Everything about the Org. How we work, why we do this, how you can get involved. Making proverbial sausages in public.
OK, Iāve mulled this over quite a bit over the past 48 hours, and here are my semi-digested ideas:
##REFLECTION
- Itās time to deliver on the promise that we believe in: learning with peers elevates your experience and makes you more engaged.
- You are more likely to achieve your learning goals with others.
- āExperimentsā cloud our resolve and legitimacy. We should make bold claims, construct the learning experiences, and then share successes and failures.
##BOLD PROMISES & VISION
P2PU: the Most Engaging Learning Experience
P2PU: Helping You Achieve Your Learning Goals
P2PU: Learning You Feel Good About
##WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE
We offer the same content several different ways, allowing folks to choose what kind of peer learning experience they would like to have.
- Length of time: try the āsprintā model, the showcase model, granular task model
- Question-based / learning group model: Ask a question each week, and groups form around answering that question together.
- Crazy blind date model: meet with 1 person via Hangout week-to-week. You know 3 details about them beforehand.
- Chain model: Meet with a mentor on week 1, mentor someone else on week 2.
- Meetup model: work through the content online, make the project with other peer learners face-to-face at a network of makerspaces / coworking spaces.
#BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS
- These ideas involve constructing a lot of content.
- Very labor-intensive for 1 subject matter area or course
- But it involves more focus on the peer learning aspect / experience, and spreads us less thin across disciplines and projects
Again, these are semi-digested thoughts. But I heeded Pās vision to think grandly, so there 'tis.
Mozz
If we follow our current trajectory I would say that success would be:
- Many active course facilitators and learners engaging on p2pu.org
- Lots of partners working together with us on interesting new learning experiences
- Strong communities forming around interests represented by badges
- A larger and more involved core community of people interested in the meta of open education
I would love it if P2PU is well established as a community you can go to if you want non-cookie cutter learning. The DIY-U course is really great and I think it should play a bigger role in P2PU.
For me there is also the question of reaching under served communities. I think there is a tension between reaching under served communities and not offering an alternative to traditional university courses. Maybe we should encourage DIY education more?
So, not a clear concrete vision and measure for success, but my thoughts.
Cheers
d
Another dreamā¦
What do we have?: Knowledge and experience in running great online courses. We know whatās good. We have an advanced learning theory. We love everything that makes online courses better: Feedback, interactive examples, learning through creation, group activities, peer support, discussing, sharing, socializing, connecting.
What donāt we have?: Domain specific knowledge. Teaching experience for specific subjects. Thereās an art thatās unique to every field - and another unique art to teaching that.
Letās work with others to make the best courses ever
Who do we want to work with?: Passionate teachers. The kind that never stops working on improving their courses. Over the years, they have learned some great ways to teach concepts and keep their students excited. They have a refined course that they are ready to take to the next step.
How do we do this?: By developing the course alongside the teacher. We start with the teacherās content. We let the teacher know what is possible. We slowly bring the teacherās content online, and p2pu-ize it along the way. We suggest places where group feedback and activities would work well. We make the course social inside and out. We leverage software to enable teaching through creation and play and if we have the budget and means, we write more ourselves. We hold the teacherās content sacred throughout this process. We iterate until all aspects of the course come together in a smooth and coherent learning experience.
Itās a philosophy of being an enabler. P2PU is an enabler and amplifier for passionate teachers.
Who pays?: Ideally, that passionate teacher is part of an organization that is creating a school and they have funding. They pay p2pu for the service of helping them create a great learning experience around their content. If not this, then there isā¦
P2PU as a School Incubator
Letās get good at creating schools. Itās a long process, but focused schools will put more time and energy into developing their content which will result in higher quality courses.
We can be smart about it. Looking for fields that have a demand for great open learning experiences without the supply. Seeking out the best passionate teachers for that field. Connecting them with funders so that they can get their school off the ground. Working with them to create great courses.
