Research

Peer 2 Peer University strongly supports both research activities under the auspices of P2PU as well as research activities about P2PU. We’re partnering with researchers to develop better integrated data streams and management tools, guidelines and templates for facilitating research inquiry, and of course a diverse and active research community.

Some of the things we’re currently working on (or worked on):

  • Big (Open) Data and Analytics for P2PU Research: We’re partnering with June Ahn and Brian Butler at the University of Maryland to create publicly available datasets of the P2PU platform, to be shared with interested researchers, and to use analytics to gain a deeper understanding of open, social learning in P2PU.
  • Design Experiments to Improve P2PU: Check out our recent design research efforts to help improve course creation and the front page interface.

We’ll also highlight emerging research that is motivated by or about P2PU in this space, so stay tuned.

Guidelines for P2PU research

If you are interested in doing research in the context of P2PU, please read through the following guidelines and make sure that you are comfortable with them.

  • Research should drive understanding and lead to action (we want research to improve and increase open social learning opportunities). We support research that leads to better understanding of the overall OER ecosystem, but we have a strong interest, and can commit more resources to research that also directly helps P2PU.
  • Researchers agree to involve P2PU so that we can give input and feedback.
  • Researchers agree to be respectful of the privacy and time of everyone involved, especially individual users who are approached for data collection.
  • All data / findings are openly shared (using an appropriate CC license, e.g. CC0, CC BY SA or CC BY, depending on the type of data and finding). In cases where research is intended for publication in a closed journal, we require an open access self archived version of the final manuscript to be available online. Most journals allow this.
  • We are always open for discussion of these guidelines. ;-)