18 October 2012
General Report Back Call

Attendees (add your name here)

• Vanessa (@mozzadrella)
• Bekka
• Dirk is away
• Chris
• Philipp

4P& an i  report back

• Progress (what I worked on this week)
  • School of Sound--launch call on Tuesday with Evan from Soundcloud
    • various people from the community are interested, so VMG will work with Evan on thinking around how to put this together and what it might look like
    • Some discussion on a mini-level about topics, tools, etc
    • This is still and idea - not concrete dates yet. 
  • We did our first P2PU performance review meeting
  • UX feedback and improvements
    • Dirk has done most of this, (yay Dirk) and some people have been giving feedback which has been great. 
  • LRMI project moving forward - learning registry metadata initiative (making it easier to find P2PU content)
    • This started out at the US dept of Education, to build a semantic description of learning resources on the web (!) 
    • We're going to be involved in helping figure out how to tag and describe P2PU content using the metadata schema that they have built. 
    • This is a partnership with School of Open/CC
  • Mooc - Group emails
    • bekka has not done her homework (bad!!!)
    • There has been a good amount of activity in some of the groups. 
    • Groups are either 9, 27 or 40 people, based on target groups and expected levels of activity
      • Seems like some of the 9 people groups might be too big. 
      • But the actual number of participating people in the groups is totally scattered

• Priorities (next week's focus)
  • [VMG] Making content tweaks for the new course creation UX/process
    • "See an example" ... adding links to pedagogical help content
  • [VMG] Different ways to make it easier for people to create a P2PU course -> Host an online seminar (School of Open), workshop model, different presentation formats (Prezi), what does a P2PU course "feel" like
  • [BK] UX launch courses
  • [BK] Onboarding/1st 30 days / [VMG] Thinking about low tech ways for onboarding 
    • BK: Currently -> On site msg to people who have created a new course leads to deafening silence (it's not working)
      • VMG: Do we need to catch them before they even come to the site? Why do they even want to come to P2PU, what is their emtional context for creating a course on P2PU
      • PS: We should also consider the offline conversations that lead to the development of courses - can we get everyone who is interested in running a course and explain to them how to do so?
      • PS: Could we make the first touch-point on the site an opportunity to connect with the community? Rather than trying to figure out how we can lead them through an automated process that turns them into an awesome course-organizer?
      • VMG: One idea might be having some kind of office hours? +1
      • Possible platforms for digital office hours:
        • http://www.olark.com/welcome/?rid=8767-9277096-10-1944&rid=8767-9277096-10-1944&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=powered_by&utm_source=8767-9277096-10-1944
        • http://slottd.com/
    • Define goals, then trace back the steps we want them to take to get there
      • PS: Let's open ourselves to possibilities that are much more low tech ("want to create a course?" -> "send an email to xyz")
    • Two audiences (people signing up for a course, people joining the core community)
    • CE: Right now we have no content during the signup process, and getting some key information in during that process might be a really key way to get new users in and make them feel better about things 
    • VMG is working on this
  • [PS] Media Lab sponsor meeting (add P2PU slides into all Lab presentation, set up presentation station for sponsors)
    • Hoping to build support and interest in collaboration, both from sponsors of the Media Lab and other folks at the Lab
  • [PS] Tax & budget (share with staff)
  • [CE] CSS framework is main priority
    • Will do at least 1 round of testing - need to do this before school of data launches

• Problems (Walls I ran into on the way)
  • Assessment--taking a step back, starting fresh--working with David Wiley next week
    • Vanessa has done 6 versions of this plan. She's a machine. But we're not 100% happy with it as is. 
    • So VMG is stepping back a bit, rethinking the plan and considering some smaller pilots. 
    • BE NICE!
    • PS: We are going to build some kind of badge issuing platform, in the context of DML
    • CE: We had a thought about using a badge for the MOOC emails - as a way of measuring the completion of the course - CE and VMG to discuss. 
  • General silence from course organisers after initial contact - need to rethink engagement with them (see discussion above)

• Process (org stuff)
  • VMG: Completed my first performance review with Philipp--and it wasn't painful! Good to know. 
  • PS: How can we make these calls (even) better?
    • VMG: Each of us prepare for the call, enter notes into the pad beforehand
    • BK: Use your notes from weekly call with PS

• Ideas (stuff that people should know about but isn't yet a priority)
  • VMG will be launching smaller prototypes
    • Onboarding presentation--make an interactive experience
    • Design research--interactions within courses
  • Helping Bekka w 1st 30 days project

Any other items (feel free to add here)
Leah has been gone working on school papers that take her way too many hours, but she misses you all! See you next week....hopefully!