We've already seen a variety of open education initiatives—including, recently, Betterfly and the University of the People—but we couldn't resist sharing news of one more. Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short, university-level courses.
Aiming to enable “learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything,” P2PU creates small groups of motivated learners and supports the design and facilitation of free courses. Currently, the project is in a pilot phase, and offers scheduled courses that run for six weeks and cover university-level topics. Each course package—organized by a volunteer—contains the syllabus, study materials and a schedule; learning takes place in small groups of between eight and 14 students. Peers in each course assess each other's work, and online certificates are granted upon completion of a course; P2PU is working towards gaining format credit as well. Ultimately, the goal is to become more of a platform so anyone can use P2PU to organize, design and offer courses. In the meantime, signup for the next round of courses will begin in September.
P2PU is supported in part by the Hewlett Foundation, the Shuttleworth Foundation and the University of California at Irvine. Social entrepreneurs: another one to be inspired by!
Posts
Post a Comment