User:Arided/P2PU-handbook

Based on http://wiki.p2pu.org/w/page/27905271/Course-Design-Handbook

=What are the responsibilities of someone involved in a P2PU course?=

Course Designer
A course designer creates a new course from scratch or remixes an old one. As a course designer, you are responsible for:


 * Gathering open resources
 * Structuring a syllabus
 * Choosing best media formats (forum, chat, wiki, blog, etc.)
 * Designing the course for openness & posterity (so it can be passed it on!)

Course Organizer / Facilitator
A course organizer actively facilitates a course. Often people are both, course designers and facilitators for their courses. As a facilitator, you are responsible for:


 * Initiating discussion around introductions, and social contracts/expectations
 * Scheduling & hosting meetings
 * Responding to contributions and keeping participants on task
 * Keeping up morale and mediating conflict

Participant / Peer-Learner
A course participant is anyone involved in learning and social interaction within a course. Course facilitators are also participants. As a course participant, you are responsible for:


 * Setting an agreement with other participants about expectations and norms (a social contract)
 * Participating in course meetings
 * Responding to discussions and assignments in a timely manner
 * Recommending additional resources for the course
 * Reflecting on your participation and recommending improvements when the course ends

=How do I structure a P2PU course?=

P2PU course features

 * a set length
 * clear learning objectives
 * a balanced workload
 * a weekly syllabus
 * a social/collaborative element (projects, meetings, forums)
 * post-course reflection for all participants

LENGTH
Course length is up to you. We recommend running a 6, 9 or 12 week course. Participants are by nature self-motivated, yet busy people. If your topic is intensive spread the work load out. (See workload below.)

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Learning objectives are explored in a P2PU course two ways:

Course organizers identify basic learning objectives
Developing learning objectives are a necessary component of P2PU courses. Learning objectives are a broad generalization of the purpose of the course and include the acquisition, retention, application, and adaptability of knowledge and skills acquired through participation. What skill or sum of knowledge will a participant gain? Where will they be able to apply it?

Participants identify their personal learning goals
You'll find that P2PU participants have differing motives for taking a course. Often participants work on a range of projects within the same course. Therefore, participants should identify their personal learning goals when they sign up for the course and revisit them when course begins. Ask participants to share their personal learning goals with the group to promote discussion and cross-pollination of ideas.

WORKLOAD
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. Past organizers have identified this as one of their major design flaws. Research has shown that short, timely activities work best in online environments. If shedding the workload is not an option, consider spreading out the syllabus to span 12 weeks rather than 6 or 9. (This may be the best option for adapted OCW courses, and intensive courses leading to academic credit.)

SYLLABUS
A syllabus should be created to cover weekly meetings, readings, or assignments. For more structured courses break down your course content into weekly themes with learning goals and group meetings. Project goals and assignments should have clear deadlines. Meeting times can be set once you have selected participants and chosen times that work for the group. For each week, courses usually have a short description of the goals for the week, some required "readings" (text or media) or relevant tasks/activities that you and your participants are expected to complete.

CONTENT DEVELOPMENT
Content development depends greatly on the style of course you are organizing. True peer-to-peer courses don't need much structure. Rather, they need clear expectations stating that every participant in the course is responsible for development of the course syllabus. For more structured and reflective courses (reading, writing, discussing) create assignments for individuals and/or questions for group discussion based on your resources. Make sure to build in some sort of peer review whether it's commenting on each others' writings or group discussion of contributions. For project based courses create distinct goals for each week surrounding tasks from the syllabus. Participants should be encouraged to review each others' projects or work in teams.

POST-COURSE REFLECTION
When the the course ends, organize some sort of feedback forum (video conference, discussion forum, personal blogging, chat) to encourage reflection from participants. They will be able to round up what they learned, what they liked about the course, and what can be improved. This is an important stage in the process, as it captures how much the participants learned.

=What do I need to include on my course home page?=

COURSE SUMMARY
Summarize the course and it's content in an exciting way! Describe the basic learning objectives for the course. [See Course Structure] The peer-to-peer style may be new to many participants. Explain what course members should expect of you the facilitator and also what is expected individually and of each other in terms of work hours, interaction, and peer review. Individuals should be expected to do some work on their own, but a large part of the learning should also surround group interaction. [See Expectation of organizers and participants]

PREREQUISITES
State the requirements to participate your course. Should a participant have previous knowledge, skills? Are there prerequisite courses? If not, state that no previous experience is required.

