Here’s a round-up of the latest ideas and experiments from P2PU community members as they hack their way through education.
Our Director, Philipp Schmidt joins Hack Education’s Audrey Watters on the latest episode of Higher Ed Live to discuss the growing popularity of MOOC’s, some alternatives and the future of education.
Mozzadrella (aka long time contributor Vanessa Gennarelli) talks about terms.
What we call ourselves matters. And the collection of terms we use has sparked a lively discussion about who we are. Are our learning experiences Challenges? Are they all Courses? Are we always learners? When are we mentors?
The community is exploring how we use language when we describe “this peer learning thing” that we’re doing. Join our community call this Thursday to hear Vanessa and everyone else weigh in on the right terms to use for the future of P2PU.
Community members Anne Witton and Doug Belshaw blog their way through the School of Webcraft Webmaking 101 challenges.
Anne has always been interested in web development, picking up bits of HTML along the way, ” but I’ve got to the point where I want to learn HTML and CSS properly. I enrolled at Peer 2 Peer University and set up this blog to track my progress and point people in the direction of helpful resources.”
Doug, who is using the challenge to brush up on the basics, “really values four things involved in the process.
- The social element (you don’t seem to get this at, for example, Codecademy)
- Filling in gaps in my knowledge (I didn’t learn any of this sequentially; sometimes I’m missing some building blocks)
- Reviewing other people’s work (some people obviously do the bare minimum, others are super-dedicated)
- The opportunity to become a mentor (once you’ve learned something, there’s the opportunity to then teach it)”
The New York Times discusses P2PU in it’s article discussing current trends to Building Schools out of Clicks, Not Bricks.
Rebecca Kahn from Peer2Peer University , which “organizes learning outside of institutional walls,” said her organization was “never going to have a school of medicine. We’re never going to have a school of engineering. But we can do some things better than a traditional university. We can adapt faster.”
We discuss current news, the latest research, and the experiences of our community members and learners every Thursday in our open Community Call. We welcome newcomers and the just-plain-curious. Join us!