A really Big Course?====================================

What is the problem?
Over 6000 people flocked to the School of Webcraft, Drumbeat and general P2PU sites after hearing that Mozilla is offering free courses about HTML5 and CSS3. 

The School of Webcraft community is still young and was only intending to offer learning opportunities for approximately 600 participants across varied topics (presuming 30 volunteer led courses supporting 20 participants per course). As it currently stands we're not capable of supporting thousands of people in one course. There may also be a  difference between the type of learning experience expected (top-down, expert-led, lecture and reading format) and the way School of Webcraft and P2PU have worked in the first round (peer-led, exploratory and participatory)
I would not only say that there "may be a difference". There definitely is a difference and from my past experience, the majority of people think that the course was "top-down" and "expert-led", with prepared learning materials and working assignements during the chat or conference sessions. The "peer-led, exploratory and participatory" approach needs to be understood by all participants. In my opinion that is not something the P2PU must "teach" its course organizors, but be something that chrystalizes itself in a conversation or interview, like an idea we all have in-common. How each course facilitator then realizes his course depends on his interpretation of the concept, but again he should try to identify the right candidates/participants for his course in the kick-off meeting/interview/session.
Personally I do not think I did a good job in communicating the concept, as I lost participation after the first two weeks and the only people that still contributed understood for themselves how the course works, either by being self-motivated learners or understanding what this is about after reflecting it and giving it a try/chance.

What we need

• A way to provide thousands of people with access to non-formal, social learning opportunities for HTML5 and CSS3.
• A methodology to develop learning pathways for other high-demand topics (HTML and CSS Basics, JavaScript)
• A first pass solution for HTML5 / CSS3 by mid-February.
• Assessments and badges to recognise people's learning achievements
• Translation and localisation support
• Matured technology

The solution should:

• Provide high quality, up-to-date information about HTML5 and CSS3.
• be scalable
  • 20 people should be able to take the course. 20 groups of 20 should also be able to take the course
  • individuals should also be able to follow the course materials
• be translatable
  • course materials should be openly licensed and should refer participants to openly licensed content that can also be remixed and translated.
• be versionable
  • as further revisions of course materials are made they should be clearly labelled with their version number.
    • this will assist localisation efforts
    • Q: a Wiki could do this? I think it has these characteristics.
• be remixable
  • participants should feel encouraged to suggest changes to the curriculum
• Prompt learners into exploratory and social learning activities that develop their theoretical and practical knowledge.
  • ability to research technical topics
  • ability to develop and test HTML5 and CSS3 code
  • develop an understanding of the open standards process
  • encourages participants to share their learning experience
• Contribute to participants' understanding of peer-education and DIY attitudes that lead to continued involvement in the School of Webcraft, P2PU and Mozilla communities.

What we need

• 6-10 weeks of HTML5/CSS3 course materials and suggested activities
• technical support and advice about managing localisation
• community members who are willing to facilitate small groups
• technology that supports the forming of small groups 
• peer assessment tools and a working environment to run assessment in (OSQA?)
• a working technology solution for the general support system
  • sign up 
  • mailing lists
  • QA / forum software
  • collaborative writing (Etherpad)
  • documentation storage (MediaWiki)
  • 
    

Existing Resources
Mark Pilgrim's openly licensed Dive Into HTML5 book http://diveintohtml5.org/


How I (Pippa) imagine this will work

• The first pass of learning content will be assembled from existing tutorials, documentation, web standards etc. There may be some video footage prepared by Mozilla developer evangelists Chris Heilmann and Tantek that ties in with both this  course and the Webinars proposed for MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) and the Firefox 4 release. 
• Weekly activities relating to this content will be developed. 
  • Activities should encourage participants to develop working examples that can be used in portfolios. 
    • Successful completion of the course will rely on a participant finishing all weekly activities. 
    • Formative feedback from peers will be encouraged at every week.
• When assessments are ready, participants (who  have demonstrably completed their course) will be able to attempt assessments that lead to being rewarded with badges.
  • Q: The assessment for the badges, is it like an exam? Who evaluates or judges the assessments?
• We will invite individuals to lead a group of 20-30 people through the course content (a course instance)
  • Course leaders will be responsible for definining start and end dates, inviting participants to define their own learning goals and remixing of the content, determining communication  software (TokBox Video v mailing lists only), moderating behaviour in mailing lists and meetings.
    • Q: How does the definition of your own learning goals work together with the assessments and badges? I mean, do I define my own learning goals or goals that aim to gain a badge. But then the badge would set my learning goal, as it will define a catalogue of objectives I have to comply, right?
• Course leaders will be provided with orientation about course facilitation. 
• Participants in all course instances will be able to collaborate and ask questions of the broader community using OSQA.

Pippa: Based on your HTML5 course what do you think are the most important aspects of the new specification to teach people about?

Dennis:

• How do I structure my content? What are the new elements (tags) in HTML5? Semantics of HTML5 (in the past, certain elements were used because of their visual effect in the browser, not because of their meaning).
• CSS3. Add a layout.
• (Forms)
• (Video)

I would keep it content centric in the beginning. Participants can experiment with how content is structured using HTML5 elements and then brought into form using CSS3 layouts. Aspects of how code is read by search engines and people with disabilities can be touched then too. This is something governments are pushing, that at least government related websites are WAI compliant. What this means in detail can be done in another course, but the technical basics can be touched within the HTML5 course.

There is a lot of hype around canvas and animation in HTML5 which in my opinion is interesting, but not essential when starting. Other stuff like storage, geolocation and webapps are additional specifications and/or require JavaScript. Could be a next stage course after the basics.

A course for beginners (new to writing HTML) should be different from a course for experienced individuals.


Asynchronous, On-Demand courses for high demand topics:
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Can we run a larger scale, asynchronous course on Webcraft topics and keep a good community?

Is this in keeping with P2PU's current vision?

How would we communicate P2PU's vision / Mozilla's vision to a large group of people?

How do we facilitate this?

Is this type of pre-designed and [hopefully] low-maintenance course a way of guaranteeing quality learning around core skills?

Is a fixed syllabus and set of activities a better way to enable localisations of content?

How can we maintain a sense of small groups and community within a larger asynchronous course?

What technology changes would we need to make to do this?

Should peer assessment / peer validation be part of this solution to make sure people complete each week / stage?

How long would such a course be?

Would the course be weekly or consist of several modules which could be completed over a weekend / over a longer time frame?

What type of learning design would suit this best?

How would we iterate and improve the course design?

What type of assessments would be appropriate?