SIGN-UP TASK
We recommend creating a sign-up task that relates to the course. It's easy to sign up for P2PU courses. Adding a sign-up task may ensure that folks with proportionally more time and motivation will apply.

COURSE PICTURE
Create a graphic or select an openly licensed photo that represents your course theme. The picture will be used within the website and promotional materials to represent your course. If you're having trouble representing an abstract course concept in one image, try searching using terms referring to color, shape or feeling. You can find images licensed for reuse here: http://search.creativecommons.org/ Licensed for resuse? What on Earth does that mean? [See Licensing and Copyright Tutorial]

=Where can I find open resources for my course?= All resources used in P2PU courses must be freely available. It's makes us even happier if they are openly licensed. Although most of us use Google to wade through the web and find free resources, we are still left with the task of finding out if these resources are open or not. Luckily for us, there are search engines and collections specifically for open resources. Here are our recommendations for gathering OER.

WHAT IS OPEN?
The Open Knowledge Project states that “a piece of knowledge is open if you are free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike.” Openness is one of P2PU's core values. "Open sharing and collaboration enable participation, innovation, and accountability. Our community is open so that everyone can participate. Our content is open so that everyone can use it. Our model and technology are open to enable experimentation and ongoing improvement. And our processes are open so that we are accountable to our community."

Open Search Engine
http://discovered.creativecommons.org/search/ The Creative Commons DiscoverEd Search Engine retrieves all types of educational materials on the web with an open license. This allows you to find educational materials that are open by default. You can also use Google.com to track down resources, but they may not necessarily be open.

Open Access Journals & Self-Archived Papers
http://www.doaj.org/ The Directory of Open Access Journals is a good way to find journals. To find an article about a specific topic, search Google Scholar, and see if you get a link to an open version. (Careful, if you are using a university connection, you might access toll-material without noticing. Try opening the resource on a non-university connection to make sure everyone can access it, or ask us).

Directory of Open Access Repositories
This lists institutional and subject repositories around the world. These do two things. First, they often hold masters and PhD theses, these can be very useful (although often a bit long and unwieldy). Second, they hold articles written by academics. Often, these are articles that have been published in traditional closed journals, and which the author has self-archived here (see below). Sometimes, it's working papers or reports that have not been published traditionally.

SHERPA/RoMEO
About 70% of the journals in the world now allow authors to "self-archive", this means to take usually their final draft (not the PDF generated by the journal), and upload this to a personal homepage, or to a repository. However, many academics don't know about this, or are too busy to do it. Using the link above, you can find out about the copyright policies of most journals (and they are happy to add new ones). If you find an article you really want to use, but which is not open access, check the journal's copyright policy here. If it says that it allows self-archiving, you should contact the original author and encourage them to self-archive their paper, so you can use it. Authors are usually quite amenable to this, because unlike with a book, they make no money from people buying that journal, and in general, they are very happy to see their work used by more people. If you have any questions about this, or feel uneasy about writing to a professor, Stian can help.

Open Summaries of Closed Academic Papers & Reports
http://acawiki.org/ AcaWiki is like a "Wikipedia for academic research" designed to increase the impact of scholars, students, and bloggers by enabling them to share summaries and discuss academic papers online. AcaWiki turns research hidden in academic journals into something more dynamic and accessible. If you have access to a closed article and want to share it with your course members - summarize it for Acawiki!

Open Textbooks
FlatWorldKnowledge produces freely licensed books that can also be printed on demand. The Open Educational Resources (OER) Consortium is one of the best places to locate over 450 college-level open textbooks in many subject areas:

=P2PU Copyright Guide= This guide provides some general information and tips about copyright for P2PU Course Leaders and Students. This should not be substituted or relied on for legal advice. Course Leaders and Designers: If there is a specific copyright query you need to clarify in relation to your course, please email [ insert p2pu community email or the info email] to seek advice and one of our volunteer lawyers will try to assist.

Why is copyright important?
Copyright is important because it gives creators control over their creative works. This means they can decide who uses their work, how it can be used and if they will charge a fee to other people who want to use it. This gives creators the ability to earn a living from their works and/or to control how their works are used or disseminated.

