Course Design Orientation

Who Am I:

I've been involved in P2PU from the start. I ran a course in the last round, and I'd be happy to share what we learned (mostly about things that didn't go so well).

Why P2P:

Because research shows its the best way to learn - and we can build the future of education together.

Learning Goals:

I want to better understand what kinds of questions course organizers have, and what issues they struggle with, and how we can make the experience better for everyone.

Hi! everybody

I´m Juan and I teach at a traditional University in Spain since 2005. My courses are Business Innovation and Business Organization.
The P2P model gathered my attention, since I believe that nowadays teachers are only learning facilitators and the main resource for learning is the motivation of people who want to discover new things
What I expect to get from this experience is just checking out new methodologies and share with others enthusiasm for learning.

Best

Juan

I am Andy Lindeman. I have a degree in Computer Science from Mississippi State University in the USA. I am currently not working full-time, but I am an aspiring web developer hoping to start work at a small firm in the next few months.

While I do not regret getting a traditional college degree in Computer Science, I am drawn to the peer learning world as it seems to be the way forward for learning cutting-edge, ever-changing technologies.

This is my first time running a course, so I am really just sticking to the basics: I hope to learn how to be as effective of a facilitator as possible, measured mostly by how much everyone is able to learn.

Specifically, I am intrigued about how to best facilitate a larger class (e.g., with many smaller study groups, etc..).

wow, you folks all sound super cool. i'm lila bailey, a lawyer in san francisco, CA. i've been involved in P2PU since the first cycle, but i'm taking the orientation because i'm very interested in improving my course, Copyright 4 Educators, for future cycles. i'm hoping to get some cool ideas for making my course more participatory, and "sticky" - i.e., so folks don't drop out half way through.

Hi, my name is David Burns. I work for Mozilla as the Test Automation lead in the WebQA Team. I have written a book on the subject of my course and hope that I can share some of the enthusiasm for the subject on the people that join my course!

Hi everyone! I'm Nate, a former teacher from the Bay Area, and recently I've been working at the Center for Next Generation Teaching and Learning at UCB (with Erin!) on using participatory tools to drive student-centered learning. Like Erin said, I'd like to share some of what we've learned, but I'm looking forward to creating an environment where we can all share & learn from our experiences teaching and learning with these new tools! I've been a strong believer in the peer-to-peer model since my classroom days and am excited about its application in P2PU.

I'm Jane Park, the Education Coordinator at Creative Commons - a nonprofit organization that develops and provides free copyright licenses and tools that anyone can use to share their educational materials with the world. As you may have noticed, P2PU content on this site is under a CC license: CC BY-SA. In order to answer questions about this and other P2PU related matters, I'll be hosting two calls on P2PU Values & Open Licensing this week and next, see http://p2pu.org/node/11464/document/11465 for logistics.

I've been involved with P2PU since before it ran its first cycle of courses. I was a volunteer course organizer, running two iterations of creative nonfiction writing. I also volunteer other efforts as needed, such as feedback in licensing, research, communications and publicity.

Please come with any questions to the calls! Or feel free to contact me directly.

Cheers people!

I like to call myself jack-of-all-trades in the web industry. As a web developer I code a lot, and as PHP instructor I teach others to code also. When I manage to squeeze out some free time I usually end up playing softball or paragliding.

Peer-to-peer model caught my attention last year, but I haven't been able to get involved. With almost three years of classroom teaching one fast growing and ever changing subject I've noticed that change and innovations are much needed.

I would like to get a grasp on peer-to-peer model, give something back to the community and network with interesting people.

Greetings, everyone. I'm karen and my course is "Entrepreneurial Marketing" (http://p2pu.org/general/entrepreneurial-marketing).

My "real job" is in education and technology, helping coach and mentor K-12 teachers and also writing curriculum. I am also a huge advocate for open educational resources (OER) and do a lot of presenting and other projects in that area. I have run a couple small start-ups and helped others with marketing, hence the course.

I am interested in the extension of OER into a broader model of open education, which draws me to the peer-to-peer model and to P2PU. Having spent a lot of years in the traditional educational system, I think that there are other models that work better for many learners, and P2P is certainly one.

