P2PU Community Call
6 June 2013
General Report Back
We're hanging out here:
https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/bd99799974316f5c662bf2385ddd3b5593da450b?authuser=0&hl=en
Attendees:
- Marisa Ponti mponti8@gmail.com
- Chris
- Dirk
- Philipp
- James
- Erika
- John Martin john@jemartin.com
Agenda
- Progress (what we've been working on)
- Badges.p2pu.org
- Partner badges can be created by some specified users
- partner have to approve a badge being awarded
- if someone needs this funcionality let Erika know and she will help
- Notification opt-out for all notifications from p2pu.org / badges.p2pu.org / etc...
- DNS for discourse http://thepeople.p2pu.org now (almost) points to our discourse (looks like the DNS is still propagating)
- MOOC Competition judging in Berlin (The jury awarded 10 prizes of 25,000 EUR each - announcement next Monday. Philipp was a member of the jury.)
- (On the weekend) Science Hackday in New York -> http://pad.p2pu.org/sciencehackday (early draft of a course on citizen science)
- Vanessa gave a presentation at Confab (Minneapolis)
- Bekka has been finishing two (our first two) P2PU Lab Reports
- Discussion of tech strategy between PS&DU, talked a bit about what we planned over the last year and how that panned out
- planning on doing a blog post on this soonish
- We've been having office hours on Mondays at 14:00 UTC - 16:00 UTC - https://www.hipchat.com/invite/1592/79fedbb5ca23f5a188837f3094c78d9d
- Prorities (focus next week)
- Signon for discourse using p2pu.org accounts [Chris]
- Courses feedback and suggestions [Erika/Dirk]
- Improvements to the home page [Dirk -> Get Erika involved as well]
- Grouping for the python MOOC
- Badges Integration with Courses [Erika]
- Problems (walls we ran into on the way)
- User from Nigeria asking questions on help.p2pu.org that we don't really understand - seems like a language barrier (i don't think it's language, i added an agenda item below)
- Feeling a little frazzled with so many of us traveling / missing calls (for discussion another time, but wanted to raise it here) +1
- Process (org stuff)
- Ideas (on the horizon)
- Discussion
(1) Marisa Ponti / Research on P2PU courses
Background:
- In 2010, Marisa was looking for examples of crowd-sourcing or peer-production in education. Found P2PU.
- Started a pilot research project about the "Cyberpunk" course:
- Wrote a first paper about this study
- Also studied the "Intro to Javascript" course
- In general - Main interest is the use of technology and resources that are used by participants (rather than "group dynamics" or other aspects of the P2PU experience). It is easier to observe behavior online that can be traced back to use of technology or resources.
- Doing research that involves interviews & surveys is harder. Not many participants are willing to be interviewed.
- Rolse of the facilitator
- People in cyberpunk course already new a lot about cyber punk literature - didn't need a facilitator that much - more of a interest groups
- Javascript is not that intiutive, people are more willing to accept a facilitator with the role of a teacher
Q: Please share some of your general reseach findings / thoughts on P2PU.
- Both courses used OER, but OER were used differently.
- The content in these courses was very different. One course included literary works, the other was focused on developing programming skills.
Q: Your research showed a split between newbies to OER and their needs (more facilitation, less remixing) and more experienced folks (who enlisted the help of others to find and contribute OER to the course). In the 2nd, the facilitator became more of a peer. How do we diagnose newbies from more experienced folks? What are recommendations for bringing new folks along in their understanding?
- This is an important question, concerning an important empirical point. I identified beginners based on what participants said about themselves. Not on their profile, but rather in the conversations in the course/study group. For example, when someone says: I am a beginner, I have never taken a programming course before, this is the first time.
- For absolute newbies, it would be useful to to provide materials to cover prerequisies
- John: When we loose people, is it because they don't understand what is expected, or because the materials are too demanding? Also, if we are focused on retaining our learners, do we need to redirect them to developmental supports that are more appropriate to their current level of understanding?
Q: What data / support would help the research in the future?
- It would be great if P2PU could act as a liaison to collect survey data from its community
- It legitimizes the research and people will be more likely to respond (it's harder for an individual researcher to collect data from participants)
- For an ethnographor it is important to gain the trust of the observed subjects
- Acknowledging Marisa as a researcher we work with*** - Builds trust, credibility and authority versus the "cold call" approach which folks may shy away from
- Mentioning her on the website- Establish a research identity with resources (such as academic papers, findings, projects, etc.) developed for and around P2PU
- Possible to ask course developers if they want to allow research connection? Signify with a research icon on the course page which directs them to the Research page on P2PU site?
(2) P2PU homepage - a place for all of us
(3) Dealing with users who have many questions on the help forum