Jane Park at Creative Commons is reporting that Peer-2-Peer University is beginning its second phase. From the post:
Due to high demand, P2PU has doubled its course offerings for the second round.
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P2P U Goes Into Second Phase
Posted in Open Education
Tagged e-learning, oer, online learning, open accreditation, open content, Open Education, open-teaching, openness, P2P
LOP2P: Architecture for Institutional Learning Objects Sharing
An interesting technology was developed and is under adoption process in Brazil. The architecture, developed by Rafael de Santiago and André Raabe, is designed to connect educational institutions interested in sharing and use of Learning Objects through a single network, named LOP2P (Learning Object Peer to Peer). As defined in their paper, this technology is:
an interoperability architecture to allow different educational institutions share their learning object repositories for creating courses using Learning Management Systems (LMS). The initiative is in line with a current trend in educational institutions to produce learning objects and make them freely available through web repositories. The proposed mechanism is based on Peer to Peer architecture where each institution is a peer.
Two main components of this architecture are a plug-in for LMS like systems and the Mediation Layer. You can read the paper and a presentation about it lop2p.org site.
P2P Foundation Citations
Mark Bauwens has posted a list of citations on P2P Foundation’s approach to politics.
The Most Important P2P Trends of 2008 and 2009
Michel Bauwens, via P2P Foundation, enumerated what he reckoned to be the most significant P2P trends in that past year, and predicted that they will remain potent in 2009. Excerpt:
2. The emergence and consolidation of open design communities
Two-three years ago, it seemed as if the open and free hardware model was not working, and advocates were looking for the reasons why. Today, there is a burst of emergence of communities designing physical artefacts, and companies making them (Arduino, Chumby, Buglabs). The Linux model has taken root outside the world of software. Advocates are no longer debating, but creating the crucial tools to make such collective development possible. I’m not going to mention the further development of co-creation and co-design, of crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, which were well covered already in 2007.
5. The expansion of Open Access and Creative Commons for Open and Peer to Peer Learning
Open content production, and access to existing scientific and scholarly content has made tremendous progress over the last year. All this is being used in the context of many new initiatives for more peer-oriented learning such as the P2P University initiative. The first inklings of open accreditation have been debated about. George Siemens’ connectivist learning theory has matured.
6. The creation of new third spaces for open collaboration: the hub, co-working, hacker spaces
People in the West work less in offices and factories, rely on mobile offices both while travelling and at home, but to live collective values and for mutual support, they are creating new type of co-working spaces, including franchises such as the Hub, and a multiplication of open hacking centers in major urban centers. Unconferencing and barcamps create infrastructures for temporary gatherings as well and have become ubiquitous including the pioneering development of Equality Camps which brings advocates and web 2.0 savvy geeks together for mutual enrichment. A culture of digital resistance is being created which combines offline and online aspects which mutually reinforce each other.
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.
