1 November 2012
General Report Back Call

Attendees (add your name here)

• Vanessa
• Chris
• Bekka
• Philipp
• Dirk

4P& an i  report back

Progress (what we/p2pu worked on this week)

• Feedback literature review: http://pad.p2pu.org/p/feedback_research [VMG]
• Assessment plan work [VMG]
• Badges issuer idea - first concept
• Slides for School of Open Webinar - How to make a P2PU course [VMG]
• Getting stuck in Brooklyn (although it's not bad!) [VMG]
• Course UX getting ready for beta run (beta.p2pu.org)
• LRMI learning registry metadata i..... - chat with Greg who leads LRMI implementation with partners (DU)
• Course UX getting ready for beta run (beta.p2pu.org)
• Fresh data dump for June Anh (HCI researcher at University of Maryland) to analyze
• Community Stuff: [BK]
  • Setting up calls with core community members
  • Trying new methods of engaging new course organisers (bypassing p2pu.org's internal message system)
• Org admin:
  • We filed our first Tax returns
  • Paid salaries
• CSS Framework - check it out on alpha if you're interested [CE]
• Mooc - developing emails and providing user support for Mech MOOC / Gentle Introduction to Python [CE]
• Exploring projects with maker community (public libraries) and teachers (cambridge teachers) - both are still early stage and may not go anywhere [PS]

Priorities (next week's focus)

• Assessment taxonomy--what kinds of feedback are appropriate at what stages/intervals/interactions? [VMG]
• School of Sound meeting/curriculum planning [VMG]
• Shuttleworth Gathering, Mozilla Festival
• Getting some courses ready on beta.p2pu.org and inviting a few people
• Blog post to anounce new 
• Rethinking community engagement - onboarding discussions with VMG & PS 

Problems (Walls I ran into on the way)

• Need for discussion about relationship with "schools" (see below)

Process (org stuff)

• Philipp away next week, may be offline for a bit the week after

Ideas (stuff that people should know about but isn't yet a priority)

• Office hours [VMG]

Agenda

Course UX getting ready for beta run (beta.p2pu.org)

• Want to have a test running of the new CSS frameowrk on Beta.p2pu.org - so we need some courses and people to work/run things
• Process: No call for stuff has gone out yet - would be good to get some people who might be interested
• A targetted call for people (ie: not a message on the community list?)
  •  every staffer brings a friend
  • VMG: we should get people who are both power-users and not power users 
    • Video capture would be good too 
  • VMG: I'd like to see where the discussions happen, perhaps prompt people and then watch where they go to do things. 
    • Usertesting.com has credits for us that we can use - they are very good at narrating their processes
    • Also suggest finding people who are not P2PU-related, so they come to it totally new. 
  • PS: If we have concerns about what it looks like now, we should address them immediatly - if we know that's a concern lets make a change now, so that we can find out the more complex problems. 
  • List of friends to run courses (both power users and new users)
    • Sam Allingham is a great example +1 +1 (he's the proto user)
    • Philipp
    • Bekka
    • Vanessa
    • Dirk
    • Chris
    • Alex Kehayias
    • Chloe 
    • Leah Macvie
    • Piet
    • Jose
    • Paul Osman
    • Jane (Open Gov course)
  • DU: I think we should get people to come and do stuff and use the site now, rather than just asking people to do "user testing" - +1+1 lots
    • Yes to limited call - reaching out to individuals
    • Ask people to "run a course" / make it real
    • Build community among the people who are part of the experiment
  • CE: Dirk needs course UX feedback and I need feedback for the new CSS - can we do it in one go? Yes
    • PS: We're wanting to do this on the beta site, so I think you could get both at the same time. 
  • Next steps: 
    • 1 - Address immediate concerns right now
    • CE and DU to co-ordinate about technical details of merging the two 
    • Do a limited call for course organizers (BK, DU will help)
      • Ask: Run a course on the beta site

Support for Schools

Different schools have different needs - some are happy within p2pu.org others need more space / flexibility, in order to:

• Build stronger community centered around the school
• Feature and promote courses that are not on Lernanta
• Run courses not on Lernanta
• Blog updates

Examples:

