22 March 2012

Attendees (welcome to any newbies)

• Welcome to Course Organizers! 
• Bekka
• Alison
• John
• Philipp
• Vanessa @mozzadrella
• Zuzel
• Karen (@kfasimpaur)
• @jessykate briefly
• Add your name (and twitter handle) here

Staff Standups
What have you been up to? Short written notes (we'll discuss only if there are questions)

• Alison
  • new groups
  • outreach
  • group review
• Bekka
  • General admin
  • working in Berlin preparations
• Chloe 
  • Challenge creation page
  • NSF grant (its back!:/)
  • Community Badges Illustration draft#
  • Badge form revamp
• John
  • wrapped up group consolidation discussion - hooray!
  • minor dev stuff
  • techsprint in april in London? - not much interest from community
  • community involvement in design
  • minor updates to signup to allow conversion tracking
  • working on next steps for challenges and groups
• Philipp
• Zuzel
  • sent email to past/current course organizers
  • added new badge http://p2pu.org/en/badges/diy-u/
  • working on expanding: http://help.p2pu.org/kb/learning/what-are-badges
  • rolled out some improvements for the scoreboard
• Add your name (optional)

News of the week
Written notes on what's going on in our world (bring up special announcements on the call)

• Blog posts you wrote
  • http://blogs.p2pu.org/blog/2012/03/16/finding-courses-challenges-just-got-easier/
  • From last week, but about development about W4Web http://flat.ly/GPMGEX
  • F2F workshop to brainstorm new P2PU groups: http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/988 and http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/1004
• Articles you read
• Initiatives you heard about

Key updates 
Super short updates about P2PU

• Exciting new courses to check out (Alison)
  • http://p2pu.org/en/groups/curating-content/ 
    • made in: http://p2pu.org/en/groups/make-a-challenge/
    • Ali to make contact and see if the organiser found Chloe's challenge before or after they started their course design (after!)
  • Karen created 4 new study groups this weekend (what a legend!) - still under development, but they look amazing - looking for co-facilitators of these - have sent out inquiries - see http://www.k12opened.com/blog/archives/1004
• Development priorities (Zuzel)
  • Next Release:
    • allowed to mark badges as global to all p2pu
    • allowing users to send their badges to the obi (http://openbadges.org/en-US/issuer.html)
      • pending some bug fixes on the OBI side:
        • https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/issues/created_by/zuzelvp?sort=created&direction=desc&state=open&page=1
      • i am adding screenshots to the trello card: https://trello.com/card/obi-integration/4ec0f020c137ff072a5d8afa/29
  • Upcomming:
    • Changes to the registration process needed for tracking conversion on google analytics/google adwords
      • https://trello.com/card/log-people-in-after-successful-sign-up/4f3d1ecc3a1fad867ad57e76/15
• State of the mustard (Philipp)
  • Courses (last 4 weeks)
    • 18 Test (too high) [karen: These are "sandbox" courses? Are conversions to non-test or future development by the authors being tracked?]
    • 10 Non-test
    • 7 ... and tasks added
    • 4 ... and running
      • Take aways:
        • need to get better at dealing with high number of test courses:
          • improve direction to sandbox
        • identify points wherer designers get "stuck"
          • move more groups forward
  • Stats (current calendar month) - Q: Are stats published anywhere? - here for now
    • On pace or better for user accounts and comments
      • Top 2 most active (new) users spanish speaking
    • Most active courses (harsh competition for top spot):
      • School of Ed course
      • Webmaking 101 first challenge
      • Writing for the Web (most joins, but not most active in comments)--Audrey is dedicating time to mentoring this week, should pick up
    • Working on a way to report all this information automatically
• Karen
  • School of Ed is running round of 7 groups
  • Working on lining up groups for June (including follow up from SXSWedu group brainstorming)

Agenda
Core of the call. Focused on four types of conversations (invited guests, challenges you need help with, proposals you want feedback on, ideas you need collaborators for). 

