Drumbeat/Challenges/p2pu
Title
Open Web Developer Career Track:
A collection of courses to equip participants with web development skills that focuses on open web technologies.
These courses will be conducted in a format pioneered by Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). Small groups of motivated learners will be able to compile their own learning materials, as well as design and facilitate their own courses.
Formal accreditation is still being worked out for participants who complete the necessary coursework.
See also: Mashing Up The Open Web, the first course we'll offer as part of this Drumbeat project. Open Web Competency Map
Background
Most web developers obtain technical knowledge from four sources:
- Formal education in schools
- Certificate courses like MCSE or Cisco Academy
- Meetups and sharing sessions with other web developers
- Learning by doing -- projects they do for work and play
One of the major challenges posed by certificate courses currently available is that they focus around the use of a single proprietary technology. This emphasis on particular pieces of technology produces web developers who rely primary on these few tools. It is essential to re-establish the application of technology as a creative, entrepreneurial endeavour independent of technological tools or platforms.
We would like to challenge the current assumption that technical training and certification needs to be expensive, exclusive and proprietary by offering you a chance to participate and collaborate with other skilled web developers and designers in training courses that cost less and offer more flexibility in curriculum than existing courses.
The Open Web Developer Career Track program is particularly focused on regions with high growth technology sectors and a strong bent towards certification. Likely places include: India, East Asia and Brazil. We want peer learning and accreditation to emerge as serious open web career path alternatives in these regions.
Course Methodology
The Open Web Career Track will consist of a series of Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) courses. Students will learn in an open, collaborative environment, as well as rate each other’s contributions to the course. Courses will be run by highly-qualified volunteers who will determine the scope of curriculum and breadth of necessary work required to graduate from the course. Both students and tutors will receive recognition for their work.
The P2PU approach accurately simulates actual working conditions, and allows participants to develop crucial communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
Formal accreditation is still being worked out for participants who complete the necessary coursework. Possibilities include:
- accreditation from established universities or educational institutions,
- recognition in the form of badges on profile sites like LinkedIn, and
- expressed sponsorship and support by high-profile companies and organizations like Mozilla.
The courses aim to combine the flexibility and camaraderie of meetups while providing the rigor and accreditation of formal education.
In addition, P2PU is coordinating a group of individuals and organisations interested in building an open credits infrastructure (think of it as an open knowledge currency). This will make it easy for Open Web Career professionals to showcase their skills and expertise to potential employers on personal profile pages. The open credits incubator will be held in mid-2010 and we plan to use open web career for our pilot.
How does this make the web better?
This makes the web better in three ways:
- More people skilled in the core technologies used to create the open web
- More people building their careers and skills around openness, creativity, on the fly learning -- the values and approaches needed for the open web to thrive
- An open credits system that gives recognition to open social learning, reduces the cost of education, and can be applied to other disciplines
Tags
social learning, openweb, p2pu, open credits
Video
Click here to watch video on blip.tv.
Curriculum
We are currently compiling ideas for the core set of open web tech courses. The perfect courses will build skills by using different types of technology to solve real world problems.
The Open Web Developer Career Track will focus on technologies used to create the open web; primarily HTML, CSS and Javascript. We are also working to build on excellent open web curriculum from:
- Web Standards Project (http://www.webstandards.org/learn/)
- Opera Software (http://www.opera.com/company/education/curriculum/)
- The Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group (http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/owea/wiki/Main_Page)
Our first course Drumbeat/p2pu/Mashing Up The Open Web starts March 2010.
Though preliminary, we intend to produce Mozilla-endorsed curriculum covering a wide variety of open web career paths (e.g. web design, app development, etc.).
Would like to move to right under "Course Methodology".
Curriculum review board
We will assemble a group of respected open web experts to review and endorse the open web curriculum. They will ensure that the overall curriculum and course structure reflect the desired expertise profile of open web developers. The review board will include academics (from traditional institutions) but also community leaders and industry representatives.
Suggested individuals (just ideas for now!):
- Dave Humphrey
- Arun (Mozilla)
- ???
Goals and metrics (outcome)
need to work on these, especially add metrics ... but here is a start
- Q1 2010 - compile materials, attract leaders and test concept
- Metrics: at least one course running, clear curriculum exists, leadership in place
- Q2 2010 - scale up, link to companies and career sites, also develop early accreditation framework
- Metrics: full slate of courses (HTML, JS, CSS plus more business oriented), relationships with potential employers, and career portals
- Q3 2010 - pilot open credits infrastructure
- Metrics: pilot implementation of open credits for open web careers
Participation asks
- Define learning goals and curriculum outline
- (what do we think students need to learn)
- Help us find (and improve) an open web tech curriculum
- (add more granular asks here)
- Start a course or a local study group
- Participate in a course
- Participate as a tutor
- Join as a 'sponsoring employer'
- Provide feedback on learning goals (what are you hiring for?)
- Donate staff time for tutoring
- Will consider candidates once they get to certain level
- Join as a karma channel
- E.g. show your peer reviews from courses in LinkedIn
Toolset and Platform
- We will use P2PU's existing learning platform, but encourage others to self-host and run courses in parallel
- Learning materials will be compiled into course packages on the P2PU platform. All materials will be openly licensed and not tied into one platform
- P2PU will lead design of the open credits architecture, and offer its platform for open web track participants
Team and Contributors
- John Britton, Flat World Knowledge, USA
- Lucian Teo, web standards advocate, Singapore
- Philipp Schmidt, P2PU and Shuttleworth Foundation, South Africa
- Mark Surman, Mozilla, Canada
- Arun Ranganathan, Mozilla, USA
- Add yourself
Needed: people to design curriculum, run more courses. also, someone to lead development of open credits system.
Timeline and Milestones
- Feb 2010 - Updated vision document (Lucian)
- Feb 2010 - Launch pilot course
- March 2010 - Map of skills and possible courses
- April 2010 - Concept proposed on open accreditation
- June 2010 - Complete open web career track department in P2PU
- May 2010 - Open credits incubator
- XXX - Pilot open credits
Current challenges and questions
- Who's doing stuff in this space already? Do they have open learning materials? Do they want to collaborate?
- Free Technology Academy (has materials from Open University of Catalunia, which will be made available by end of December)
- How do we bootstrap? W/ interested tutors? Who coordinates?
- Use P2PU community to identify course organizer for pilot course and
- Do we have a leader / leaders for this? People who know the content? People in the countries where this needs to happen?
- Brasil:
- India:
- South Africa:
- What materials exist that we could draw on? Is there enough that we could run a course tomorrow?
- There is a lot, but it needs curation
Related projects
- P2P Foundation, a giant resource of P2P info
- Wikiversity, a Wikimedia Foundation project