What does success look like?: Enduring communities. Alumni that love the courses so much that they stick around. They find that they can continue to advance themselves in the field through discussion with their fellow alumni. They canāt wait for the next course to be released.
Most of this thought comes from how I am approaching the music course. So in a sense, we are already doing a lot of this. Maybe it would be good for p2pu as a whole. Not sure.
Cheers
Chris
So, Iāve been hanging back a bit on this, because I really struggle with this kind of discussion.
Iāve decided, however, to put my caveats at the end of this message, becuase I donāt want to sound like a wet blanket - thatās not my intent, at all!
I really, really like what Vanessa, Dirk and Chris have said - I think you all have concrete ideas, which are realistic and implementable, and thatās the best thing we could ask for, because we can plan from that. Nice one.
So here is my simple vision of what a āsuccessfulā P2PU would look like, at least from an org perspective
- We keep doing what weāre doing, but better.
- Weāre more confident, more able to hold our own, more able to say āno thanksā to things that
donāt seem worth doing. - Weāre true to our values, good to our friends and partners (in the professional sense I mean, although you should always be nice to your friends/boyfriends/girlfriends/mothers/cats).
- There is continuity. We develop a reputation for being really good at what we do because weāve been doing it for a while. That doesnāt mean we donāt change or experiment but that the core of any activity is based on our 4 years of helping people learn with their peers.
- We build a stable-enough org for staff to be able to take on exciting
experimental work without having to put other things on hold or stuff being put on the back burner
Now for the caveat:
We need to remember in conversations like this that saying āXYZ is my great dream of successā does not imply that anything else is failure, or at least second best. Grandiose talk is good to have over beers, but it has to either be implementable, or itās not helpful.
Looking up at the stars means you risk tripping over your shoelaces. This doesnāt mean you shouldnāt look up. It means you should always make sure that your shoelaces are properly tied.
And finally mine ā¦
So I gave this a lot of thought, at one point I almost tried to bail out for the reason that I am new to the team and donāt know much about the original goals that were set out.
But bailing out is not my nature (at least when it comes to talking and discussing about anything really, I have opinion about everything), so I went on and think about what I expected P2PU to be when I first encountered it.
The promise of this great community was so appealing to me, the people that thing like me, that feel some freedom from bounds of the rest of the worldā¦ It was all that and more.
I learned that there were plenty different kind of people that were all sharing my feelings about the conventional education. From there I started to think about the foundation of principles that was build for the community from you guys, and I guess main thing that bound them all is peer to peer and openness. Something dear to me, for if this things would not exist I would still be in some dead end job (corporate or otherwise, telling people that I want to build programs for computers and web and they telling me back that I am a woman and thus not smart enough to do it)
This was fine and clear enough for me to start to believe in it passionately, but lately I have started to struggle somewhat with lack of enthusiasm that I experience, I got somewhat scared at one point when some word about not reaching the goal that was set out to do, got out. But in words of a very wise man: āin the middle of the difficulty, lies an opportunityā (some fella called Albert). From this I take that who ever thinks the goal of P2PU is not quite there yet, should sit back wait, see and be amazed. So some thoughts on what I want to do and then some on what I want to leave in my ālegacyā after all is said and done:
- having a big vision equips you for great success, letās not give up on the big dreams, they brought us this far.
- but meanwhile I think we need to set reasonable goals and some milestones as well, they will keep us motivated
- letās not build tools that no one uses, but if we do build something letās make it good. Lets maintain it like bosses and most importantly
- letās not let the heist pressure us in building something that is only half done (letās not act like some big corporations where people does not notice a dead of a colleague for for days, I read an article about it and it happened recently in this company.).
- letās advertise more (have lightning talks, talks, attend meetups, ā¦) about what we do, why we do it and what we want to achieve.
Sometimes this can be a drag, since one can find themselves repeating a lot same things over and over (but we have to remember that this is a sacrifice we should make) - letās remember also that one type does not fit all. World is really not black and white, so different approaches for different people, groups, different values, diversity emphasis ,ā¦
Now what I want to leave behind as a ālegacyā?
