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Mission

The mission of P2PU is to leverage the power of the Internet and social software to enable communities of people to support learning for each other. P2PU combines open educational resources, structured courses, and recognition of knowledge/learning in order to offer high-quality low-cost education opportunities. It is run and governed by volunteers.

 

Project Map

Currently P2PU is in a pilot phase. To begin P2PU will offer scheduled "courses" that run for 6 weeks and cover university-level topics.  Each course package, organized by a course volunteer, contains the syllabus, study materials, and a schedule. Learning will take place in small groups of 8-14 students. P2PU blurs the boundaries between students and teachers. Volunteers step forward to create course outlines and facilitate the course work. In some cases they may be experts in the field, and in others, they may rely on input and advice from others who have expert knowledge. During the phase the project aims to test different styles of course structure, communication, and organization. As the project grows the goal is to become more of a platform so anyone can use P2PU to organize, design, and offer courses.

 

Accreditation

While learning in itself is a valuable goal, getting credit for what you've done is also important to gain social and economic opportunities. As P2PU develops we are experimenting with new ways of recognising learning. Assessment of each other becomes intrinsic in the community learning process. Like open source software communities, the participants in a learning group provide feedback to each other, reviewing and improving each others' work. Peers in the course will assess each others work, and P2PU online certificates will be offered to signal that you've completed a course. 

 

Support

P2PU is largely run by volunteers, however we have also gotten seed funding to cover some basic costs from both the Hewlett Foundation, and the Shuttleworth Foundation. The University of California at Irvine has generously offered to incubate us and help with administrative and legal support. Thanks!!!

 

Collaborations

P2PU is working with a number of different people and organizations on many different facets of its development. In particular, P2PU would like to recognize the efforts of: the staff of CC Learn for their advice and collaborative awareness-raising and research support; etc.

 

Research Opportunities

As P2PU is in its beginning phases we are open to others who wish to monitor our progress for research purposes. The field of online learning and open / peer2peer learning and collaboration is in rapid development, both when it comes to available technological platforms and social models for organizing. We have been inspired by a number of very successful pilots and see the P2PU as building on these pioneering courses. We will be continually monitoring and evaluating the progress, making many changes along the way, and hopefully developing new models of collaboration which not only benefit P2PU but also other projects in which communities of volunteers attempt to work together. We will actively promote and support research, especially action research, on the P2PU model, and make it a priority to share information and reflections with the larger community on a regular basis. The P2PU will look very different in three or five years from how it looked when we started it, but the only way to get there is to jump in and try. We invite anyone interested in doing research on the P2PU to contact us.