Set the stage.

Think about who is coming to your P2PU course.

Your task:

Post an answer to: "Who is coming to your course?" You can:
- Draw a picture of a potential P2PU peer
- Brainstorm 3 words that your peers might use
- List where your potential peers hang out--either on the web or in real life (IRL)
Post a URL to your course with the tasks inserted with skills.

Step 1: Define your audience.

Who is your coming? What will attract them?

Think about the skills they want. You can tag your course with those skills in the "Course Creation" page.
Consider what language they use. You may want to phrase your tasks and activities in terms they are familiar with.
Where do they hang out? Think about the places, activities and tools that get your peers jazzed up.

Step 2: Identify Skills.

What do you want learners to be able to do when they are done?

Make a list of skills you want folks to master in your course. Why are these skills important to your audience?
Go ahead an create tasks for your course (in Step 2 of the "Course Creation" process).

Name the tasks with the skills you've identified. For instance, if the skill is "Draw a Project from a 3D Perspective" you might name your task exactly that!

Task Discussion

Vanessa Gennarelli said:

Big Ideas:

Writing for the web is a new set of skills. And very different from academic writing.

Here's a first draft of what Audrey and I are working on--feedback and ideas most welcome!

on Feb. 22, 2012, 10:02 p.m.
Anne said:

example context: designing software across cultures

goal: understand that it doesn't work the same for everyone - values and rules between cultures differ.

on Feb. 13, 2012, 7:42 p.m.
Xavier said:

Why writing and reading skills matters today? Are these important for you? There are the background questions of my challenge.

I want them to understand that their literacy skills will change their world.

Is this a good example of BIG IDEA? Maybe it can be smaller?

on Jan. 31, 2012, 8:39 a.m.

Chloe said:

"I want them to understand that their literacy skills will change their world."

is actually a great big idea. It is something your peers will remember after a long time, great work.

When you are actually writing out your challenge, you might want to give some examples for that, but for now it looks good.

on Jan. 31, 2012, 1:29 p.m. in reply to Xavier
Brad Emerson said:

My idea for a challenge is for people interested to become knowledgable enough about electricity and their power usage to plan for solar power. Very few people know how much power they use or even understand how electricity is measured, other that the amout for the check they write each month.

Planning for solar power can save money by just making people aware of the power they do use, what uses a lot and what doesn't really matter.

My challenge will involve tracking all the things in ones home that use electricity and estimating the month usage.

Hopefully the data gathered will be used in a follow up course on designing a solar powered home

.

on Jan. 29, 2012, 3:54 p.m.

AJC said:

I would love to see this challenge happen. I am working with my neighbors to create a block-wide energy utility where we can collectively capture and share solar energy (either thermal hot water or electricity). Few of us in the neighborhood understand the metrics involved and it holds back our planning.

on Jan. 29, 2012, 8:09 p.m. in reply to Brad Emerson

Xavier said:

Hi Brad

While I'm reading your post, I think that you can precise better your BIG IDEA.

Maybe it can be something like this:

Selfmanaging of power consume emancipates us and will change our vision about power.

Do you like this?

on Jan. 31, 2012, 8:48 a.m. in reply to Brad Emerson
karen said:
The big idea of my first challenge is that creating solid mission and vision statements for your enterprise is the first step to successful marketing.

Question: Is there an "ideal" chunk size for challenges? Can multiple challenges be linked togehter in a sequence?

As an example, my entrepreneurial marketing course included creating all the major elements of creating a marketing program for an endeavor. Now I'm breaking it into smaller pieces:

creating mission and vision statements

outlining a marketing plan (which could be further broken up)

creating a web presence

developing a promotion plan

engaging social media and user-generated content

Ideally, some of these should be done before others.

Does it make sense to have each of these as a separate challenges? And is there a way to make some "pre-requisites) to others?
on Jan. 25, 2012, 12:36 p.m.
Chloe said:

Hello Karen,

Re Sets: we can create a Challenge Set like this one : http://p2pu.org/en/schools/school-of-webcraft/sets/webmaking-101/

This functionality is still only available through back-end but can definately help you get started with it once you have a set of Challenges you d like to connect.

Re: does it makes sense to break them up into separate challenges ; I think as far as I can tell, yes if you think that each of these tasks might be longer than say a paragraph or if they have many subtasks.

hope this helps!

on Jan. 25, 2012, 1:21 p.m. in reply to karen

karen said:

That does help. Thanks.

Each of these challenges is pretty meaty and has subtasks.

on Jan. 25, 2012, 1:23 p.m. in reply to Chloe
LBCarfagna said:

I'm really intrigued by how P2PU can harness the energy and talents of people who feel stifled by traditional higher education or how P2PU can break down some of the barriers for people that have been underrepresented in traditional higher education. I like the question "how does the internet work" because I'm a structural learner and I think I could muse about something similar for the DIY U class. For example, a question could be "how does college work?" This might be really basic for some people, but I bet there would be a myriad of answers and those answers could help mentors/facilitators/peers interrogate assumptions about traditional education and move the learner towards a more creative model. If you asked me "how does college work" and had me do something like the internet question, like drawing how college works, it would look completely different from my parents' drawing or my sisters' or my best friend's.

Perhaps you all can help me out here and help move my questioning onto a good path?

on Jan. 21, 2012, 11:48 p.m.

AJC said:

I think our main goal (for our DIY U challenge) is to help people create a personal learning plan. An awesome one that has clear goals, measures progress and is worth holding one-self accountable to.

on Jan. 24, 2012, 1:51 p.m. in reply to LBCarfagna