Building community in P2PU courses starts right at the beginning and is the most important activity to occur.

The best way to set strong expectations is to set aside the start of the course for discussions about expectations and setting agreements about how the participants will work together. Think of it as building a "social contract". Without the creation of a "social contract", course participants often struggle with confusion and demotivation from failed expectations.

In the first course meeting (whether synchronous or asynchronous):

1. make thorough introductions 
2. ask participants to share their personal learning goals   
3. discuss the p2pu values of:

• openness - all resources must be free, and preferably open. All content made by participants and posted on p2pu.org is automatically licensed CC-By-SA unless otherwise noted.
• peer learning - Peers are expected to commit to the course. Although individuals are responsible for their own learning, they must work as peers to make that experience more valuable.  
  
• and community - Participants are welcome to become involved in larger aspects of building P2PU.
  

You may feel that some activities  in your course require some explanation or need agreement ahead of time. Here's some suggestions for additional discussions to hold during community building.

Schedule & Syllabus

• Can participants edit the syllabus?
• Are project dates static or dynamic?

Social interaction in meetings & forums  (netiquette, taking turns speaking, rules of leading conversation/forum  discussions)

• Are there any topics out-of-bounds?
• Who is responsible for keeping the conversations on track?  
• If the course is divided into sub-groups, how are they expected to interact?
• If participants are taking charge of certain aspects of the course, what are their responsibilities?

Critiquing each others' work

• What are we looking for in each others' work?
• What is the format for critiquing?
• Where are critiques posted?

Collaborative projects

• Can other people edit my work without prior discussion? (i.e. wikis)
• Can participants reuse each others words and ideas within and beyond the course?

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