• Add your agenda items here. Provide a link to background materials you want the community to review prior to the call.
• Some lessons learned in recent School of Ed courses
  • Of the ones kicked off in March, some are very popular and active, others not at all (the ones designed as challenges are struggling)
  • Signups on challenges has been lower, although the topics are ones that people requested
  • Karen working in making contact with people to try and activate them
  • Most successful courses are those which are conversational, and the challenge model is slightly differently oriented, so we need to work around this
  • Philipp: Considering the discussion around new "group" features, is it possible that challenges would benefit from having someone beating the drum? 
    • Karen -> Challenges are very focused on making something/project-type model, although groups where there are dicsussion is active are the most popular. 
    • So we need to figure out a way where we can have the conversations, and still have the meaningful learning that takes place in challenges
    • Karen: is there something about Challenge tasks that stops learners mid-course? Are you finding it's less "exploratory"? I'm curious about if the learning feels too "chopped up"...
      • I'm not sure. People aren't even starting (in mine at least). I think they look a little less "social" but I'm not sure.
      • Social presence is totally key--I think groups/cohorts may speak to that. But also designing a 1st project that showcases background & interests versus traditional introductions?
      • I'm had great luck with introductions in groups (we even had ppl do videos this time), but in challenges, people aren't even introducing themselves. Not sure what's going on.
      • I'm thinking of trying the same things I'm doing as challenges now as groups to see if they go better. Really, the content/tasks/prompts would be identical.
  • Term "challenge" may be problematic (teachers have enough "challenges" already)
    • Nature of the content: Some content (like learning a new programming langauge) is suited to a challenge, but some learning is more suited to conversation
    • Alison -> one of the major areas of focus at the moment is removing problematic terminology, to make things verb driven so we can avoid problematic words
• Course Organizers Special Session --> http://pad.p2pu.org/p/organizers-session
  • This is your special time to ask P2PU community elders absolutely anything about courses. Make sure to get your course info in the session pad before the call.
  • Collect suggestions on using video in P2PU courses
    • Next step: [Alison] Create a knowledge base article and blog post +1
      • MITx
      • Hulu
      • http://p2pu.org/en/groups/personal-learning/content/agency-in-our-learning/ (from karen)
    • Ideas for supporting organizers:
      • Individual mentorship
      • Use an organizer group/space more effectively
        • There used to be a group specifically for course organizers - Karen thought that was useful
        • Could also be used to connect new organizers with experienced ones for mentoring
        • Could use the "create a challenge" challenge?
          • This is so specific to challenges...make/do stuff...the old organizer group was much more social. Helpdesk isn't social. I think there's a need for something more collaborative.
          • I didn't feel a social connection on the Make a Challenge challenge. It seemed more about content and instructional design, not peer learning (social). I think that I'm missing the deeper peer learning part of challenges (beyond mentor help)
          • Zuzel: helpdesk doesn't feel social
          • Karen: This could also be a terminology issue. No one loves helpdesks. :) It feels like bugs/complaints...not connecting with people and exchanging ideas (good point!)
        • Or is the helpdesk (help.p2pu.org) the right place for these discussions?
        • Once we can add groups to challenges, we can try to make the "make a challenge" challenge more social. At that point we should also point new organizers to the challenge. 
      • Question about reaching the right audience (potential organizers) with our support offers
      • I like the idea of recognition/reward of course organizers--so that the support is also seen as recognition--Yelp Elite is a bad example, but you get the idea
      • Next steps:
• (If there is time) Discuss ways to let our community know about the (very small) updates to the Terms of Service / Privacy Policy
  • Options:
    • Opportunity to do things "the right way"
    • Send a single purpose email to all registered users with link to the terms / policy
      • -1 -1
      • If updates are very occassional, an email seems appropriate to me. (It's subjective as to what people think is "significant." Everyone gets TOS updates all the time. Some ppl think it's a courtesy to be notified.) Agree with this, trying to get a sense of what's appropriate in this particular community. 
    • Add this into the communication around new courses
      • -1 - instead, include as a line item in this or weekly newsletter +1
      • - 1 -1
    • Updated keyword next to the links on the site (with link to a blog post explaining the changes)
      • +1 +1 +1
    • Highlight box that invites users who log in to review
      • +1 -1
• Terms [John]
  • This came up in the School of Ed discussion, we can talk if there's interest... otherwise please add notes ideas on this pad
  • http://pad.p2pu.org/terms
  • not converting everything to challenges, but separating content from groups
  • john: also be consistent with "verbs" we use in association with the terms
  • karen: Seriously, if you're going to have only one term (which I like), make it generic enough to apply to the widest spectrum
  • philipp: what would also be useful to think through this is to see the terms "in use" Add use cases, and fill in the blanks.
    • e.g. "Learn in a space." "Participate in a learning space." ?
• Swag:
  • Pencils! We're getting new swag, looking for ideas to put on the pencils
    • Made out of recycled newspapers/cd cases ("green" to offset Philipp's carbon footprint)
    • HB pencils
    • Ideas (42 Characters)
      • "Learn with your peers" at P2PU.org +1
      • "Make smart friends @ P2PU.org"
      • "Get a really small t-shirt @ P2PU.org"
      • "Sharpen your wits @ P2PU.org" +1
  • T-shirts
    • if we get tshirts, can we get nice girl tshirts? please? :) (ie, not just small boy tshirts)
      • Love this idea, really important

General discussion and questions

• Anything else that just needs to be said out loud
•