Peer to peer university — couldn’t that be a description of the web in general? YouTube alone has an incredible wealth of educational videoa. From learning how to play a popular (even not so popular) song on the guitar, to how to install a local version of WordPress there is a already a lot of peer to peer learning available. The mission statement of P2PU says their purpose “is to leverage the power of the Internet and social software to enable communities of people to support learning for each other.” Do we need institutions there to organize and validate these resources? Or will they just get in the way? If they can offer credit, CEUs, certificates, degrees, federal student aid, and other trappings of traditional educational institutions, does that help? (none of which currently seem to be there at P2PU) Time will tell.
P2PU – Peer 2 Peer University / FrontPage
The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources.
Organizers plan to see how things go this semester and will probably revamp the model for its next term, said Joel Thierstein, one of the leaders of the effort, who is also executive director of Rice University’s Connexions project, a free online collection of scholarly materials. “We’re trying to keep our minds open,” he said. “Success will probably come in a form that we’re surprised by.” Registration for the new university’s courses closes August 26.
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