What is copyright?
A simple definition of copyright is that it is a bunch of rights in certain creative works (literary works, artistic works, musical works, computer programs, sound recordings, films and broadcasts) to stop others from copying the creative works without permission. At its most basic it is simply the right to copy.

The rights are granted exclusively to the copyright owner to reproduce (copy, scan) and communicate (email, put on internet) the material, and for some material, the right to perform or show the work to the public. Copyright owners can prevent others from reproducing or communicating their work without their permission. Only the copyright owner can licence or sell these rights to someone else.

How does it work?
Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, styles or techniques. For example, copyright will not protect an idea for a film or book, but it will protect a script for the film or even a storyboard for the film.

Copyright is a separate right to the property right in an object. For example, this means that the person may own a book or painting but will not also own the copyright in the book or painting unless it has been specifically assigned (sold) to them. In most countries, copyright protection is automatic. For example, there is no need for copyright registration in Australia, nor is there a legal requirement to publish the work or to put a copyright notice on it. A work will be protected as soon as it is put into material form, such as being written down or recorded in some way (filmed or recorded on an audio tape). It is important to note that each country has its own specific copyright legislation and rules which will apply to your use of other people’s copyright material.

Plagiarism
Copyright is different to plagiarism. Plagiarism is about using someone else’s work and pretending it is your own. Copyright is about having to obtain permission to use someone else’s work.

What sorts of things does copyright protect?
Copyright protects lots of different types of works. For example:

Artistic Works
Paintings, photographs, maps, graphics, cartoons, charts, diagrams and illustrations

Literary Works
Novels, textbooks, poems, song lyrics, newspaper articles, computer software, computer games

Musical Works
Melodies, song music, advertising jingles, film scores

Dramatic works
Plays, screenplays and choreography

Films and moving images
Feature films, short films, documentaries, television programs, interactive games, television advertisements, music videos and vodcasts

Sound recordings
MP3 files, CDs, DVDs, vinyl and tape recordings, podcasts.

Broadcasts
Pay and free-to-air television and radio It is important to note that online text, images, broadcasts, videos and music on websites, wikis, blogs and social networking sites are protected by copyright. See Public Domain below.

Who owns copyright?
The person who creates a work will normally own copyright in it. In general:


 * the creator of a visual art work will own the copyright in the artwork
 * the author of a poem will own copyright in the poem
 * the composer of a song will own copyright in the music of a song.
 * the film company and/or producer will own copyright in the film
 * the record company will own the copyright in the recording of music
 * the Broadcaster will own the copyright in the radio or television broadcast.

In most countries, employers will own the copyright in the works created by their employees as part of their job. Independent contractors will in general own the copyright in their creations unless the contract that engages them requires the copyright in the work to reside with the commissioner of the work.

A copyright owner may give someone else permission to copy their work. This is known as a licence. Please see Why is licensing important? below. Sometimes the copyright owner will ask for payment in exchange for giving permission. Sometimes the copyright owner will give permission to use their work for free, subject to certain conditions. See Creative Commons below.

How long does copyright last?
The period for copyright protection will differ in each country. In addition the period of protection will differ depending on the type of creative work. For example in Australia,

By way of comparison, in the United States, copyrighted works are protected until 70 years after the death of the author. If it’s a work of corporate authorship, then protection lasts 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever expires first.
 * Copyright in artistic, literary, musical and dramatic works are protected from the time the work is created until 70 years after the creator has died.
 * Copyright in films, sound recordings and broadcasts lasts for 70 years from the end of the year in which the work is released.

What is the public domain?
A work is in the public domain if it is not restricted by copyright. In most of the world, once the period of copyright protection expires, the work is in the public domain.

In the United States, the public domain extends to works of the United States government, including federal laws, regulations, judicial opinions, government documents and legislative reports. U.S. government works are any works prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties, although projects written by non-government authors with federal funding may be protected by copyright and not in the public domain.

When a work is in the public domain, it means that anyone can copy the work without having first to obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is a common misconception, that once a work is published or available for free from the internet, that it is in the public domain. This is not correct. Material that is made freely and publicly available on the internet such as online newspaper or journal articles or images on Google or Flickr are protected by copyright. A work can also become part of the public domain via use of Creative Commons CC0 (read CC Zero) public domain waiver, which allows a creator to waive all of his or her copyright and neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. See Creative Commons below for further explanation.