My personal goals as an organiser of this class are:

- To learn more about marketing small enterprises and what works for different types of groups/causes (especially around social media which I am immersed in right now for a couple projects)
- To learn how to better frame questions and challenges (and to present less content but possibly curate better) to facilitate learning
- To think about how this marketing course and other related courses could be structured into an "Open School of Business," particularly with an emphasis on entrepreneurs for whom traditional biz schools might be less appropriate

I also expect to meet some interesting new people and learn some totally unexpected things along the way!

* Hello friends, my name is dany i'm student of computer science and a phisycs lover, i am the coordinator of a research group in web engineering, ubuntu-co member, front-end developer and the mos t important :a dreamer.

*Peer-to-peer model caught my attention because is something that need the society. the academic globalization require the same knowledge in the same time for all the people in a context. and is a big opportunity for meet with people from all the countrys and is really cool because from experiences like this are the first step for a multinational bussines with your friends.

*i will teach the new features of html5, is a good beginning for a web development career.

Hi everyone!

My name is Matt Buscemi and I'm a web professional in Hawaii. I'm passionate about web technologies, and I have been fascinated by computer programming languages ever since I was a child.

I've also been told that I have a knack for explaining things and helping other make sense of complex topics. I have experience as a teacher. However, both my experiences as a teacher and a student have led me to a single conclusion -- learning works best when the teacher "gets out of the way", so to speak, and supports and directs students' discovery of new information. This is diametrically opposed to the traditional method of teaching, which has the teacher as the fount from which all knowledge flows.

The School of Webcraft and P2PU seems like such a great opportunity to me. The teaching/learning philosophy matches what I've learned from my own experience, and I get to organize courses around topics that I care deeply about.

My first course, which starts on January 26, is called "Introduction to PHP" (http://p2pu.org/webcraft/introduction-php). I hope to deepen my knowledge of PHP, server programming more generally, as well as curriculum development skills. I hope to participate in the development of the School of Webcraft accreditation badges for PHP programming.

Hello Everyone!

Who I am:
I am a researcher and collaboration and peer-production are my core research interests. I have a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. From October to December 2010 I conducted a small exploratory study on one course run at P2PU last year. The study is almost completed.

Why I peer-to-peer:
I am fascinated by peer-production and by the possibilities afforded by digital media to generate content. I am also fascinated by the approach to learning taken by P2PU. I think it is radical and implies a lot of unlearning of old patterns in order to work. So I am here to learn but also to unlearn

What my goals are:
I am taking the orientation course to prepare for the course on Open Governance and Learning, which I am co-organizing with Joe Corneli. I am new to this task so it is necessary for me to learn “the basics” of running a course. I am already learning by reading what other co-organizers are doing. Another goal I have is to learn more about P2PU as organization, which is useful for my current and future research on P2PU.

Hello everyone,

I am very new to this but also very excited because I see the amazing potential for learning, community and sharing. have been teaching Math at Ithaca College http://www.ithaca.edu/ for 28 years... here is also some more info: http://faculty.ithaca.edu/novak/ I Love Math and believe that by learning math in a fun and meaningful way students can transform their consciousness and the whole word will benefit. This online direction gives hope to ailing humanity...

Cheers,

--Dani

Hello Everyone,

My name is Parag. I have a masters in Computer Science and have been working as an freelance programmer and teacher for over a decade.

I feel that the all the Internet has all the ingredients for a perfect learning environment - information, interactions, micro mentors, and credentials. We just have to figure the right way to combine them together.

I am very interested in models of open online education where students can learn at their pace, from their peers/mentors, and also create a learning portfolio (proof of learning) which will act as their credentials. I am making an open source software which can power such a setting. The software is still very nascent ans much work has to be done. I have created a website which is powered with that software as it is being made (http://www.diycomputerscience.com)

I am looking forward to teaching/facilitating the Javascript 101 (http://p2pu.org/webcraft/javascript-101) course at P2P2. My learning goals are to improve my Javascript skills, and learn how to facilitate online courses which use a peer taught and mentor facilitated model for teaching and learning.

Hello! I am B. Maura Townsend, and I sort of volutneered myself to lead the course "Intro to Design and Usability." I'm kind of uncomfortable with these biographical statements, frankly, I always feel I've either gone off track and shared too much or said far too little.

