Open Education Leading Enthusiasts to Start P2P University

Jeffrey Young, via The Chronicle of Higher Education, featured a story about the P2P University to be initiated by leading proponents of Open Education. Snippets:

Five academics from around the world plan to open a new kind of online university early next year, built upon professor star power and students learning from one another through online social tools. The teachers will be volunteers, the courses will cost next to nothing, and no official credit will be given.

The organizers call it P2P University (for peer-to-peer), and they hope to fill what they see as a gap in online-education efforts by traditional colleges, which often focus more on delivering full degree programs online than on one-off courses. The project is running on a shoestring, with the organizers paying the initial Web-hosting fees and volunteering their own time, though they may seek grant support in the future.

Its leaders point to successful models like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. They also say that the timing is right, now that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major universities have established an audience for free online course materials. What the new university is adding is expert teaching.

The effort grew out of theoretical discussions at open-education conferences over the past two years. But in the past few months the five colleagues, who work at different universities, decided to flesh out their plan and put it into action.

P2P University’s two main audiences will be working professionals who want to brush up on a topic for their jobs but don’t have time to take a whole degree program, and recent retirees who have plenty of time on their hands and feel comfortable in cyberspace, said Mr. Thierstein.

Details are still being worked out, but the plan is to open registration for the institution’s first 10 courses in January and begin the first term in February. Basic information about the project is posted to the university’s tentative Web site (http://peer2peeruniversity.org).

Among the unusual aspects of the model:

Although the university will not grant credit or seek accreditation of any kind, it will encourage students to seek college credit elsewhere.

Courses will last six weeks rather than the traditional 12-week term. The hope is that shorter courses will appeal to new audiences, better fitting into people’s busy schedules.

Professors will have a reduced role than they have at traditional institutions, in part to encourage top faculty members to volunteer by lowering the time commitment. (Organizers are tentatively calling them “sense makers.”)

Each student will be able to set up a profile on the university’s Web site, much like on Facebook, where they can show which courses they have taken or taught and communicate with other students.