A new university is scheduled to begin offering courses in February. While an announcement of this type may not seem terribly newsworthy on the surface, one thing sets this university apart from many others: the faculty members will be volunteers. Founders of P2P (peer-to-peer) University, including Joel Thierstein (executive director of Connexions at Rice University), believe that the time is right for the initiative, and point to current successful models such as Wikipedia and the MIT OpenCourseWare project. Working professionals and retirees are the target market for the P2P University courses. These individuals will not received credit for the courses they take through this institution; rather the hope is that credit will be obtain via other institutions such as Western Governors University.
The big question is: Who are these volunteers who will teach the courses? At present, the founders have 10 professors who are prominent in their respective fields (no names are being released yet). Those at P2P hope to continue along this trajectory and attract more celebrity professors to the program. Even with star profs participating in this "design research experiment," a major concern is student retention.
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We have now launched our first six pilot courses, sign-up is restricted to 15 people in each course, and you can apply and view the full curricula at our website http://p2pu.org. The courses begin on September 9th, 2009.
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