From September 18 to 20th, we welcomed 55 educators, librarians, and learning circle advocates to Boston for a P2PU Gathering. This came on the heels of a similar event in Kansas City last year, and we are grateful to the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Siegel Family Endowment for providing us with the…
If you’re like me, you probably grew up thinking that serious learning only happened in school, college and university. The consequence of this belief is that it devalues, denies, and discriminates against how most of the world actually learns, which is outside of formal education. If we’re serious about achieving education for all, then we…
We just submitted our mid-term report for our 2017-2020 IMLS grant with Kansas City Public Library. This project has aimed to grow learning circles from a Chicago-specific project into a nationwide community of practice across public libraries. Since our project began in May 2017, our 12 partner libraries have run more than 178 learning circles,…
If you’re reading this, you probably already know that you can run a learning circle for free whenever you like. You probably also know about our facilitator resources, Juliana’s guide for local organizing, and of course, the global community of facilitators who are ready to help you out on our forum. However, there is a…
This year, Dokk1 Library in Aarhus, Denmark asked us to facilitate an informal learning space at their Next Library conference. Dokk1 was looking to create a new type of space that sat alongside the more structured conference elements like keynotes, sessions, and ignite talks. They were looking for, in their words, a space where “participants…
Two of our objectives this year are to improve the learning circle training materials and to implement a better workflow for people who want to create open courses for learning circles. So in March and April, we used our own Course in a Box tool to adapt our learning circle training materials into an open…
Peer 2 Peer University is a global community of people who believe that everyone should have access to free, community-driven and social learning experiences. To reach this goal, learning circles combine free online courses with peer learning practices in public spaces. Learn more by hearing from what others have to say, checking out useful resources, seeing where learning circles…
What do you think? Should libraries replace universities as centers of education and learning? Universities are increasingly expensive and commodified, offer a top-down curriculum, and reinforce the status quo. No thanks! Wouldn’t it better to have a ‘university’ that was free and that had a mission to serve everyone? A university for the people and…
P2PU is largely a grant-funded organization, which means that we encounter a lot of grant reporting requirements. Over the past few years, we’ve often encountered a tension as traditional notions of reporting, assessment, evaluation, and data collection come into conflict with our values of peer learning, community, and equity. None of this is to say…
The P2PU learning circle project began with the belief that there are tons of good online courses out there, and that we just need to better curate and frame these resources if we want more people to gain meaningful access. Three years into the project, we feel that this belief is only partially true and that, in…