Open Air

P2P University: from content to community

October 27th, 2008 Posted by: l.dewis

For almost a decade now universities around the world have been opening up access to their course materials to the public. The aim – to equalize access to knowledge to transform people’s lives. The question I’m most often asked is – has it worked? The answer is, sort of. Publishing content goes some way to equalizing access to education but alone, doesn’t address issues of motivation, accreditation, sensemaking and community. So Open Education Resource (OER) providers are increasingly focused on ‘participatory learning‘ and ways to utilize technologies to help learning communities form.

P2P University is due to open in early 2009 and is being set up by several experts from the OER movement who understand the current limits for OER. They say: “The P2PU will provide the missing pieces to help self-learners benefit from OER”. The basic idea is to direct learners into learning groups with some tutorial support. This isn’t new – OpenLearn offers a facility for people to create their own learning clubs and provides them with the tools and content to learn collaboratively. However we haven’t been good at organising other people, connecting volunteer tutors with student groups and providing the course structure. P2P University will offer 6 week long courses in groups of 8-14 students.

The hope is that volunteer tutors will provide the ’stick’ and alternative accreditation models will be offered for the ‘carrot’. The OER vision was that course development and delivery would be supported by tutors in the same way the technical developer community supports the open source movement. These tutor networks do exist – just one example is the Tutor/Mentor Leadership conference and the Mapping for Justice project in Chicago. In P2P University there will be sense-makers who design the courses, using freely available OER and tutors who support the students.

Sense-makers identify the key readings, pose the big questions, and structure the content. For sense-makers the P2PU offers an opportunity to do what they feel passionately about – share knowledge.

Tutors could be graduate students or amateurs with expertise in a particular field. They seek out a sense-maker to develop a course, and do most of the preparation work. Once the course starts, the tutors act as guides, facilitate discussions, answer questions, and providing feedback.

This means that sense-makers don’t need to commit too much time and may scratch an itch by being able to share knowledge in ‘long-tail’ subjects that aren’t supported by their own institution. The tutor is described as a ‘party host’ – the person who keeps moving things on. The benefit for tutors is in gaining expertise and reputation in teaching and contact with sensemakers through the P2P University network. Courses will be demand led – so where there is a need for a course, P2P University will facilitate its development. It’s this level of facilitation that the OER movement has so desperately needed – just putting content out there and hoping that motivated, confident people with time on their hands will discover and use it, does not lead to transformation.

In the spirit of reducing barriers to entry, OER projects typically shun any type of payment (other than donation) and any lengthy registration process for the learner. However, this introduces issues around commitment and how people perceive the value of what is on offer. P2P University is going to trial a new approach:

In order to ensure that students are motivated and committed, they have to overcome a little “obstacle” in order to join a course: pay a very small sign-up fee and submit an application. The sign-up fee takes into account purchasing power inequalities especially regarding developing countries and for those who can’t pay, it will always be waived. The P2PU only safe-guards the money, and students decide how it is spent after they complete the course. They can choose to either donate it to charity (selecting from a list of charities), use it for the next course, pay it out to the tutor, donate it to the P2PU, or use it to cover the cost for an external test/exam that would award credit for the completed course. To apply for a course, potentials students write a few paragraphs about themselves and respond to a course-relevant question.

In addition, course groups and tutors are free to decide how to test each other. The portfolio and reputation functions will help motivate students to achieve. Employers are beginning to take interest in systems that evidence the effort of the learner over and above their exam scores, so a case can be made for how this style of learning could become an important selling point for those seeking work. Formal accreditation may be provided by the student’s current university. Students who are not in university could seek ‘recognition of prior learning’ services from a network of supporting universities or take exams with universities that offer competency based degrees based on evidence of knowledge. These are all tried and tested approaches but they are lesser known and understood than traditional routes to accreditation. P2P University hopes to make these routes become better understood, empowering learners to direct their own courses of study to reach personal goals.

Courses open in February 2009 and include economics, creative writing, media studies, alternative energy, and data visualisation.

Entry Filed under: oer