Sketchpad (old notes)


Three Types of Peer Learning (Sketch)

P2PU has evolved over the years. Different users have experimented with different course and study group models. School of Webcraft has always had a very unique perspective (and opportunity). And there are many users who we didn't have anything to offer to - and who felt the barrier to become active participants was too high. 

We are seeing three distinct models for learning and participation emerging. Any (or all) of these could be part of the future of P2PU. But accommodating three different styles is difficult. 

The traditional course / study group model
[experience so far has shown that the traditional model works best at small scale [depends on definition of small ;-) knight course], and requires one or a few people to do heavy lifting. see below ... ]

• Facilitated groups of learners
• Materials structured as series of tasks
• Example: School of Ed, School of IP/CC

Pros

• Feels "familiar" for potential partners (easy sell)
  • e.g. MoJo, School of Ed,  UCI pilot
• Can work very well as long as facilitator is good
• Enables connection into formal learning certification systems
• Was requested to come back after a Board Meeting when we only had study groups

Cons

• Depending on facilitator, not strong P2P component [not really p2p at all]
• Doesn't scale easily
• Down-time when no courses are available [start dates, application, selection difficult]
• Requires high level of commitment from facilitators
• High barrier to "participation" (only experts feel they can contribute new courses)

Personal Learning Plan
[really like this model, could be core to p2pu and can work well with social stuff]

• Anyone can get started learning whatever they want
• Based on Edupunk, DIY U, Uncollege, etc.
• Set up your own plan (list of tasks) and sign-up your mentors
• Example: DIY course

Pros

• Potential to scale (anyone can start their own)
• Partly return to original P2PU idea (but needs "social" for full P2PU)
• Low barrier to get started
• Never any down-time

Cons

• Building social support features into learing plans would be complex (require significant effort) [bootstrapping is the community is the hardest part]
• Is personal plan approach suitable to anyone and any field? [not sure, but would guess no]
• Each person has to build their own mentorship network (vs. meeting peers when they join a group that is created around a particicular course/challenge/topic/task)
• Any ideas for revenue with this model so p2pu can support itself?

Challenges & Mentors

• Seed high quality content (created by experts)
• Designed for self-learning, group-learning, or mentor-supported learning
• Social support built in
  • community support on demand (chat and discussion forum)
  • challenge-specific support by alumni
  • one-on-one mentorship)
• Example: School of Webcraft

Pros

• Low barrier to contribute (design a challenge less work than running a course)
• Strong interest to mentor (at least in webcraft) [hypothesis: strong interest in very focused content areas]
• Scales from self-learning to full P2P learning
• No downtime
• Possible to design transition from traditional model to challenges based model

Cons

• Unfamiliar model for potential partners, especially in more traditional fields
• Will "challenges" work across wide range of content / topics? [should work in most trades, crafts, and industires that require making/doing, don't think softer subjects will work as well]

Overall notes
I'm most strongly behind the Challenge and PLP models in a sort of hybrid. I think they work really well together and could easily be integrated into one experience. I'm less enthusiastic about the continued support of traditional courses because the value prop of P2PU is social learning, from people like you. Our goal is to build an experience that is uniquely P2PU. I think the PLP and Challenge based models are right on target but the traditional course model doesn't help us differentiate ourselves with a uniquely P2PU experience. If anything I think that maintaining traditional courses at P2PU will confuse users and add complexity to our platform.

thanks for sending this my way. It's a good write-up, and I actually think all three ways are really valuable, and in fact also work well together. I totally disagree with the tentative conclusion though, if that is what I am seeing, of discontinuing support to more traditional courses. To say that the traditional course model doesn't differentiate us is disingenious, right now there are lot's of web pages which are doing "on demand" learning (like OpenStudy but also more thought through websites, communities etc), but basically no real competitors doing what we are doing openly, free of cost. In my recent talk in Changchun, I talked about informal learning venues, site-based topic-centric communities like StackOverflow, distributed topic-centric networks like "the open edublogosphere" (horrible name :))... all these are great and I use them all the time. But I still believe there is a great value to "cohorts", going through material together. This is particularly true, perhaps, for "softer subjects" if that's what we call them, and given that this is my personal main interest, it's natural perhaps that this is what I am most interested in (and also what my research focuses on supporting). 

Now what is best for P2PU is another discussion. I think someone trying to understand Nietzsche would benefit hugely from a group of people who had read the same article the same week, and together gained a growing understanding of the contents (supported by increasingly sophisticated tools for collective meaning making - we haven't even begun scraping the surface of what's possible here). I don't think this could easily be replaced by a collection of challenges. But perhaps P2PU isn't that interested in these kind of courses? Certainly in terms of helping people get jobs, there is no doubt that School of Webcraft is much more "important". But go back and read the comments left in the final week of the CSCL course and see if they didn't get something incredibly important out of what we did - and think back at all our great examples of really successful courses (which is often how we got many of our core volunteers, being energized by that kind of community experience).

Perhaps other aspects of our site will grow faster, and warrant more investment in tech development etc right now. Maybe we'll end up with 10,000 people doing personal learning plans (which I think is a great thing!), sharing challenges etc, and only 1000 people attending formal or semi-formal courses at any time. That's fine. But I don't see any reason to cut it out or actively discourse formation of courses. That seems like a major decision that the community should definitively be involved in. 

Relationship between the three

Imagine this -> JB: Thousands of interesting challenges on P2PU in tens of schools with lots of curated learning paths. You can pick queue up individual challenges, subscribe to a path, or follow along with people who you think are interested. Your personal learning plan is based upon the paths you subscribe to, individual challenges you "want to complete" and the people who you find influential.