Some Info on Course Organizing on P2PU

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#1

Hi P2PU friends. I’m finishing up a paper on course organizing patterns on P2PU, and while I can’t share the paper (under peer review right now) yet, I thought I’d share some of our findings to open up community discussion.

Some tidbits off the top of my head:

  • Over 50,000+ registered members in P2PU

  • 12,000+ have ever logged back in after registering

  • 3,000+ have ever tried to organize a course

  • This group of organizers has tried to launch 3,000+ courses

  • 400+ have ever successfully launched (the others were started but not launched)

  • Majority of would-be organizers register for P2PU and then try to organize a course within 1 day

  • The majority never take an existing course prior to attempting to organize

  • The majority did not ever enroll in the “How do I create a P2PU Course?” course

  • “Successful” organizers who succeeded in launching at least one course numbered 711 (out of 3,000+)

  • These folks spent a bit more time on average (about 1 week) before attempting to create a course

  • Higher % enrolled in the “How do I…” course, but still very few

The two main predictors of the probability that any given course would be “launched” was:

  1. Taking a prior course (was small but significant)
  2. Collaborating with multiple other organizers to create a course (This was a HUGE predictor)

Any thoughts? I’m interested to see what others think this means :smile:

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#2

Hey @ahnjune, stellar data and insights.

The “How to Build a Learning Community Online” course will prompt folks to co-design their course with other folks and get feedback early on. My hypothesis is that:

  • codesign keeps your audience in mind
  • codesign shares the weight of responsibility
  • codesign is more sustainable because it’s networked and empowers others to take on leadership

Interesting that folks try to create a course in 1 day. That’s a puzzling design problem–because I don’t think it can be done. Perhaps we need to think about re-marketing to them or telling them to stop, think and come back to it. Running a course is itself a learning experience, it takes time, and the attrition rate will probably be similar to that of other online courses (unless folks have significant content / marketing support or project management to keep them on track).

I know that at Skillshare, each project manager has 12 courses per month they help develop. Co-design is a more sustainable (and community-centered) approach to course design.

Having taken a course before is interesting–means we should look more at onboarding people in our MOOCs to the core community, reach out to them to design their own course shortly thereafter.

#3

@vanessa… great ideas on the “how to build a learning community” course. I think your hypotheses about why that would work are right on… I wonder how we can track enrollment and subsequent course creation from that?? We should try if we can, and it would be a great followup to my current paper/analysis.

One clarification… folks didn’t try to create a course in 1 day. They attempted to start creating a course within 1 day of registering on P2PU for the first time.

So one thought is slowing them down somehow and onboarding them in a co-design community, might help these people succeed. For example, when they click to create a course, and the system knows they’ve never launched one before, recommending that they join your “how to build…” community. Or matching with specific people who will co-design with them etc. etc.