Peer 2 Peer University is an online learning community, which allows you to learn skills and subjects all for free. It gives the user the freedom to learn what they want when they want and also gives them the opportunity to become mentors and help out others with subjects they might know.
Users must create an account, which will store all their educational information.
I spoke to John Britton who is a representative for P2PU and this is what he had to say:
“We started P2PU to be the social wrapper around online learning, so you can go to P2PU and find some like minded people who are interested in learning any subject, for example we’re partnering with Mozilla on creating a school of Webcraft which is about learning how to program but you can learn poetry, you can learn literature, you can learn how to cook and all kinds of different things. If you find a group of people that have a similar interest, you get together and you can set up a plan of learning over 5 to 6 weeks and you use free materials and learn for yourself for free”
“ The most important thing is that you get knowledge but we are working on a form of recognition system so as you work on different courses at P2PU, your profile gets populated with new events, so for example ‘John took a class in astronomy 101 or john helped Bob how to program in Web Making 101’, so I get credit or all the activities I do and my profile will reflect how much of a self learner I am. We are working right now on a badges project so as you learn new skills for example programming, you can get badges from trusted partners like Mozilla saying that you know how to program and since Mozilla is a well known name on the web, it actually carries some weight and you might actually wanna put it on your CV.”
With the fees in England increasing next year this can be another opportunity for people to gain knowledge without accumulating up to £50,000 of debt, without even needing to leave their house. It also gives flexibility to those who don’t want to dedicate 3 years of their life to a particular course as P2PU promote life long learning but with the influence of higher education.
Visit The P2PU website for more information: http://p2pu.org/en/
On 11.02.2012 we are hosting ‘Hack To The Future’ a free event for the developers & digital creators of today to engage with 200 developers & digital creators of tomorrow (aged 11-18 years). The aim is for this event to be replicated in other regions
We are looking for speakers to inspire and enthuse the next generation.
It is particulaly important for us to have speakers from the Open Community, please see who has already signed up to speak and spread the word.