I recently defended my dissertation which focused entirely on Learning Circles. Coming from a Ph.D. program in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media, I had many opportunities to look at the intersections of learning and networked technologies through courses, readings, workshops, conferences, lectures, etc. Having this background made me eager to start my own explorations. I…
During our expansion (from Coast 2 Coast), we sent out a survey to 40 new library facilitators about their interests and concerns about learning circles. According to our survey results, their greatest worry about learning circles is that learners won’t show up or stay engaged. “The only challenge I’m worried about is low attendance, which…
And we’re off! Thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation, we’ve started to expand learning circles across the United States. Learning circles are lightly-facilitated study groups for learners who want to take online courses together. We started running learning circles as a pilot with Chicago Public Library in 2015 and after a year and…
Well, what can I say? Hello! This is me! I joined P2PU as the Community Lead, and fitting with my colleagues’ fun and clever titles, I declare myself Town Crier (although Community Whisperer was a close second). My focus will be coordinating the learning circle program, with some big help from the Knight Foundation. We’ll…
We’re excited to share recent updates we’ve made to the learning circles tools to help you better run learning circles! Team organizer dashboard interface Last year we introduced the ability to form teams of facilitators managed by one or more organizers. As team sizes increased, it became apparent that we needed to improve the user…
Written by Wendy Pearson, Digital Inclusion Fellow at Kansas City Public Library, and cross posted from KCPL’s website. PREFACE As a digital inclusion leader, the Kansas City Public Library provides many ways to engage in digital learning, including a Digital Media Lab for teens, over 300 public access computers available over a ten branch system,…
We just completed the first round of learning circles in Detroit, in partnership with Libraries Without Borders. Two learning circles were held at the Parkman Branch of the Detroit Public Library (DPL) and one was held at The Matrix Center. In addition to running the three learning circles, P2PU and LWB trained 18 librarians and library…
15 CPL librarians will launch Learning Circles in their respective branches this April. Courses on offer include some repeats from last year such as Public Speaking, Intro to HTML/CSS, and Fiction Writing, as well as 4 new courses: Pre-College English; Try College 101; Resume, Networking, and Interview Skills; and Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for…
It is with a heavy heart that we take leave of Bekka. From 1 March Bekka is working full time on completing her PhD – we miss her already! Bekka has been with P2PU from the start when a bunch of crazy visionaries first came together in Berlin many moons ago. Since then Bekka has…
A little while back, we announced that P2PU was partnering with a group of European Universities and other online education experts from Belgium, Greece, Poland, Sweden and the UK to launch ExplOERer, a new course on how to create Open Educations Resources (OERs). This course is being presented in English, Polish and Swedish (it’s a…