March 28, 2010, [MD]
I should probably have written a lot more about Peer2Peer University, it's developing rapidly, facing tons of challenges, and turning out to be an amazing learning process about so many different aspects of social learning and the creation of online communities. But I end up writing my thoughts on the mailing lists, and working on improving the community, rather than blogging.
However, I thought I'd share a few newspaper articles resulting from interviews that I've done. It's fun to have a chance to explain to journalists (or bloggers) about our vision, progress, and challenges. Sometimes you spend hours talking to a given journalist, helping them with links, etc, and you end up with a tiny notice -- but I guess that's part of the game, and anyway often the information I give them becomes part of a larger article about OER or open education initiatives, and I'm happy for more people to learn about this whole field, not just the one initiative that I am involved with.
One of the first one was the magazine L'Actualité, one of the highest-circulation weeklies in Quebec. The result was a piece about P2PU and University of the People, as part of a much larger feature on the future of universities. You can download a scan, or read the text below.
Inventez votre propre université Daniel Chrétien (L'actualité, 15 November, 2009)
Pas de salles de cours, pas d’équipe de football, pas de vaste campus gazonné et, souvent, pas de... professeurs! Bienvenue à la Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) et à la University 0f the People (UoPeople), deux établissements entièrement virtuels, gratuits et ouverts à tous.
Depuis septembre, un peu plus de 300 étudiants, dans une cinquantaine de pays, suivent des cours universitaires par Internet. Mais à la différence des Téluq et autres programmes d’études offerts sur le Web, ceux de la UoPeople et de la P2PU s’appuient d’abord sur la collaboration entre les étudiants plutôt que sur l’enseignement magistral prodigué par un professeur.
Chaque étudiant doit donc mettre la main à la... souris. Sous la supervision d’un enseignant bénévole, les étudiants montent les cours, préparent les «recueils de notes» et animent les discussions. Le tout en anglais. «Nous assemblons notre matériel à partir de ce qui existe déjà, dit Shai Reshef, fondateur et recteur de la University of the People. Nos étudiants utilisent les possibilités qu’offrent les nouvelles technologies et toutes les ressources mises en ligne gratuitement par les universités traditionnelles.»
Il n’est d’ailleurs pas question de remplacer ces universités, «mais d’offrir aux étudiants une solution de rechange», précise Stian Haklev, Norvégien d’origine qui vit aujourd’hui à Toronto et cofondateur de la Peer 2 Peer University. Objectif: rendre la formation universitaire accessible au plus grand nombre, et ce, dans le monde entier.
Le nombre de programmes et de cours offerts est encore restreint. Ils vont des traditionnels programmes d’administration des affaires et d’informatique, à la UoPeople, aux cours — moins classiques — de neuroéthique, de droits d’auteur pour enseignants, de littérature cyberpunk ainsi que de poker et pensée créative, à la P2PU. Tous les cours sont gratuits. La University of the People exige toutefois des frais liés à l’admission et à l’administration des examens. Même si aucune des deux universités ne délivre de diplôme officiel, les étudiants espèrent que la formation suivie les aidera à trouver du travail. Les cours ne peuvent pas non plus être crédités dans une autre université. Mais les deux établissements y travaillent, assurent leurs fondateurs.
Then I had a chance to talk to a Brazilian scientific magazine called Galileu, which printed a four-page article about the reinvention of the university. I will paste the short paragraph mentioning P2PU below, but it's worth downloading the PDF, to read the whole article and see their nice illustrations.
A reinvenção da universidadeRita Loiola (Galileu, February 2010)
Algumas pessoas acham que o caminho pode estar em coisas como a Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU, que em português significa algo como Universidade Ponto a Ponto, que teria o mesmo sentido que os programas de torrent, nos quais os usuários compartilham informações entre si) e a University of the People, instituições totalmente virtuais e gratuitas, lançadas no fim do ano passado. Enquanto a P2PU une estudantes de deiversas partes do mundo para dividir conhecimento e aprender em poucos cursos, a University of the People tem um currículo mais parecido com o das faculdades tradicionais. Mas as duas se baseiam em encontros online de pessoas que querem aprender. E essa é a principal ideia por trás dos novos cursos superiores.
Finally, I had a chance to talk to a journalist from the highest-circulation daily in Malaysia, The Star. The result was a long article talking about different education initiatives, including a mention of P2PU. The whole article is available online, but as usual, I will paste the small part about P2PU below.
Tapping into technology Priya Kulasagaran and Tan Shiow Chin (The Star, March 14, 2010)
Meanwhile, Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) has opted to radically experiment with the entire model of tertiary education.
As its name implies, the project makes full use of the peer-to-peer learning concept, giving users an online platform to fashion university-level courses from open learning resources.
“The course organisers are responsible for structuring the modules and leading discussions, but everyone in the class will pitch in with their own knowledge and help move the class along together,” says P2PU co-founder Stain Haklev.
“Our main focus is the collaborative learning process; I believe that everybody has the capacity to teach something.”
I also did an interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education, about my research on Chinese Open Educational Resources (not about P2PU). The whole article is online, and the part mentioning my research is below.
Around the World, Varied Approaches to Open Online Learning Simmi Aulja and Ben Terris (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 11, 2009)
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In Asia, national governments are supporting open courseware at top universities so that instructors and students at other institutions can learn from their videos and other material.
China's government gives grants to dozens of universities to help them improve their undergraduate teaching materials and then put them online. The goal is for teachers at less-rigorous institutions to learn from the countries' best instructors and improve their own courses. The country's Ministry of Education gives professors grants to post their course materials online.
Stian Haklev, a graduate student in education at the University of Toronto who has studied online projects in China, says the program, called "the quality project," focuses on instructors rather than students, unlike MIT's OpenCourseWare.
The government sees its approach as the most cost-effective way to improve education. Though students who find the course materials and videos online may benefit, the program wasn't designed to teach students directly, Mr. Haklev says.
Since many professors compete for the grants, which are worth about \$10,000, universities consider winning them a matter of prestige. Because of the project, more than 10,000 courses from Chinese universities are now available online.
And to finish off, you can look at an interview I did with Chris Watkins of the P2P Foundation in January, 2009.
Stian
Stian Håklev March 28, 2010 Toronto, Canada comments powered by Disqus