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Selecting participants for your course

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Hi folks - Just by reading all the introductions I can tell we have a strong group of motivated organizers!

Many of you have had your courses opened for sign-up. (If your course is not open yet, it may be missing crucial elements). You should expect to start receiving applications for your course now. Webcrafters should expect a high volume of interest due to wide-ranging press coverage. Don't feel the need to accept folks right away! You should be using this time to make improvements on your design using the handbook: http://wiki.p2pu.org/Course-Design-Handbook.

The application process is one of the most important steps in building a strong community of learners around your course material. The sign-up task is the crux of this. The P2PU community highly recommends creating a strong, robust sign-up task for your course. This will help you select participants that are most likely to commit.

Because P2PU is open, anyone can follow a course just by visitng the website. Participating is the next level of engagement and requires making a commitment. P2PU courses are free - everyone is volunteering their time to make learning happen. There's no bottom line. 

We can use this thread to discuss sign-up tasks, reviewing applications, and figuring out the right size (no. of seats) for your course. Post any questions or suggestions you have abou the process here. In the meantime review sections of the handbook and use the course checklist: http://wiki.p2pu.org/course-checklist to guide you through.

Best,
ALISON

Marisa Ponti's picture
Marisa Ponti
Tue, 2011-01-11 23:37

Hello Alison and everyone in the course,
talking about recruiting and selecting participants, I have probably just made my first mistake! I advertise the course via Twitter.
Now, I can see a long list of people when I click on the Admin tab. Most of these people do not have identification details.
Marisa

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Tue, 2011-01-11 23:41

Hi Marisa,

Organizers have the freedom to deny applications that are sub-par - BUT - if an application is entirely empty & anonymous is could be a bug. However, if an application has some information, but lacks substance, it might be an application worth denying. If you are wary you can contact registered applicants to provide more information to follow up on their application.

I took a look at your admin list and I only see one applicant. Keep me in the loop - perhaps by email.

Alison

M. Volz's picture
M. Volz
Wed, 2011-01-12 07:06

Ack! How does this approval process work? What if our sign-up task is actually to generate the syllabus from a python script that's provided...

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Wed, 2011-01-12 07:59

Marielle,

I think the task was fine. I guess after everyone's signed up and registration is closed, you can post the syllabus for ease of reference. But, you have one. I see it. So, I would think you'd be OK for the approval process. Good book choice too! I can't wait to hear how it goes. I was going to do a Python course m'self in the future.

Jessica

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Wed, 2011-01-12 19:17

Marielle,

Collaborative syllabus building happens in many other courses, too. It's an approach many organizers like to experiment with. As for creating a strong sign-up task, go with one that a user can do BEFORE they are accepted into your course. If you will be collaboratively building the syllabus, make the process for how participants can be expected to contribute clear on your course page.

Use the handbook, it has a lot of good advice: http://wiki.p2pu.org/Course-Design-Handbook
there's a checklist there that's also very helpful: http://wiki.p2pu.org/course-checklist

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Wed, 2011-01-12 08:05

I *don't* speak for the python course organizer but the signup task appears to ask you to paste the output of a program into the field in the signup form. What may not be obvious until you click the "Sign up" button on the course page or the "Apply" button on the "Course list" page is that the form will ask you fill out a field labeled "Sign-up task" at the top. So you type or paste your response to the task into the form. The signup task may ask you to watch a video or install something in which case a good response would just to make a statement that you completed that task (and maybe a short comment on it). Or the course organizer may be asking your to write a narrative, paste output, answer a question, post code or an a URL. You might want to fully complete the signup tasks and save the your responses in a text file. Once the signup tasks are complete you can open the signup form and supply the requested information. I hope that helps clarify the general process.

Philipp Schmidt's picture
Philipp Schmidt
Wed, 2011-01-12 12:10

What about also asking users to upload an image to their user profile as part of the application? Or is that something best done in the first week - once participants have been accepted?

It makes such a difference to see all the little user images in this discussion forum - as opposed to the grey P2PU default icon.

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Wed, 2011-01-12 19:20

Great idea. I'd say for acceptance so before first week. It's so nice to put a face to the name!

Though some might want to not use RL photo but there are other options for those.

Joe Corneli's picture
Joe Corneli
Fri, 2011-01-14 03:15

I like the idea too - would it be possible to make this a required item during profile creation (put a little red star next to the thing...)?