I am a graphic designer and practical artist, with most of my training being focused on traditional print methods. I've also been an avid computer nerd since the mid-1980's, so I was able to take my print design training and apply it to web design in the mid 1990's very easily. I've always been interested in making media more accessible to the general viewer, because it's not communication if nobody can, or wants to stick around to, read it.

I'm an artist and a designer first - all the code and formatting tools I have managed to learn are tools to make the design work. I always try to design with the user in mind, and that's the real thing I'm going to try to communicate in the course I'm leading.

This will be the first online course I've ever facilitated. I'm sure I'll have a lot of questions!

I have a lot of hobbies, which I understand is pretty typical of creative people in general. I minored in theatre production in college, because I've always loved textile arts and theatre, and I still do costume construction, textile arts, and historic costume research as a hobby pursuit. All the classes and tutorials I have written previously have been involved with those practical arts. I also restore houses, write a little, cook things, and write how-to posts on my blog.

My blog is here: http://bymyownhand.blogspot.com
I have several historic costuming handouts on Scribd, and a twitter, which I use only to announce new content.

Hi everyone!

I'm Pippa Buchanan and most of my time within P2PU is spent helping run the School of Webcraft. I've previously organised one course in the previous round and learnt a lot in the process. Hopefully I'll be able to help you learn from my mistakes and learn more from you too!

My learning goal for this orientation is to find out better ways for us to organise the School of Webcraft.

I'm here to help Ali with the orientation, in particular to assist School of Webcraft organisers. I'll also be paying attention to Ali's advice in preparation for the next course I hope to organise around the Philosophy of Friendship.

I became interested in Peer-To-Peer learning when I started a self-organised DIY Masters project around friendship and media art. I'm still working on DIY Masters in snippets of time and am looking forward to learning more later in the year at P2PU.

I'm originally from Australia, but am based in Germany. I'm currently back home visiting family so I'll try to send some summer sunshine to all of you in the north.

P*

Hi everyone

I'm Bekka - I'm a South African based in London and, like some of the others, I've been around for a while. I ran a course on cyberpunk literature in the pilot round at P2PU, and took (and dropped out of, I'm ashamed to say) several courses since then.

The peer-to-peer model is fascinating to me, becuase I think traditional learning can be an experience that often brings our insecurities to the surface, and a love how peer groups tend to behave with compassion.

My goals are to learn how to engage better with courses, so that I don't keep dropping out! I'm a repeat offender.

Howdy Everyone,

I'm Una Daly, Associate Director of College Open Textbooks at Foothill College in Northern California. I'm also an adjunct faculty in the Computer Technology department as I was formerly a software engineer for many years :-)! My undergraduate work was in Computer Science and Math but I switched to Educational Technology for my Masters. I also coordinate ePortfolios at Foothill College primarily in Career Technical Education and Licensing programs. I am interested in learning theory and the factors that we control as faciliators to improve learning outcomes for our participants.

I facilitated a course on Adopting Open Textbooks last Fall at P2PU and really enjoyed it. It was a great way to reach out and hear from folks outside my traditional learning environment e.g. Technical and Community Colleges in the U.S. Having taught online before in a more traditional manner, I had to ease into the idea of co-teaching or peer-to-peer and realizing that I am not responsible for all the content of the course. The more everyone contributes, the more we all learn.

Some of the feedback from my peers was that they wanted to work in small groups possibly discipline-specific and develop open educational resources so I am incorporating small team projects and authoring as a possible team project. The teams will ultimately choose their own project but I am trying to help organize the teams based on the responses to my sign-up questions.

I am sure that I will learn a lot more this Winter in the second go round of Open Textbooks and hope that we can share our worries and successes with each other in this space because I'm going to need some advice on this journey :-)!

Hi all. First of all, what an absolutely amazing group of people this is! I feel so privileged to be part of this group, and so excited about what we are all creating together!

I'm a PhD student in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at University of Toronto, and I am researching peer-to-peer learning. I also try to have my finger in most things at P2PU, which is getting harder and harder as the community is growing rapidly.

When we were at the second community workshop in Barcelona last year, I was embarassed to find that I was one of the only people there who hadn't run a course... I was originally planning to run one this cycle, but for different reasons, it didn't get ready in time. Now I am working with a friend on preparing one for the next cycle. Preliminary title "Computer-supported collaborative learning and open education" :)