NOTE: Please do not edit this pad. It's messy. It should stay that way. We'll pull out the good stuff into cleaner versions elsewhere. Take it for what it is - a big storm of ideas. (Philipp)



1 - What is the problem we are solving? What is the system we are changing?

Not enough people have access to education

• no universal access/inequity
• lack of opportunity
  • creatively accessible
  • cooperatively
  • geographically
  • financially

Universities are not teaching the things that are most important

• Develop confidence and ability to be learners
• Hone our social abilities to learn
• Find fulfillment
• Its role is not not to provide quality education anymore - but sustaining the university. It's a fee collecting machine.
• Insincerity in education
  • Does the university really "care" about the learners?

Tolerance for other views - critical thinking - competitive rather than cooperative / collaborative
(Move to "what we can be best at" -> Realize the full potential of Peer-driven learning)

• Knowledge production happens in "tribes" (communities?) and the traditional system doesn't support global tribes - it forces us into silos
  • Physical space limits the ability to form communities
  • important to be online because long tail communities are distributed
• People don't know how to do PEER online learning (and online learning is important because it helps solve the access problem)
  • Institutions don't know how to do it
  • Individuals don't know how to be self- or social-learners online

Universities are not teaching us the knowledge we need to get jobs

• Inadequate and non-dynamic
• Syllabi don't evolve as fast as the domains they cover
• We are stuck with a one size fits all education
• Hate the nepotistic elitist system
• Hate the non-dynamic nature of traditional universities. 

The education system

• Drives university in the wrong direction
• Quality exists, but doesn't scale

The world has changed, but the education system hasn't

• We are now lifelong learners

Assessment and certification systems don't recognize the meaningful achievements

• Creates hierarchy between students
• Assessment is not grading

Current society/system prevents people from pursuing their true passions 

• Lack of empowerment
• people aren't engaged - apathy
• people aren't passionate about learning
• people are ignorant

Commodification of learning

• Knowledge is something you buy and sell, rather than gain and share
• Knowledge is delivered

Human-centered education (ie. human-centered design IDEO)


2. How are we doing that? / What can we be best at:

• P2PU addresses this via peer-learning in a community. results in passion/care/action!
• Gimmick: P2PU: Pursue and master your true passion with a (diverse?) community of like-minded people.  through learning in community. Make friends with like-minded people.
• learners shape their own world
• change the world in the way you want to 
• Help learners discover what they really love
• The place for the long-tail of courses / all subjects are accessible
• Turn learners into peer learners - reciprocity built in
• Bring learners together
• Help people build things together
• Helps people be learners (and learning is social)
• The 21st century space
• Provide skills and experience for those who want to learn (rather than degrees for those who can afford to pay)
• Give learners the tools, model, in order to ... create personal learning pathways
• Federation of open (social) learning places
• Research and exploration tank
• Invent cool ways of teaching, and changing people’s lives through that. 
• The place for social learnING / The place for social learnERS?
• Community for social learning online
  • Provides services to learners
  • Connects learning network / communities (Maria brings her own community)
• offering courses that no other university can offer
• Could be the best in the world at leveraging their experience, helping them help other people. 
• Access to education
• bringing people together to make things (DIY leaner+creator)
• make learning an enjoyable experience
• Openness for research and exploration for the future. 
• Focus on diversity, this is where we can be best at. 
• Do we work with this network of people who can teach, 
• Helping you make really smart friends ("P2PU - Make smart friends")
• We can help you make the most out of your skills - connecting you to others and helping you teach others

How do we change our users' lives / Changed behaviors in our users:

• Tolerance for other peoples' views
• Learners actively sharing their experience and skills with others
• People helping others learn
• Action is a direct result of learning - people make things, build things, learners are creators
• Learners have confidence in their ability to help others learn

3 - What do we stand for? What are we deeply passionate about?

• Connections between people
  • human-centered education
• social process of learning
  • meta- everything/reflection
• Diversity - Respect for diverse opinions, people, methods, styles 
• Learning from one another
• Openess
  • Is open "looking through the window" (transparency) or "talking through the window" (participation)?
• Reuse
• Participation
• Creating something new / that never existed before/a new space
• Shaping a world that we want to live in
  • making change in the world with each other
• Being part of something bigger than yourself
• achieve mastery/ a sense of accomplishment
• pursue true passion
• Tolerance for other views - critical thinking - competitive rather than cooperative / collaborative

4. What does success look like?

We don’t have to explain what we do

• When at a dinner party your parents say my daughter works at p2pu, and they say wow that’s like working at google innit? 

