P2PU Schools Working Group

Contact: Lila @ p2pu-schools |at| googlegroups | com

What is a school?

 
Minimum: A school is a learning community that commits to be stewards of a content area. A school runs under the core values of openness, peer learning and community.

What that means usually:

• A core group of people committing to organize multiple courses within a given content area. 
• The group should consider pathways of learning and how those could lead to certification. As part of that it might define core competencies.

Minimum Expectations for P2PU Schools

The P2PU values of openness, peer learning and community apply to schools.

Schools should state their mission and provide support for their mission.

Schools may partner with outside organizations and institutions. If an outside partner is involved, P2PU and the school partner must agree on their roles.

School organizers are those who promote and coordinate activities related to it's mission (mission - better word needed). They are responsible for:

• Inviting folks from outside P2PU to run courses
• Ensuring that the school has course offerings in most if not all cycles
• Maintaining relationships with partners
• Tagging courses
• Supplementing orientation materials with school specific information
• Determining a path for learning, and potentially a path towards credit/certification

Benefits of schools:

• Allows core communities within P2PU to develop.
• For users, they are able to connect into content communities they care about most.
• It allows us to build appropriate recognition of skills and competencies and pathways to certification.  
• Some level of autonomy with respect to the content, but founded on the basis of core P2PU values.
• Alleviates part of the problem with certification - as we can build the appropriate model for a particular area.
• Branding and identity opportunity.

Using Micro-Grants to Start Schools

 
The working group has developed an initial set of Guidelines for the Microgrant process. Any individual or group that is interested in forming a new School or growing an existing School within P2PU is welcome to apply. Though not required, special consideration will be given to those who have demonstrated a strong commitment to the P2PU community, and who have already run successful courses on the P2PU platform.

Learn more about the micro-grant process: http://wiki.p2pu.org/school-microgrants

Current working group action items

1. DONE - Start a group (as a great test bed for group structure decision making)
1. Mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/p2pu-schools 
2. Working group listed on wiki page for working groups and mailing lists
2. DONE - Define a group contact person -> Lila Bailey
3. DONE - set guidelines for micro-grants process
4. Define what it means to be a school and how to become one officially (still in progress)
5. Identify potential future schools within the community - (Who owns this?)
6. Refine the process of nurturing schools that we started developing in the session - (Who owns this?)
7. Review applications for micro-grants, and make funding recommendations to the community - (the working group does this together, with Lila leading the way)
8. Figure out a decision making process around granting official approval for a new school (who owns this?)