When can you use other people’s work?
If you want to use someone else’s work, you can generally only use it if: the copyright owner has said that it can be used for free, eg under a Creative Commons licence. See the section on Creative Commons. you ask the copyright owner for permission and they give it. This is called a permission or a license. your use is permitted under your country’s copyright legislation. Most countries’ copyright legislation has exceptions or defences to copyright infringement. For example in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand there are a list of exceptions called ‘fair dealing” that allow some copying for research and study, criticism and review, reporting the news and giving legal advice. In the United States, there is a general exception which is referred to as fair use. In Europe, exceptions to copyright infringement are set out in the relevant civil code.

The rules in relation to “fair dealing” and “fair use” are quite complex and the use must be fair. We recommend that you only use quotes or small extracts not whole works and that you always attribute the author and publisher where the source is known.

Why is licensing important?
Only a copyright owner can give you a licence/ permission to reproduce their works. Although in some circumstances, you may be able to rely on fair dealing or fair use to include extracts of a work as part of assignments and group work, you may not necessarily rely on these exemptions to create open education resources using those works without a licence/ permission.

Rather than seeking licences from individual copyright owners to include their work in your course curriculum, we recommend the following Smart Tips when developing your course materials

Linking
Linking is not a copyright activity. This is because you are not actually ‘copying’ or ‘communicating’ any material, you are just providing a path to its location on another website. Providing links to material on external websites will not infringe copyright and you do not need to seek permission from the website owner to include a link to their website.

Embedding
Embedding is another type of linking, except you don’t have to leave your website (e.g. blog or wiki) or intranet to access the content. It is commonly used for displaying online films on websites, e.g. YouTube films.

Embedding involves copying the HTML code of the film, which is often displayed in a box near the film, and pasting it onto your website. The result of this is, rather than displaying the link, it will show a small screen of the film on your website.

The primary advantage to embedding material is that you do not need to copy the material in order to make it available on your website. Some websites, such as YouTube, provide the link for embedding films. This makes embedding an easy and practical alternative to copying.

Material created by you
If you are using material that is your own original work and does not contain any material created by another person, you do not need to rely on the special provisions/ exceptions in your country’s copyright legislation as you are the copyright owner.

Open Educational Resources (OER)
The internet contains a variety of OER material that is licenced under Creative Commons. There are also many websites which are ‘free for education’. This is because their website terms and conditions permit material contained on the website to be copied for ‘educational purposes’.

The following table provides a summary of when the terms and conditions of a website indicate that the material is ‘free for education’.

One problem with terms and conditions on websites is that sometimes the terms and conditions of use can change and often there may be conflicting terms and conditions on the one website. In some instances, it is not clear what the terms and conditions allow. This is why we recommend where possible to link to or embed websites and to use Creative Commons licensed material. See Creative Commons below

Creative Commons
The most common source of open education material is licensed under Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a set of licences which creators attach to their work. All Creative Commons licences allow the material to be used for educational purposes. As a result, material available under a Creative Commons licence is ‘free for education’. Depending on the type of CC licence used, a teacher and student may also modify and share the material.

=P2PU COMMUNITY WISDOM=

This page quotes reflections from previous organizers and participants in P2PU courses. It includes excerpts of things that worked well (+), general approaches (=), and things that blocked progress and participation (-).

ON ACCEPTING PARTICIPANTS
Once sign-up for your course closes, you'll have to review applications and accept participants. It's up to you whether to allow everyone in or select individuals. It should be noted that many applicants may select themselves out once the course begins, because they overestimated their free time, or lack the flexibility to meet with the group. This is a normal occurence. (=) "The course received 32 sign ups. I admitted 27 of the 32 applicants based upon application completeness. I only rejected applicants that didn't answer all of the questions on the very short application form. Immediately after closing signups I set out to coordinate a weekly time slot for us to have synchronous meetings. The best we could do was 11AM & 1PM Eastern time which would allow for around 20 of the accepted applicants to make the course. For the first week I held two sections, but consolidated to one section at 11AM Eastern for the remaining five weeks." -Organizer, Mashing Up The Open Web

