[O]ne might be tempted to ask how we might harness the power of these peer-to-peer collectives to meet some learning objective. But that would be falling into the same old twentieth-century trap. Any effort to define or direct collectives would destroy the very thing that is unique and innovative about them.
This might be at the core of the tension I often feel when working in P2PU. It runs through everything from instructional design to system architecture.
I used to think it was my “old-school” teacher tendencies coming out, but I think it goes deeper than that. The very notion that perhaps peer learning shouldn’t be be structured, shouldn’t have learning objectives, and can’t be externally assessed simultaneously makes sense to me and is very uncomfortable.
This is in part because, at my core, I am an organizer. I see P2PU and its potential, and I want to build, organize, and disseminate. I want to make a School of Ed and to make it great.
Can the learning collective be both undefined and organic and also be focused and purposeful?
I am in the process of reading and compiling some research related to peer learning and staff development for teachers.
A bibliography is below, and here are a few quotes that exemplify to me what the P2PU School of Ed is all about.
“What everyone appears to want for students – a wide array of learning opportunities that engage students in experiencing, creating, and solving real problems, using their own experiences, and working with others – is for some reason denied to teachers when they are learners.”
“People learn best through active involvement and through thinking about and becoming articulate about what they have learned. Processes, practices, and policies built on this view of learning are at the heart of a more expanded view of teacher development that encourages teachers to involve themselves as learners.”
– Lieberman (1995)
“Teaching in collaborative settings puts front and center the tension between the process of student learning and content coverage.”
“As we become more involved in using collaborative learning, we discover what radical questions it raises. Collaborative learning goes to the roots of long-held assumptions about teaching and learning.”
“Not only is course content reshaped, so are our definitions of student competence. Because the public nature of group work makes demonstration of student learning so continuous, collaborative learning both complicates and enriches the evaluation process.”
– Smith and MacGregor (1992)
Selected Bibliography
Garrison, Randy D. E-Learning in the 21st Century: A Framework for Research and Practice. 2nd. New York, NY: Routledge, 2011.
Lieberman, Ann. “Practices that Support Teacher Development.” Phi Delta Kappan. 46.8 (1995): 591-596.
Smith, Barbara Leigh Smith, and Jean T. MacGregor. “What is Collaborative Learning?.” Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education. (1992).
Sparks, Dennis, and Stephanie Hirsh. A New Vision for Staff Development. Alexandria, OH: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1997
“Standards for Professional Learning.” Learning Forward (formerly National Staff Development Council), 2011. Web. 26 Sep 2011. <http://www.learningforward.org/standards/standards.cfm>.
Thomas, Douglas, and John Seely Brown. A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change. CreateSpace, 2011.
So here we are. We’ve covered a lot of issues related to the challenges of an innovative, DIY educational initiative trying to work with more traditional, formal institutions.
What are the options for moving ahead? It’s a vast continuum of overlapping choices. Some may make more or less sense in different timeframes.
Flex to meet credit requirements, which may mean compromising the core values of peer learning as we’ve envisioned it. (At the School of Ed, we won’t likely do that.)
Flex to meet credit requirements while not compromising core values. (It’s not yet known if this is possible and under what circumstances. It will likely depend on how flexible and creative we all are.)
Forgo credit for now and work hard on creative new models.
Forgo credit and stay true to the letter of our core values. (Easy for us but a disservice to folks who need credit; may also limit the reach and impact of P2PU).
Pursue becoming accredited as a credit-issuing institution. (Lots of time and money involved.)
Pursue new models of issuing credit by working with policymakers, states, districts, etc. (Long term process, again with lots of time and money required, but the upside for learners could be huge.)
Most of this series has been written with PD and CEUs for teachers in mind. The issues get bigger and more complicated when you start thinking about degrees and actual university credit.
This is a guest post from Erin Knight, who works with Mozilla and P2PU on assessment in open peer learning environments.
Let’s face it – learning looks very different today than traditionally imagined. Its not just ‘seat time’ within schools, but extends across multiple contexts, experiences and interactions. It is no longer just an isolated or individual concept, but is inclusive, social, informal, participatory, creative and lifelong. People are learning new skills like digital literacies and 21st Century Skills, as well as learning through new pathways and channels such as through open education opportunities from providers like P2PU, through freely accessible information repositories like Wikipedia and many other destinations on the Web, and through each other on social media and other collaborative tools. Much of this learning involves critical job-relevant competencies that include the obvious hard skills and professional development, but even further, and perhaps more importantly, social skills like collaboration, teamwork and critical thinking.
And yet, much of this learning does not ‘count.’ Institutions still decide what types of learning if officially recognized, with little room for innovation, as well as who gets to have access to that learning. Their end products, the grade or degree, are the only way that learning is currently communicated and recognized within the system, as well as the larger society. Without a way to capture, promote and transfer all of the learning that can occur (and is occurring) across the wider spectrum, we are discouraging self-driven engaged learning, making critical skills unattractive or inaccessible, isolating or ignoring quality efforts and interactions and ultimately, holding learners back from reaching their potential.
This is where we feel badges can come in. Badges are digital emblems or symbols of skills, achievements, interests or affiliations. Badges can be aligned with assessments, like those mentioned in the last post, to provide meaningful evidence of learning that can be carried with a learner to demonstrate their skills. Badges can support innovation in assessment and be awarded for a much deeper and wider set of skills and achievements, including the often neglected social skills like collaboration and teamwork, and thus one’s collection of badges can tell a much more comprehensive story to potential employers, formal institutions and peer communities.
Specifically, badges can support:
Capturing and demonstrating the learning path
Signaling achievement and ability to key stakeholders like recruiters or peers
Motivating learning and participation
Adapting to and supporting innovation in learning and assessment
Formalizing and extending reputation and identity development
Fostering community and kinship
I am involved in a number of initiatives to explore the potential for badges, including developing a badge and assessment program for P2PU, specifically in their School of Webcraft which is a partnership with Mozilla. This badge program will offer credentials for web developer training and will ultimately provide pathways for learners to not only find additional opportunities for learning and skill development, but to find jobs and get real results. In addition to working with P2PU, as well as a number of other badge issuers, we at Mozilla are also building the Open Badge Infrastructure which will support a badge ECOsystem, in which there are many badge issuers, and any given learner can earn badges across experiences, collect them to a single collection and then share them out with various websites and stakeholders. The OBI provides the plumbing to extend the value of each learning experience and each badge.
Again, the ultimate goal of all of all of this exploration and momentum around badges is to support learning as it occurs all across the Web, keep each learner in control of her own learning and credentials, and allow people to share that learning and evidence of skills and experiences with anyone, thus adding flexibility and value to the system and supporting personalized learning paths.
