# P2PU and homeschoolers? 


One of the fun things about [P2PU](http://p2pu.org) is that we really
didn't design it for one particular narrow demographic – it could be
useful to anyone, whether it's high school students who want more
challenging classes (and in the future, maybe earn some AP credits and
skip a year of university), retired people who want to pursue their
interests, workers who need to keep up to date with their subject area,
laid-off workers who need to retrain, etc.

This means that we are constantly trying to think through how P2PU can
be useful to different groups of people, and how to engage with those
communities to collaborate and learn from each other. I've had wonderful
conversations with people working with disadvantaged youth, doing
teacher training in developing countries, wanting to improve the
efficiency of NGOs, or make university classes more international and
interesting.

As we are evaluating different communications/community platforms for
P2PU, [John Britton](http://www.johndbritton.com/) shared a link to
OSQA, an open source platform for "Q&A" – asking questions, getting
answers, rating the best answers, gaining community credit (they have a
neat system of badges, which plays into another aspect P2PU is
investigating right now). While looking at their example sites, I came
across a [very active forum](http://homeschoolhelpdesk.com/) for
[homeschoolers](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeschooling).

This made me realize that homeschoolers represent one community that I
had least had not thought about as a potential user of P2PU. It makes a
lot of sense though, here are people who are very critical to the
existing system (for a host of different reasons), who have thought and
reflect a lot about the kind of education their kids should receive, and
who are also eager to make formal systems – college or grad school
admissions, and hiring processes – more open to non-traditional ways of
gaining knowledge and skills.

So I posted a question on the site, asking "[How could Peer2Peer
University be of help to
homeschoolers?](http://homeschoolhelpdesk.com/question/153/how-could-peer2peer-university-be-of-help-to-homeschoolers)"
I also outlined a few possibilities that I see, but I really hope people
will respond, because I would love to hear from these thoughtful and
reflective individuals how we could be a positive resource to them.

Let me know if you think of other groups out there that could benefit
from P2PU – or whom P2PU is not serving well right now, and what kinds
of changes and additions we would have to make, to serve that group
better?

Here is the text of the question that I posted:

* * * * *

**[How could Peer2Peer University be of help to
homeschoolers?](http://homeschoolhelpdesk.com/question/153/how-could-peer2peer-university-be-of-help-to-homeschoolers)**

Hi all, this seems like an amazingly helpful forum, and I hope this
question is appropriate. I'm involved with a project called [Peer2Peer
University](http://p2pu.org). We are a number of people who come from
the Open Educational Resources movement - where MIT, Open University,
Yale, but also individuals and organizations, made large amounts of
educational resources available for free, and with open licenses.

We thought this was wonderful, but for self-learners, it was very
difficult to find proper materials, and they lack the community to
provide motivation, feedback, etc. That's why we created P2PU. It's kind
of a platform for conducting online learning groups. Our course
organizers (who don't have to be experts) submit proposals for 6-week
courses, where all the curriculum resources have to be freely available
(we link to them). We are building up resources for course organizers to
improve their course design/facilitation skills, and we pair them up
with mentors that have already led classes before. Then the curriculum
goes out for community review.

When a course is running, you apply to take part (not based on previous
education, but just that you show that you are enthusiastic/committed to
complete the course). The students do their readings, watch videos, go
through exercises etc in the curriculum, and use forums, live chat,
Skype and videochat, collaborative text editing, blogs etc to
communicate with each other. Everything is open, so you can "audit" or
peek into any class, even if you are not registered.

We are also looking into ways in which the learning that happens can
later be recognized, formally or informally. For the formal route, we
are researching link ups with people like Kaplan or AP exams, competency
based curricula like Western Governors' University, challenge exams,
recognition of prior learning etc, and for informal recognition, we are
looking at assembling electronic portfolios, measuring community
reputation, etc. (You can see a brief summary of our project
[here](http://www.vimeo.com/11158136)).

So my question is, how could we serve the homeschooling community? And
what would we need to modify/add to be more useful to your needs? I
think we could learn a lot from each other, because we have the same
belief that education doesn't have to come pre-packaged in a
mass-produced fashion, and the same desire to open the system up to
recognizing different pathways students might choose, to reach the same
goals.

Here are some ideas I have, please pitch in!

-   The curricula that we generate are useful in themselves. MIT has
  curricula for 1800 courses online, but they all link to 200\$
  textbooks, and academic articles that you can only get if you are at
  an academic library. Our curricula only link to free resources. So
  if you want to get started with behavioural economics or urban
  sustainability, we are a good place to go (and will hopefully become
  much better)
-   Students could attend courses. We certainly pose no age limits, but
  I'm assuming this would be most relevant to high-school age
  students. It would be a great way for them to get exposure to a
  larger group of people, and age range, and exercise their critical
  skills, communication and writing skills, etc.
-   Students could teach courses! as I stated above, we are not looking
  for experts, because in a course, everyone learns (and in a way, the
  course material we find to a certain extent plays the role of the
  expert). In this networked world, we also shouldn't be shy about
  reaching out - if you designed a curriculum for a class, we can
  definitively find a professor willing to have a look at it, and
  maybe even come in for a "guest lecture". This would be an amazing
  experience, and growth opportunity.
-   Another idea is to facilitate courses for parents or others involved
  in home schooling. I am sure a common doubt is "do I know enough, am
  I doing it right"? This project seems like an amazing resource for
  asking questions and getting help on specific issues, but some
  people might be interested in collecting some resources - maybe
  Paolo Freire, maybe Ivan Illich, maybe "Homeschooling 101", "how to
  teach your kid without going crazy" etc, and studying them together,
  while sharing resources.

Anyway, I know I am an outside to this community, but please don't
perceive this as spam, I'm genuinely interested in engaging with you,
and learning from your experiences, and perhaps seeing if we can work
together in some way.

Stian