ON COURSE MATERIAL
Almost all previous course organizers felt they had included too much content or time-consuming tasks for the six-week course. As you develop your syllabus, identify the most essential tasks for learning. Take into account how much you would have to spend with the workload if you were new to the material. (-) "The 6 week course had no provision to stop and think and engage with the content and in the end it became a matter of just "getting it done". I felt we needed far more time to engage with the ideas, so perhaps the same amount of content but in a 10 or 12 week period would be better. " -Participant, Copyright For Educators (-) "I think next time around we will have to cover less material and spend more time solidifying things. I think it may have been way to much to try and tackle in 6 weeks, not to mention the first time running." - Organizer, Music Theory (-) "I tried to do too much at once with this class, beginning with the syllabus. I selected a dangerously open-ended task at the outset - identifying and articulating a design challenge for the rest of the class. In my experience, these kinds of conversations and exercises were difficult enough in the real world, even amongst experienced designers sitting in the same room; it really got us too broad too early." - Organizer, Build Ideas Through Design

ON COMMUNICATING
Communicating with your participants well is the key to success in a P2PU course. Participants and organizers both vocalized it's importance. In courses where communication lagged, members were less enganged, produced less work, or dropped out. However, courses with strong communications (especially form the start) kept members engaged and produced more work. (+) "We started the course by using a web based video conferencing tool, Tokbox. Each week at 11AM Eastern, the group would gather in a video conference room to do three things. First each participant would give a project update, followed by a review of the active assignment, and finally a group discussion around the passive assignment. During class, I encouraged participants to ask questions and lead the discussion in whatever direction they wanted it to go. My goal was to facilitate the discussion, not control it. I generally tried to defer answering questions to other participants, unless I was the only one able to answer." - Organizer, Mashing Up The Open Web

(+) "We had a super energetic kick off call - really, everyone was pumped, except one student who had terrible connectivity issues - and we had lots of solid follow-up skype conversations. We had some good, high-level exchanges on the boards, too." -Organizer, Building Ideas Through Design

(-) "Getting everyone on the same call proved to be a challenge, and with writing classes, only text feedback is not desirable as you don't really feel part of a community or group. I don't really see how this could be remedied, as people were from all different timezones and that's what made it interesting." -Organizer, Creative NonFiction (+) We used P2PU's website and the forums as the central hub of communications augmented with a mailing list, UStream, Twitter (#kmdp2puDJ) and an IRC channel that was also accessible via a web interface on the P2PU website. Each week, we had assignments and a real-time seminar. The physical space was the Keio Hiyoshi campus, but I would video conference in via H.323 when I was out of town and we had guest speakers and remote students video in via Skype. We then streamed this and recorded it on UStream, using the IRC channel as the discussion and question area. We would tweet the UStream sessions and would gather an tag-along participants in real-time. The video of the seminars recorded in Tokyo in high definition and were uploaded later (html/rss). - Organizer, Digital Journalism (-) I think that having so many modes of communications made it difficult to keep track of the threads. - Organizer, Digital Journalism (+) "In addition to the weekly hour of class time, I held two office hours. One at 10AM Eastern (before class) and another at 12PM Eastern (after class). I had a much higher participation rate in the office hours after class than before class, but generally always had at least one participant taking advantage of the time. Office hours were especially useful for working with the less experienced participants." -Organizer, Mashing Up The Open Web (+) "I posted discussion questions and responded to each and every student posting and had some really great interaction (and the best thing that could have happened as a teacher happened: I learned from the students!)" - Organizer, Green Action: Creating Sustainable Communities

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): make thorough introductions ask participants to share their learning goals 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 participate for the entirety of the course, they are expected to collaborate and community - participants are welcome to become involved in all aspects of P2PU and are supported by our enthusiatic community You may feel that some activities in your course require some explanation or agreements ahead of time. Here's some suggestions for additional discussions 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/fourm  discussions)


 * How can we support each other as peers in a learning community?
 * What I do if I feel deeply offended by something the tutor or another participant has said in the course?
 * How important is it for the members of this group to get to know about each others lives and interests beyond the course?

Critiquing each other's work
 * What are we looking for in eachother's work?
 * What is the format for critiquing?

Collaborative projects
 * Can other people edit my work without agreement?
 * How should we reuse each others words and ideas within and beyond the course?

