P2P University (the ‘peer-to-peer university’) is being heralded as one of the most exciting projects to come out of the open education space in recent years. And best of all is that they’re located in the Mother City.
According to Old Mutual GeekRetreat Fellow, Rebecca Kahn, ‘P2P University is an experiment in horizontal learning, following the peer-to-peer file sharing model. The question we ask is: What would a totally free, open and accessible online university look like.
People looking to learn or teach can go onto http://p2pu.org/, browse available courses or design a new course.
According to the founders of this innovative project, ‘the mission of P2PU is to leverage the power of the Internet and social software to enable communities of people to support learning for each other. P2PU combines open educational resources, structured courses, and recognition of knowledge/learning in order to offer high-quality low-cost education opportunities. It is run and governed by volunteers.
Rebecca is excited about participating in the new retreat. She says that she’d like to use the opportunity to let digital fundis at the GeekRetreat know about P2PU and try to develop new ideas on how P2PU can become more relevant in South Africa. She’s also looking for partners who can help in web development and research and will be running a workshop at the retreat to chat about P2PU. Rebecca has a wealth of experience in journalism and the Internet in South Africa. She worked as content editor for SL Magazine, has edited a book on adoption in South Africa, and worked as a researcher and project manager at iCommons.