Stian Haklev's picture
Stian Haklev
Thu, 2011-01-20 10:58

I absolutely agree that nicely filled out profile pages make P2PU a nicer place to be (and this goes for course organizers too - one of the most common comments I made when I was reviewing courses, was to ask course organizers to fill in their profiles - at least a picture, and some text). In the future, I think we should make it much easier to fill in your profile, maybe something like LInkedIn where they say your profile is 70% complete - nudge you a bit... I think it's great if course organizers require this in their sign up task. If someone is serious about taking a course, it's not too much to ask. And although you can (and probably should) ask people to introduce themselves during the first week, the profile comes up anytime you see someone's name and click on it, so it's much more handy.

Karen Fasimpaur's picture
Karen Fasimpaur
Sat, 2011-01-15 02:33

I like this idea and have thought about giving "bonus points" to applicants to my course who have done this or otherwise fleshed out their profile.

I have gotten a lot more applications than I expected so far, and I am very pleasantly surprised by the quality of the responses to my sign up tasks. I can't wait for my course to begin because I know I'll be learning a lot! I am mostly likely going to expand my max # of participants because the applicants are so good.

David Burns's picture
David Burns
Wed, 2011-01-12 16:23

I have a number of people that have appear to have signed up without doing the signup task and are "members" of the course. Does anyone see an issue with removing them and asking to reapply?

B. Maura Townsend's picture
B. Maura Townsend
Wed, 2011-01-12 16:56

My course was opened Sunday, so I figured out a workaround. I broadcast to all participants that submitting the signup task was mandatory, and to send it via my contact form if they were not able to see the apply or sign up buttons.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Wed, 2011-01-12 19:12

Hi David,

It might be in your best interest to do this. It will allow you to select folks who are willing to commit, rather than just follow along in the background. (Following along is always ok, but the application is about choosing participants willing to collaborate and build something.)

Nick Doiron's picture
Nick Doiron
Wed, 2011-01-12 21:26

I have mixed results from course applications. The sign-up task was HTML with a special image URL. My account was set for plaintext e-mails. The e-mails I get vary, some with full URLs and escaped HTML, others with URLs split or hidden in the raw e-mail, and a few blank.

But now I have responses describing an image, but without a URL. A few could forget to paste their URL, but it's difficult to tell whether many people made this mistake or there is a technical problem. In the future, I would prefer a sign-up form (to make sure all info is included in the application) and a place on the web to review responses with intact HTML and URLs.

B. Maura Townsend's picture
B. Maura Townsend
Thu, 2011-01-13 02:20

I have perhaps 22 really great applications - that all came in before today. I have another 10-15 that are between incomplete and terrible, and just today I got 28 new apps. I expect more tomorrow.

This would be fine, but my course is supposed to be 15 people, maybe expanding to 20 or 25. I have no idea how I'm going to go about narrowing people down by merit, and I can't think how I can conceivably expand the course, unless I want to set it up to be assigned reading + mailing list style discussions only once a week.

I am not confirming anyone until this weekend, but I have a feeling that I will have a very hard time of it.

I am feeling very out of my depth here.

BMT

Alison Cole's picture
Alison Cole
Thu, 2011-01-13 02:55

Do not despair! There are many pathways you can take from here to reduce your workload and still arrive at an excellent group of participants.

One option could be to let applicants know of the high volume and assign a second sign-up task they can submit via email. This may weed out those that feel taking the course is not a huge priority.

Another option is to be extremely choosy in you selections.

A third, more involved option is to contact particularly stellar applicant and ask if they will co-facilitate the course with you. You can accept a larger load of applicants, and divide the group in between the two of you (either by global location or personal learning goals).

I hope this is helpful, and I bet other folks will chime in with good ideas.

ALISON

Karen Fasimpaur's picture
Karen Fasimpaur
Sat, 2011-01-15 02:36

This is helpful, Alison. Thanks. In addition to the above, I am also thinking of screening out people who have applied for more than 2 or 3 other courses. It doesn't seem likely that people could fully participate in that many. Does that make sense?

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Sat, 2011-01-15 03:24

One person from Mongolia has applied to 15 WebCraft courses and has been accepted into Wordpress Development. This might just be an eager learner situation - you never know.

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Sat, 2011-01-15 21:32

This is a good strategy for sure.

saulo venancio's picture
saulo venancio
Tue, 2011-01-18 23:53

i totally agree with u. as easy is to sign up, some anxious guys will start signing up for more than 1 and commit, hopefully, one.

Matthew Buscemi's picture
Matthew Buscemi
Thu, 2011-01-13 02:55

Maura,

My "Introduction to PHP" course is in a similar situation. I currently have many more "acceptable" applications than I could possibly be the single coordinator for without severely compromising course cohesion. However, I believe I have found a possible solution:

1) I put a message out on the Webcraft mailing list asking if there are any individuals who would be willing to be a coordinator for additional sections of my course. I have already gotten four replies in less than twenty four hours of sending it.