Course discussion
 * Are there any topics out-of-bounds?
 * Who is responsible for keeping the conversations on track?

=WHAT PARTICIPATION TOOLS ARE RIGHT FOR YOUR COURSE?=

....This section seems to need editing.... Participatory media refers to media tools that support social interaction, participation and communication. Often also referred to as “social media” or “Web 2.0”, participatory media employs web-based technologies to allow users to contribute content and interact with the content and each other. The use of participatory media tools in education is typically geared towards creating a more learner-centered, adaptive environment where learners can contribute to the course material, formulate and express their own insights and opinions, construct their own understanding of material and learn from one another in collaborative environments. The most common participatory media tools used in online courses today are forums, chat, wiki, blogs and social bookmarking. These tools can be used to meet a wide-range of objectives so rather than choosing a tool first and then developing your content to fit it, consider the learning objectives of your course first. The following list should help you connect your objectives with the best modes of participation. You may choose to use more than one tool to meet your various objectives and this is fine, but keep in mind that using all of these tools without guidance around how to use each one can be overwhelming and lead to duplication of participants efforts in the course. For the participation tools you choose to use, we recommend providing quick tutorials to your course members on how to use them. Not all course members will be as savvy as you! FORUMS support asynchronous, many-to-many discussion amongst participants. Typically someone posts a forum topic and the group responds through comments or replies. Learning objectives include:

For more learning objectives and strategies on how to use forums to accomplish, visit Learning Objectives Alignment. Benefits of forums:
 * Express clear, coherent thoughts and arguments in writing
 * Debate and discuss issues in the field topic
 * Analyze and critique (scholarly) work/discipline
 * Create community
 * Connect course topics with current events, personal experience or concepts across courses

Built-in to P2PU.org 24/7 availability, meaning that discussions can carry on beyond time-zone constraints or scheduling issues Helps create community by a continuous flow of discussion Facilitates discussion on issues or concepts that can foster deeper connections or understanding Limitations: No assurance of response from participants, facilitator must stay engaged in forum Due to the asynchronous nature, requires continued motivation to participate Some responses can be lengthy and make catching up difficult Forums are built into each course page on p2pu.org. This feature is a familiar, easy to use tool. Most organizers have found forums are the best tools for discussion in courses. We recommend that organizers use a forum in conjunction with any other tools, as it allows the group to interact asynchronously, keeping everyone in the loop and building more robust conversations. Chat is a lightweight synchronous form of communication through short text messages. Learning objectives include: Create community Ask question / get assistance Debate and discuss issues in the field topic ☞ For more learning objectives and strategies on how to use forums to accomplish, visit Learning Objectives Alignment. Benefits of chat: Built-in to P2PU.org Synchronous engagement of participants Easiest form of communication for low-bandwidth participants Lowers the disadvantage level of those participating in a second language Excellent for office hours Limitations: Overlapping, often many conversations going on at once, therefore challenging to facilitate and follow May lead to expectation that the organizer is always available for questions, so guidelines should be set in advance. Chat is another embedded feature in p2pu.org course pages. It is a familiar and easy to use method of synchronous communication. Many organizers have used it for "office hours", although if you choose to do so, we recommend that you set designated time slots and communicate them upfront to avoid an expectation that you will always be available and lead to extra burden on you. Wiki is a collaborative space which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it. For example, you are participating in the orientation, and our participatory platform is this wiki! Learning objectives include: Collaboratively write or build documents Share work / learn by social example Synthesize various perspectives about a topic or concept Create community Take responsibility for learning / teach others ☞ For more learning objectives and strategies on how to use forums to accomplish, visit Learning Objectives Alignment. Benefits of wikis: P2PU has an existing wiki (wiki.p2pu.org) Serve as a knowledge platform where participants can share their knowledge with the group, put up interesting pieces of information, work together, discuss issues, etc. Facilitate collaborative document building, great for group projects Keeps course materials, assignments & happenings all in one central, editable location. Limitations: Requires a certain level of computer skills Requires some curation to ensure pages are linked and easy to find Completely open wikis are vulnerable to inaccuracy, poor revisions, and vandalism because anyone can edit. Attribution and original ownership can get lost amongst a large group of collaborators and editors. Our wiki is not embedded within a course page on p2pu.org. Rather, you must navigate to 'wiki.p2pu.org'. If you choose a wiki as your main participation tool, make sure to have clear links to and from your course page on p2pu.org. We recommend using the forum and chat features on your main course page in addition to the wiki. BLOGS are personal web-logs that support opinions, ideas, and news. Blogs are a platform that give voice to a person's or groups intentions on the web. Learning objectives include: Express clear, coherent thoughts and arguments in writing Connect course topics with current events, personal experience or concepts across courses Synthesize various perspectives about the topic or concept Reflect on learning, metacognition ☞ For more learning objectives and strategies on how to use forums to accomplish, visit Learning Objectives Alignment. Blogs in Plain English Video by Lee LeFever

