P2PU Community Call
3 October 2013
We're hanging out here: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/d37725f585084d8f3f23895a118838acee0b7611?authuser=1&hl=en - join us!
Attendees:
List of Projects:
- MOOC Maker (Dirk)
- P2PU Homepage (Erika)
- Courses UX (Dirk)
- P2PU Internal Tech (Dirk)
- Boston Workshop (Bekka)
- Lab Reports (Bekka)
- Communications (Bekka)
- Offline MOOC (Karen)
- Assessment Framework (Vanessa)
- Badges platform (Vanessa)
- Data Explorer Mission 2 (Vanessa)
- P2PU Strategy 2013 (Philipp)
- Python MOOC (???)
- School of Open (Jane)
- School of Ed (Karen)
- School of Data (Question about how to list here - managed independently)
- Music MOOC (TBD)
- New Projects (Philipp)
Agenda
- Progress (what we've been working on)
- Communcations:
- Music MOOC
- Copy updates
- Planning to announce/open sign-up: 15 Oct
- Class Photo
- Deeper learning MOOC
- Talked with Karen about tech requirements
- Registered Dreamhost account (thanks Bekka!)
- Python MOOC
- Badges
- P2PU Board Meeting
- Talking to Gov Lab about potential collaboration
- Media Lab X course - broke into project teams. One team focuses on "Better MOOCs" (they are interested in figuring out how to break into small groups, within a much larger community)
- Priorities (focus next week)
- Finish Mechanical MOOC report
- make lists for call topics & guests and future lab reports
- We need to fax papers to dreamhost for free hosting (this is great!)
- @PS: would it be possible for you to do this?
- Class Photo
- Deeper Learning MOOC, collaboration with high tech high, a really innovative school in California
- MechMOOC
- ability for admin to see number of signups
- ability to see/download list of signups
- Badges
- Problems (walls we ran into on the way)
- Process (org stuff)
- Ideas (on the horizon)
Discussion
Board Meeting
- 3 scenarios presented:
- 1 - Methods for open learning
- 2 - Champions of open
- 3 - Alternative To University
- It was a good meeting.
- Some members felt that Option 3 was the best, most ambitious startegy. But it was agreed that in terms of our current situation (funding, staff etc) it was a big ask
- Final discussion was a combo of 1 & 2 - we would run a few courses on how to do open learning,
- If you want to do open p2p learning on the web, you can come to P2PU to find (1) resurces - tools, sw, etc., (2) best practices and how-tos, reports, (3) showcase case studies to inspire you and show you what is possible, (4) a community of interest you can ask for help and discuss ideas with, and (5) an org (P2PU) that you could collaborate with if you wanted to implement a project.
- Board has tasked us with coming up with a 4th scenario, going into slightly more detail than first iteration, and dig into some of the hard questions. And a 12 month plan. +1 - maybe combining a few elements across the 3
- This goes back to the board for a meeting on October 18th, for discussion and refninging, and then an email vote.
- Questions:
- Sustainability - in the document, it says that long-term funding is not clear, so would we need to bring in experts to tell us how to get more funding?
- Answer: no, we would no be hiring a professional fundraiser or business development manager. We would aply for more grant funding, try to get more staff involved in building partnerships and creating proposals,
- What's the role of our values? Do Peer Learning, Community and Openness still inform this?
- A: The values are still critical, and will inform what we do, and how we do things. We may not work with people who want to use closed technologies or build projects that are not accessible.
- There was a question that came up about learning, and whether peer learning was more important to us than open learning, and which one would shape the way we might work in the future
Communications & Community
Background: last week, staff discussed how much we enjoy using Hipchat as our virtual "office" space, and asked if this meant we'd fallen out of love with Discourse.
- Our Hipchat http://www.hipchat.com/gkNTyewyo
- TODO ERIKA - Can we add a link more prominently somewhere? (How to get involved in P2PU -> Say hi in our hipchat) Homepage? (Good for me)
This led to a discussion about discussions (a discussion about discussions!), and whether conversations were happening, and if so, where and when. Some questions were raised, and now we'd like to think a bit more deeply:
- When to use discourse vs when to use mail?
- Setting up meetings
- General "getting things done" messages (BK, DU prefer to use email, discourse is less direct)
- Work stuff vs conversations
- TODO BEKKA - Can we make the community list announce only (to make sure "conversations" move to discourse)?
- Discourse notification settings can make you blind to conversations that are happening
- There is a sense that replies to discourse messages can take a couple of days
- It's not (yet) possible to cc the entire community list into discourse
- JP: I think for staff, we can think about what makes us work more effectively and productively but you can't tell people where to go and what to use.
- The wider community just wants one place to go to get in touch with people.
- Add email signatures to P2PU email
- To Do:
- put a more prominent link to HipChat on p2pu.org
- Make the mailing list announce only
- TODO BEKKA - Add signatures to all @P2PU email addresses