2) I have created a rubric by which to judge applications. I will cut any application that is incomplete or below 20 out of 50 points. The rest will be divided up into groups depending on how many applications remain. For example, if it turns out there are 60 applications between 20 and 50 points, then 20-30 pts. will be a group, then 30-40 and 40-50. That way, participants of the same relative skill level will be grouped together.

3) I will add additional coordinators as admins to my course as necessary on January 23. Then, on the first day, in chat, I can tell everyone who their primary coordinator will be. I can make different forum pages for the different sections. We will all use the same syllabus and share the same collaborative workspace, but the groups will be a maximum of 20 participants each.

Could something like this work in your case?

Also, I'm more than happy to share the rubric with you, or any course coordinator, but I do not want anyone applying for my course to view it. I feel it would provide any prospective participant who saw it with an unfair advantage.

- Matt

Pippa Buchanan's picture
Pippa Buchanan
Thu, 2011-01-13 03:08

Hi Maura,

I've just updated the Webcraft page of the Course Design Handbook with some information about general management of sign-ups:

http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/34243004/Designing-a-Course-for-School-of-We...

Matt Buscemi (Intro to PHP) has invited other Webcraft community members to help him facilitate the course. They'll each take on 15 people and act as sub-groups within the main course. I'll write up some notes about how Matt's planning on doing this.

I'd suggest that you ask for assistance from the mailing list - I'll put out a general call for assistant facilitators. You could also send a broadcast message to course applicants finding out if anyone is able to help facilitate - remind them that they don't need to be an expert, but they'll need to help you answering questions etc.

I hope that helps! I'm very aware of how stupidly huge the interest is going to be for Webcraft courses.

Best wishes and GOOD LUCK,

Pippa

Stian Haklev's picture
Stian Haklev
Thu, 2011-01-20 11:01

This might seem a bit frivolous, but another option is just to select the participants you think would be great for the course, and if they are more than you are able to admit, just choose randomly among them - pick every other name or something like that. It might seem arbitrary, but I wouldn't waste hours on picking the "absolutely most excellent" application, that time is better spent on other stuff. There will be many more opportunities to do courses at P2PU, and anyway people can follow alongside, it's not like they are completely locked out. if someone is super-motivated, they could even voluntarily do all the tasks that in-course students do... So I wouldn't worry too much.

ozzie sutcliffe's picture
ozzie sutcliffe
Sat, 2011-01-15 22:17

Parag and I have been working on how to deal with 150 odd applicants for the JavaScript 101 class and so far over 100 have done the sign up tasks.
We are thinking about defining folks by the time zones and this way we can create sub groups that can chat etc in their own time zones. Then encourage buddy groups where maybe 5 folks get together as a study study group.
Having 30 small groups is a far less daunting admin task that 150 individuals.

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Sat, 2011-01-15 23:34

I would give some careful thought as to how you are going form and administer these groups. The P2PU platform aggregates and identifies all your members and applicants in a course by their handle (eg "ozzie" for you and "sproket" for me). You *don't* initially have access to your member's or applicant's email addresses that they used when they signed up with p2pu.org. The only communication mechanisms you have is to (1) send a private message to a specific user through their p2pu contact form (eg http://p2pu.org/users/ozzie/contact) or (2) have the course organizer send a broadcast message from the course home page. This message would have to contain instructions as to how a member is to communicate back to the course organizer information such as their time zone (collected at signup but not required or visible to the course organizer) and other details that would help form these smaller groups. Additionally, once you received this information you have to again communicate back to the members which group they are slotted into and how this group will be communicating among themselves during the course (eg join a google group). Moreover, since the "group formation" communication process is completed through the p2pu platform you can only initially identify each member by their "handle". The net result of all of this activity might create a flood of information which you have to manually process and you might wind up disassociating the link between a member known by their "handle" within the p2pu platform and the email address they use when they join the smaller group.

ozzie sutcliffe's picture
ozzie sutcliffe
Sat, 2011-01-15 23:54

Good points.
My initial thought is to put out a broadcast and have have folks respond to a thread with their time zone using GMT and let the folks find peers in their time zone ..

Dan Diebolt's picture
Dan Diebolt
Sun, 2011-01-16 00:10

This will generate a thread with 150+ replies and put the burden on each user to read all messages seeking out people in their time zone with the implied message "self-organize into smaller groups based on time zone." The broadcast message has to provide instructions to send the info (time zone) to a database, a wiki, or some other collaborative data store where they can enter their info without generating a flood of email messages. You need some type of way to aggregate the info you want to collect without creating a flood of communications. The more steps that are involved the more dropouts and debugs you are going to have to deal with.