Benefits of blogs: Helps course members develop their own unique voice, encourage them to formulate opinions and thoughts Gives course members more time to reflect and develop an understanding and think critically about the topic Provides opportunities to express and experience different opinions and perspectives among the group. Provides greater context to course material. Limitations: If the blog is available publicly, this could intimidate some members from participating Requires continued activity and community involvement to write new posts and read/comment on other's posts Necessitates some form of aggregating to pull everyone's posts into one place. P2PU does not have blogs embedded in p2pu.org. If you decide that blogs are the best mode of participation, participants will need to use an external blog and link to it within the course. To do so, we recommend the following process: New bloggers can create their own blog on Wordpress.com. Participants willing to use their existing blogs may do so. All participants link to their blogs (new or existing) on the course forum Discussion can also take place on the course forum and potentially If you're feeling savvy, you can work with the community to set up an RSS feed for your course. SOCIAL BOOKMARKING allows people to share share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources through tags. Learning objectives include: Conduct research, contribute to course content repository Connect course topics with current events, personal experience or concepts across courses ☞ For more learning objectives and strategies on how to use forums to accomplish, visit Learning Objectives Alignment. Social Bookmarking in Plain English Video by Lee LeFever Benefits of social bookmarking: Provides personal management of potentially large collections of resources Fosters discovery of relevant resources and sharing Creates a course resource repository, extending the course content to current events and member interests Limitations: Difficult to assure of quality of bookmarked items Does not free buried resources (restricted access, journals, libraries) P2PU.org does not have an social bookmarking feature on our platform yet. We recommend using an external social bookmarking service such as del.icio.us or Diigo. Provide visible links to the service form your course page on p2pu.org.

=SYNCHRONOUS MEETINGS=

CHAT
Chat is the easiest synchronous form of communication for low-bandwidth participants. Additionally, chat lowers the disadvantage level of those participating in a second language. Chat is built into each P2PU course.

VIDEO/VOICE/TELE CONFERENCING
Video/Voice conferencing is an adventure. First meetings can often go awry regardless of the technological literacy of your participants. If you decide to use an online conference tool, it's crucial to run a "test" meeting with your group before you try to get work done. Trust us on this one. Make sure you have a back-up option (free conference calls or chat) if the group decides that the tool complicates rather than facilitates social events. Tokbox is the favorite video conferencing tool for most organizers. When you are running a course, it's best to have a tool that allows you to gather many folks in one place. Tokbox is easy to use, and all the features you need are free. Tokbox also integrates your chat contacts from popular email providers (Gmail, MSN, etc.). You do not need to download a client. Here's some wisdom about Tokbox: Often, everyone will have to be muted while someone is speaking to avoid echo. Give about 5 minute of "test" time to make sure everyone has functionality (video/mic) and that they know how to mute in and out. SKYPE is another favorite, and many of us are already familiar with it. It's free and allows connections over phone lines, which can be helpful for course members with slow connections. Skype requires downloading a free client for use. Some wisdom about Skype: Make sure you're all connected (user ID's) on Skype before hand. You can keep record everyone's ID's on your course etherpad. Waivering connectivity can kick a larger (4+ group) offline. Run a test meeting with your group first. Big Blue Button allows presentations in addition to video conference and chat/text area. Some wisdom about BBB: Free Conference Calls Sometimes it's just easier to do it all over the phone. Providing a free number allows participants to dial in via phone line or computer. Often folks with low bandwidth have better phone access and this can overcome many communication hurdles. Some wisdom about free conference calls Have everyone mute themselves if not speaking Create a pad.p2pu.org/(your call) to keep track of attendance, take notes and field questions. Etherpad has an IRC chat box, which is extremely useful for fielding & queuing questions