We hate nothing about P2PU

Our users operate as a community online

Success looks like a big hearty bowl of goulash


WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE - ROUGH NOTES 

Jane's & Bekka's group

• More is not necessarily better: smaller number of users getting more out of it (defined below) vs. large number just being registered with superficial activity
• Go-to place for ed online that's non-institutionalized
• Lots of evidence of impact - case studies that demonstrate people who got jobs due to work they did at p2pu
• Many people know about p2pu - more people than users (ok)
• PPL have a direct pathway to a sustainable and passionate career that is part of that person's identity thanks to p2pu (in part, if not the cause)
  • ie. mozilla training that is a literal career path that leads to job
  • caveat: they get a job that they like, that they can say they are doing something amazing, ie. fullfill their chosen passion in life
• P2PU becomes a defining part of what people are / peoples' identity
  • ie. answer to what do you do? i am an artist/peer learner
• We become an educational and social/societal norm
  • "there's no reason why you can't be the most talented artist/business director as long as there's p2pu in the world" - bc this is something you can easily create
  • nobody has to say "i wanted to be abc, but I couldn't"
• Looking over someone's shoulder, you should get an immediate sense of what p2pu is about
  • one of the biggest appeals of p2pu is that it is easy to use
• P2PU is still an experience, ie. it's fun! we don't take ourselves too seriously

Organizationally

• Staff should be as small as possible
  • not become institutionalized
• Sustainabilty plan that removes us from relying on ground funding
  • people can make their livelihoods without having to work for p2pu
• Ability to leverage/reuse existing spaces, ie. temporary working spaces
  • give people tools to identify and use people's spaces, connect to orgs like couchsurfing/coworking spaces like betahaus
  • pop-up spaces
• Has a place to get mail
• We don't get sued
• We have a turn-over on the board
• No sense of P2PU as a personality cult (Philipp as a personality) ie. without a leader
  • No single point of Philipp! ie. who can name the person who started "mothers against drunk driving," AA, the abolitionist movement
  • Founders/founding volunteers could disappear and p2pu could continue
• P2PU is seen as more a movement and network than an organization
  • In some sense it is run democratically OR
  • A goal of closing the nonprofit org in a period of time bc it's sustained by its community, other companies... it's more of an ecosystem is a possibility
  • ie. member owner cooperatives

Philipp's Group (New York Times headlines)

• P2PU learners win LG Prize - Alternative nobel prize for research
• P2PU learners are measurably happier and more successful
• P2PU learners invent a new alternative energy source
• P2PU complete a month of online learning with 1 Million people
• 20% of economic activity online is created by P2PU learners

Nadeem's Group

Lots of discussion:

• Felt the deliberately vague vision statment that Philipp provided before lunch did resonate with the group. Rather than repeat whats been written above just listing the other ideas our group had.

Thoughs about what success might look like 5 years from now:

• we have a large vibrant community
• P2PU is very n00b friendly - currently theres a high barrier to entry
• P2PU is "sticky" i.e. we have a significant number of people who come back to mentor ( give something back)
• We have celebrities/noteable individuals running courses/challenges at P2PU
• P2PU is helping people change their lives, find their passions and persue careers.
• People looking to recruit start to use our site to find people with the skills they are looking for

We came up with a story to illustrate our vision of what success might look like:

Naria is a youg lady who lives in Chicago. The city is experiencing an economic downturn, and as a consequence of that Naria looses her job. She is really struggling to work and ends up taking a part time job at a Diner simply to make ends meet. She continues to try to find better fulltime work but is unable to - even the local job center cant help her because she doesn't have the right skills.  Naria cant afford to pay for a university Course and doesnt have the time to go back to school fulltime.  The advisor at the job center  suggests that Naria might want to try P2PU, it a global community that helps people learn new things in peer groups. Naria visits the P2PU site and is amazed by this diverse, vibrant, global community. She explores many of the courses and even participates on a few before discovering she has a real passion for writing. She enrols on the Creative non -fiction writing course and after being inspired takes another course on Journalism. As part of the course she and her peers have to write blog posts reporting on news form their local communities. Naria writes a number of articles as the course progresses. One day she is contacted by a local newspaper that has come across her work. The editor is very impressed with her writing and offers Naria a job writing for the newspaper.  Six months later Naria is browsing the P2PU site when she receives a request in her inbox from a new P2PU community member called Alice. Alice is looking for a mentor to help her get started with here Creative Non-Fiction assignment ... 


A FEW MORE THINGS MENTIONED IN THE CLOSING WORKSHOP

• The vision of the future is that P2PU is a place to learn about anything they want
• P2PU is in the world - there is no reason why someone can't be who they want to be
• People identify with P2PU