Our mission at P2PU is to leverage the power of the Internet and social software to enable communities of people to learn with each other and get recognition for it . P2PU courses experiment with a variety of methods in learning to deliver a high quality and open, peer-to-peer education. Currently, P2PU offers no formal accreditation. We are experimenting with new ways to validate learning through peer-to-peer recognition and support anyone seeking pathways to formal credit.

Governance

P2PU is run and governed by volunteers. P2PU also benefits from the guidance and collaborative efforts of our advisory group. In addition, we have received seed funding to cover some basic costs from both the Hewlett Foundation and the Shuttleworth Foundation. The University of California at Irvine has generously offered to incubate  us and help with administrative and legal support.

Our Volunteer Team

As a course organizer or designer you are now part of our P2PU team. Welcome! P2PU started with a small group of dedicated people from around the world. These folks and many new members continue to contribute time, ideas and content to P2PU. We encourage you to read more about the people currently involved with P2PU. Contributing to P2PU is a volunteer effort.

Different from a large college classroom, where information is given uni-directionally, the P2PU learning experience is based on interaction between peers in small communities. The course organizers job is not to teach, but more that of a study group faciliator, who keeps everything moving along, pulls people into the conversation, and makes sure all voices are heard. Student groups are kept small to create a stronger sense of community, which provides additional support mechanisms, and motivates students to keep going.

Whether you are organizing an existing course or designing a new one, it's important to address the following questions:

Evaluation of these questions will help you identify the best tools to facilitate peer to peer learning in your course.

Organizing an Existing Course

Taking over and leading an existing course is always encouraged at P2PU. We recommend that you work closely with the original course organizer to ensure a smooth transition as improvements and changes are made in the course's structure. Using this handbook and the community toolbox may help facilitate your experience as a course organizer.

A little help from your friends - P2PU Mentors

If you are designing a new course for P2PU, you will be paired with a mentor. Mentors are experienced with course design and course organizing. During the orientation and design process, your mentor is available to answer questions, recommend resources and review drafts of your course. Our mentors are great people, and we will try to match you with someone who is knowledgeable in your subject area.

Designing a New Course

To get started in the course design process, we recommend that you first look at how other courses on P2PU.org have been designed. You may find some inspiration in the diversity of learning styles and communication tools that previous courses have used. In addition, you can use the outlines of other courses to structure your own. Read about the experiences of past organizers [here]. 

Listed below are some primary resources that will aid in framing the design process for you. Remember - there is no one way to design a course for P2PU - we always encourage experimentation!

Course structure

• Courses run for 6 weeks. A syllabus covers weekly activities, readings, or assignments. 
• For each week, courses usually have
• a short description of the goals for the week,
• some required "readings" (these could be videos or podcasts), and
• a number of tasks/activities that participants are expected to complete. 
• In order to create a sense of community and cohesion among participants, we suggest a round of introductions, uploading of photos, and other "community" focused activities you can think of. We have found that the stronger the sense of community, the better the course will work.
• We recommend: guidance from the University of Washington's Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) on designing online courses for optimal learning.
• Here is an excellent example of a P2PU course (the "Mashing Up the Open Web" course).
• Be mindful of the workload for both you and those who will take your course. A heavy workload throughout may extinguish people's enthusiasm in voluntary situations.

• The P2PU website has some communication features built-in, like blogs, discussion boards, etc. However, you are not limited by them and we encourage experimentation with openly available tools.
• We recommend: A comprehensive list from the University of Manitoba describing emerging technologies for online communication and learning.

Finding open educational resources for your course

• Comprehensive lists of Open Textbooks & Academic Journals

• Creative Commons' DiscoverEd search engine for freely available and open educational resources (OER)

• You can find additional resources, book exchanges, tools and open software suggestions in the P2PU Toolbox. Additions to the toolbox are always welcome.

• To keep P2PU free, all materials provided in courses must be freely available.

Understanding Copyright & Licensing Practices

If you are designing a course and are new to compiling and sharing resources for learning, we highly recommend reading the P2PU Copyright & Licensing Tutorial compiled by Delia Browne.

P2PU & Creative Commons Licenses

All content hosted on P2PU.org is licensed under a Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA). It allows anyone to copy, modify, share, and build upon our work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit us and license new creations derived from our work under the same conditions.

This license also has implications for what materials you can use to create content for your course. We recommend reading this short guide if you will be remixing (using and changing) open educational resources (OER) for your course content.