Jessica Ledbetter's picture
Jessica Ledbetter
Sun, 2011-01-16 00:16

Maybe http://www.doodle.com/ or http://whenisgood.net/ would help with that. Wiki works too. People could even pair up on stuff other than timezone like age or career level or experience level with the wiki.

Stian Haklev's picture
Stian Haklev
Thu, 2011-01-20 11:05

Given all of our experiences in this cycle with courses receiving tons of sign-ups, lot's of people being willing to act as co-facilitators etc, one of the things we have to think about carefully for the next platform is how to enable group-creation within courses. Right now, there is no built-in facilitation for this, so it has to be done manually. One course that has done it very well in the past is the Copyright for Educators, although that was smaller than some of the ones being proposed right now.

I'm very excited about the willingness of people to serve as facilitators though - one course which asked people to volunteer, and had 25 people step forward. We're really breaking new ground here, experimenting with new pedagogical models. I strongly believe that the small group model is one powerful way of learning and motivating - very different from the diffuse Twitter networks or even the large massive open online courses ... However, if we can preserve aspects of that social experience, and combine it with much larger courses, to be able to serve many more people - that is great!

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Sat, 2011-01-15 22:17

(Long comment to follow.)

I've started accepting participants into my course: http://p2pu.org/general/potable-water-treatment-ocw

I've also denied weak applications. I expect to accept a few more people over the coming week.

I sent a BROADCAST to accepted participants with the following message. Wanted to share!

__

"If you're receiving this email, it means your application into this course has been approved!

My name is Alison and I'm organizing this course, which will commence 26 January. We'll start off with introductions in the forums and figure out if our schedules align enough to have real-time meetups on the web!

In the meantime there's a few things you need to do:

P2PU courses are seriously different from traditional learning environments. You are responsible for your own learning. However, we must work together as peers to make that learning more valuable. Commitment is key.

Please review the weekly readings and browse through each "chapter". Is this the actual material you're expecting to learn?

Consider the proposed projects - do you have enough time to work through these for the next 6 weeks? Are the tasks and projects something you're willing to do?

If yes, then clear a few hours for the coming weeks in your schedule. It will be an awesome course.

If not, no worries! You have the ability to drop the course, but please do so BEFORE it begins. Dropping out half-way through will negatively affect the experience for the rest of the participants. Participants who start are expected to finish.

Everyone's applications were really interesting, and I'm excited to have such a diverse group to study and work with me. I expect a few more applications to come through in the next week.

Excited for the 26th!

Best Regards,
ALISON COLE

P.S. Please fill out your P2PU profiles. Add a picture and a little about yourself. It's nice to know more about you!"

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P.P.S. P2PU's John Britton inspired me to give accepted participants the option to drop out ahead of time. I think it's an excellent strategy.

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Sun, 2011-01-16 09:30

I'm in the same situation of adding someone as a co-facilitator during one part of the course. Rather than for splitting the group (at least the MediaWiki course at the moment doesn't have that many applications), for leading the conversation at some moments with certain fields.

My question is more technical: after accepting him as the rest of applications and making him an admin too, he's not in my list of participants anymore nor appears as admin in the classroom page or seems to see any difference in his session.

Is there more info somewhere in the wiki about how does that work? I mean what to do for someone to work and appear in the course as co-organizer. I wasn't able to find it ;(

Enric

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Sun, 2011-01-16 20:34

Hi Enric! You're disappearing admin has reappeared. They were made admin but not actually "approved" first.

Note to others about adding course organizers. Approve the person first and then "create admin". Otherwise you'll have to search for them.

http://wiki.p2pu.org/course-page-administration

Enric Senabre Hidalgo's picture
Enric Senabre Hid...
Mon, 2011-01-17 10:02

Ok, thank you Alison!

eric desmond's picture
eric desmond
Mon, 2011-01-17 06:06

What experiences have you had with lack of student participation? How do you overcome it?

Alison Jean Cole's picture
Alison Jean Cole
Mon, 2011-01-17 23:09

Hi Eric -

First, you should formally join the orientation so you can receive notifications for all the good conversations that are going on.

Secondly, there's a new forum discussion for this topic: http://p2pu.org/general/node/11464/forums/21208

Good participation results from having a thorough conversation with participants about expectations for the course and discussing their personal learning goals.

Any replies to the topic of participation/expectation should take place in the other forum discussion (linked above).