- First some good products/apps since this is my field (QA should get much more love before and during deployments). I like to be the opensourcer but not at any price.
- Furthermore I would like to get the feeling of āmeaningā, as in: we have committed to something really meaningful (even if we would take a roll of a long forgotten band which had in itās time changed music scene, as long as we are not some washed up douche money gathering band machine that does not know when they reached their peak,ā¦ several comes to mind but Bonjovi kinda stands out - sorry to all the fans), so letās shout about what we do, like we are freshly inlove :).
There, now you have it with all the typos and all!
Thank you for all the really thoughtful responses so far. I would like to ask a follow on question [Iām wrote different versions of what I think is the same question, because Iāve heard people talk about this in these different ways] ->
- Whose lives do we make a little bit better; by providing what experience to
them that they canāt get elsewhere? - Who are the people we touch and what do we touch them with (refrain from profanity!)?
- Who are our customers and what do we offer them?
Hey Dirk - I was struck by the way you started your post. I donāt think we need to necessarily follow our current trajectory, unless you think that is the best route to success.
+1 to āweāre more confidentā - I agree thatās important. One question: when you say āWe keep doing what weāre doingā what exactly do you mean? Weāve done a whole bunch of things over the years and Iād love to hear which one of those you think are the core of P2PU (or maybe all of them together?).
@1L2P Agreed, just wanted to start from a concrete point. Iām still trying to think about what we want to achieve? Part of me feels like what we want to do isnāt that complex: we want to provide open online peer based education.
There are lots of other players in the online education field, but I donāt think theyāre open or peer based. It feels all part of the general startup scene. I think what I like and what we should be aiming for is more like the open web. Allow and encourage people to take education to be their own and to be in control of it.
Others (like coursera and udacity) enforces the general idea that you have some experts that are qualified to teach and some people that are ment to be taught. They even say things like that you can take a course from one of the best professors in the world.
I feel we are saying that everyone has the capability to be a teacher and everyone can learn something. Thatās important to me!
Iām not ready to formulate a big and grand dream at this moment
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That is absolutely fine. As I said in the original question - thinking big or small, being concrete or grand, is all totally fine. Maybe stepping back and reflecting is a better way to frame the conversation. I donāt want us to get too caught up in what we are doing in our day-to-day work at the moment, but I am always skeptical of the ā2 Billion kids will learn XYZā announcements. Thatās not us.
Ha! I would argue you just articulated a big and grand vision. If we can make this a little more concrete (we probably want to start with āsomeā people, not with everyone - and what does it mean to feel like you can be a teacher, etc.)
I actually totally agree and this is a very good āsellingā point!
Argh. I made a mistake. This is the default topic for the org category. In order to fix the category description I have to edit the topic. Here is the original post. Please all ālikeā this post, so it gains some popularity within the thread.
Imagine -> Things go well beyond your wildest dreams. Things for P2PU. And things for you, as you are building P2PU. What does that look like? Be concrete. Be grand. Think big, or think small. Donāt worry about what the world thinks - you get to define success here.
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Ok, so I thought a little more and hereās my stab at formulating my dream:
People engage their passion and interests more regularly in their daily lifes as a result of their involvement in the learning experiences and community that P2PU offers.
A few things:
-
@1L2P: Iām really pleased at the way you asked us to do this. Iāve been reading āThinking Fast and Slowā and one of the recommendations he makes to combat bias in meetings is to ask everyone to write mini āposition papersā first.
- From my research in informal tech ed so far, watching GitHubbers interact, and thinking about our distribution, I am really most excited about our face-to-face offerings, and Iām looking forward to working on that experience as part of the p2pu suite of course offerings, (maybe ie learning from a menu of different ways).
Also, wanted to share the online/offline Hub that Stefania is working on with Hackidemia: http://www.hackidemia.com/makehub