their approach is quite different: for example, we use our large community to create a large variety of courses in every imaginable topic, whereas they are going for the assembly-line model of offering very high volume for just a few high-demand topics, like business administration. But I think what they are doing is also valuable, and I wish them good luck.
There are also a number of websites to connect teachers and students around a topic, sometimes for pay, sometimes not.
- And, just to be sure, this project is been incubated by the University of California at Irvine and has no relations with Harvard, that's it?
That is correct.
Hope this is useful, and looking forward to talking to you on the phone for clarifications/further questions.
best
Stian
--
http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters
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