SCHEDULING
For big classes, timezones and other commitments can make scheduling difficult. Keep in mind that as course size increases, compatibility decreases. A common way to handle this is having additional meetings. Naturally, this increases your time commitment, but makes communicating easier for participants in your course. When Is Good is our favorite tool for finding out when everyone is free for your next meeting or event. No sign-up form. No password to choose. No fuss at all. It will tally the number of people who can and cannot make each time slot, handles different timezones, and uses various techniques to let you select different subsets of the group to see what the best fit is for holding course meetings. World Clock Chances are, you'll have a global distribution of participants. What time is it in Cape Town? Delhi? Kansas City? It's the easiest way to find out.

=OFFLINE PEER GROUPS= Adding an offline component to your course can be very exciting, but tricky if not all members are involved. An offline group of peers live near each other - allowing them to meet in person to work on course material. If other peers in the course aren't involved, we recommend that the offline group should always present its activities to the online group in a timely manner. If the group is technically advanced enough to rope distant peers into the live meetings - all the better!

=Applications= Once your course is open for applications, you will be designated an admin for your course. You'll see an admin link appear, and clicking it will reveal the applicants for your course. You do not need to wait until course sign-ups are closed to begin reviewing or even accepting applicants. However, it may be in your best interest to wait, especially if you have a limited number of slots and want to compare all applicants before choosing. Although you were asked to put a target number of participants in your course description, you are not required to stick to that limit if you think your class can handle more. Selecting applicants should rely on the the strength of their application. All fields should be completed and their sign-up task should be fulfilled to a satisfactory degree. Applicants who submit incomplete applications are unlikely to be good peer-to-peer learning candidates. If you think an applicant would be a good participant, but they have submitted an incomplete application, follow up with them before accepting them into the course.

Closing course applications
You can close your applications at any time. Course organizers can do this themselves, and at some point after the agreed upon deadline all remaining applications are usually closed en masse.

Course Materials
new course materials WILL generate a notification email editing existing materials will NOT generate a notification email course materials CAN be commented on and will also generate notification emails

Broadcast
A one-way message that will be emailed to all course participants. This is not meant for discussion (use the forum for that). It's meant as an announcement. Notification emails WILL be sent. Formatting in the emails is NOT preserved, but links are included as footnotes. There may be a delay as all the emails are deployed, depending on the size of your class. There is no way for participants to reply to these messages. They are not archived or available for reference on your course site.

Forum
Notification emails WILL be sent for new forum topics. Participants CANNOT reply to the forum notification via email. They must respond within the forum on the course page. Participants CAN start a new forum.

Reducing Notification Volume
You can set the frequency that the p2pu site sends you notification of changes made to the courses you are a member of. You can also decide what events (for example, the submission of an assignment) should trigger an email notification This will help you control the amount of email coming to you. Make sure to share this information with your course members. Read more.. http://www.p2pu.org/node/809/document/3033

=Issuing Certificates= P2PU is not an accredited university and we are not planning to become one. However, we encourage course organizers and participants to experiment with the idea of issuing certificates, and we are working with third parties like the Mozilla Foundation and the University of California Irvine to create opportunities for certification of P2PU learning. In the meantime, we really like the idea of community signed certificates. In your course, why not ask all users who completed the course, to sign each others certificates. One way of doing that is for all participants to take photos of their signatures and send them to the course organizer, who creates one certificate that contains all signatures. A more romantic idea would be to send a pack of printed certificates to each person in the course, who signs, and then forwards it on to the next person. The last person mails one fully signed certificate to each participant. In addition, Frauke Stegman, a friend of P2PU has designed a certificate for us. It's more like an artwork, and some recipients thought their PDF reader was broken. They do not look like traditional certificates. If you'd like to make P2PU certificates available to your participants, we can send you the electronic version and you can fill in the names and expert as PDF files.

=Check list=

Course Page

 * Basic learning objectives are clearly stated on the course page.
 * Information about the course organizer (you) is included.
 * Instructions for when and where course meetings occur are clear.

Syllabus

 * If participants are encouraged to change and edit the syllabus, information that they can do this is clearly provided.
 * All links are active and working.

Meeting Tools

 * If you are using an online conference tool, you have practiced using it before the course.