• School of Ed - courses on P2PU, but community lives elsewhere
• School of Data - community site on wordpress, http://schoolofdata.org, want to provide access to data relevant courses through schoolofdata.org

Questions:

• How can we distribute P2PU through the web = how can we make our tools available to a range of different schools?
• What are concerns with a more distributed approach?
• VMG: How can we better identify the features that people need upfront? Can we predict these requests?
  • Can we include a preliminary evaluation of the platform into the front-end so that we can avoid frustrations?
  • -> So everyone can decide if the collaboration makes sense 
• DU: There are limitations to what features and requests we can support for schools
• BK: Who are we serving?
  • In some situations we have been given money or resources, and they influence what we can and are prepared to do
  • In other contexts it's more of a "here is what you get / take it or leave it" approach, because we can't prioritize one school over others
• DU: Are schools partners to P2PU or are school the default way that we organize groups within P2PU?
• CE: Is P2PU the layer of learning around "content"? One size does not fit all with respect to courses and schools.
  • Does P2PU *make* the content/experience or does P2PU lend expertise to content development/experience?
• BK: And we need to remember that we have another community of independent learners who will still be using P2PU outside of schools (even though it often appears that most of the action is happening in the schools)
• PS: Sounds like there is some frustration that schools are driving a lot of the activity, and in some cases the work that is being done on a school is funded time, and we have an obligation to deliver certain things, whereas for others that's not the case. 
• DU: The fundamental question remains "what is our relationship with schools?"
  • Are the independent partners? Or are they a group of people organised within P2PU? 
    • Seems like right now, schools are an organised group within P2PU and I don't think that's necessarily the case. 
    • At a university, things happen within faculties - are schools our faculties? 
      • P2PU could be the liberal arts college for things that aren't in schools
    • Is P2PU only on p2pu.org or distributed across the web (e.g. schools can live elsewhere)
  • We offer a model of learning online (peer to peer, project based)
  • We offer tools, lernanta, badges, mechanical mooc (that they can use or not)
  • VMG: I know that we spec out the expected roles and relationships for some of our projects - to what extent would it be useful to provide a kit or protocol for guiding what we do with schools?
    • Do we have a similar agreement with schools?
  • That way we could know what to do when, and be more helpful
• BK: We tried a schools application process in the past and it didn't work so well, but maybe worth reconsidering
• PS: Are we happy to consider a future where we would be building tools for schools, and having partnerships with people to do this? 
• CE: My notion of what would be right for us right now would be as a community that is intimately knowledgeable about all the different tools (including ours) you can use and models you can use /  aggregator for content
  • BK: What is the role of our own platform then?
  • CE: If we were to have something it would be a light-weight wrapper (PS: What does that mean though?)
  • DU: I feel the same way as CE. Should maintain a platform, but it should be more like an instance of a school itself, rather than a massively comprehensive platform where many different schools have come together. 
• DU: What do we offer to schools? A learning experience (or two), homepage, pedadogical advice, tech advice?
  • Services:
    • A place to create a course for people who aren't in a school and don't have a lot of technical expertise
    • Badge issuer
    • Mechanical MOOC
    • Mentoring (potentially)
    • List of courses across schools +1
  • Consulting
• PS: lots of potential in working with some schools and maybe building something more custom, leverage our tools, but also our expertise
  • Responses:
  • BK: I don't know what this would mean for the community - do you join a big community which is divided up over smaller "schools" (like groups on facebook for example?)
    • Is each school reponsible for its own community?
  • I don't really understand what this perspective "solves"
    • The problem: Right now we can't innovate with schools, because they either use our platform or they don't
  • This conversation is focusing more on frustrations with platform than any other services P2PU could offer
  • PS: right now, I think we're not comfortable innovating with schools who aren't using our platform, and I think we should find a way to get excited about this, and come up with ways to partner with people beyond the platform
  • DU: like the idea - I thing it isn't a bad thing that School of Data is going with WordPress
  • DU: We create the bits and pieces (in terms of tools and technology) they need
    • Courses could be something separate from lernanta. The mechmooc is currently something completely different, but it doesn't stop us from listing a mooc that's running on the learn page.
• BK: This could be exciting, but we also need to cater for people and communities that don't fit into a school
  • PS: P2PU can still offer any course

Budgets and Funding