Sharing Nicely

We just launched an information site about the Peer 2 Peer University ahead of an article that is supposed to appear in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. I am blogging about it now, because by the time it comes out I will be on my way to the vast open plains of The Karoo … let’s see if I can resist checking email on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the Chronicle’s content is mostly non-open (unlike the P2PU), but we have been told that they will also mention the project on the Wired Campus blog, which is public and allows comments.

At the moment, www.peer2peeruniversity.org is just a basic site with a few pages that explain what the P2PU is and how to get involved. We are currently confirming tutors and sense-makers (kind of like Professors, but they don’t have to have a PhD or a title, they just need to know their fields really well) and are hoping that the press coverage will encourage more people to join. It’s an open community project in the true sense, so anyone with a good idea, and some time on their hands to help is welcome!

If you are interested in finding out more, head over to www.peer2peeruniversity.org, send an email to thepeople@peer2peeruniversity.org, or sign up to the mailing list.

Those of you that came to the workshop at Open Education 2008 will see some of your ideas in the latest version of the concept document. That workshop really pushed us to get from “thinking” about this, to “doing” something about it. Thanks to everyone who was there - you will see that many of your ideas helped us clarify what we were trying to achieve.

Disclaimer: The web-site was built using Google Sites, but only because we didn’t have much time and thought this was the quickest way to get started. Unfortunately there are some things about Sites that make it pretty useless (no RSS feeds, hello?) and there might be privacy issues, but don’t jump on us! We are currently thinking about technology options for hosting the actual P2PU.

Image (licensed CC-BY 2.0) courtesy of flickr.com and g-hat