Continuing the discussion from Potential quests:
(These are cranes.)
Project Name: The Peeragogy Project
Envisioned goal: Sources differ, but one goal would be to create a free, degree granting online university, peeragogy.edu.
Other potential outcomes: Short of creating a new university, we can still create great online learning environments and activities; in particular we document how other people do this, and amass a catalogue of “good practice”. Historically we’ve done this in the Peeragogy Handbook (peeragogy.org), with “semi-regular” new editions documenting what we learn.
Time available: ∞ or 5 years, depending on who you ask
Accountability structure among participants: We ask participants to adhere to a set of Community Guidelines. Contributors to the Peeragogy Handbook need to sign the CC0 Waiver which permits unlimited reuse.
Any associated Mini-Quests: For the 4th Edition of the Peeragogy Handbook we want to produce a collection of “mini-Handbooks” that can help people solve various practical problems. We need more examples!
Next Steps:
- Having created this “potential quest” description as an example, I would like to receive any feedback on whether or not it works as a call to action. I am not afraid to “fail” publicly so if it doesn’t really work, please give constructive feedback. One of my aims with this example is to help figure out what a good way to describe “quests” (in general) is (although I do not specifically find the terminology 100% applicable, e.g., in the ∞ mode of the Peeragogy project, we dispense with notions like “goals” and look at learning in pure process terms).
- Concretely, one way to get your feet wet would be to watch/listen to our upcoming podcast on Data Ethics, to stream January 13th, 1500 UTC (https://youtu.be/v15f07e0ahQ) — This is our 5th podcast episode and OGM would be an interesting topic for a future one!
- And we invite contributions to the Peeragogy Handbook from interested participants
- … And we have numerous other activities going on across software, writing, editing, media production, teaching, etc., so if you’re interested, just ask me.
- One additional interesting thing about Peeragogy is that we’re currently revitalising our method of using “design patterns” to manage next steps.
How the world was before and what sparked the journey (why this matters): Before peeragogy, there was a prototype, “paragogy”: and before paragogy, there was no identified practical theory of online peer produced peer learning. (There was Benkler’s admirable theory of peer production, which served as inspiration, and Knowles’s theory of “andragogy” which served as a kind of interlocutor.) This meant that organizations that were doing peer learning were trying “whatever” and efforts to build and share good practices were limited. This matters because, while we have great state-sanctioned resources like the public domain, these don’t come with instructions! Furthermore, in terms of a “need” the world has many giant problems (too many to list here) that are going to require adaptation and learning at a collective level.
What the great challenge was/is (what it is): Creating the Handbook is an example that has served to get the process started. Increasingly, the Handbook is now accompanied by software and other media, which will help us make the material accessible and applicable to as many people as possible. But, the scaling up process is still a bit “stuck”: e.g., we haven’t yet used the Handbook as a textbook in a formal course. Furthermore finding contributors who want to engage with this process can be difficult, even though it should (perhaps) be easy. Create a thriving global collaboration based on “sharing” and “learning” — these Kindergarten concepts — is certainly possible! But doing this in a timely fashion could use the help/input of more people.
What attracted the powerful collaboration (who’s involved and the pieces they bring): Some of the most involved participants have been Charlie Danoff, Howard Rheingold, Charlotte Pierce, Paola Ricaurte, and Lisa Snow McDonald. Over 30 people have signed the waiver, and many more have joined discussions. Stephan Kreutzer has been taking the lead on software support in the sense of a “neutral data department”. We also have support from the Oregon State University Open Source Lab.
What is the world we envision after (outcomes): Considered as a “question”, it goes something like this:
would it be possible for everyone in the world to have access to high-quality learning support, so that we could do away with the old exclusive models of education, and help everyone find meaningful work, that is, moreover, in harmony with nature?
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I hope others could will add some additional examples! But we could discuss the “Peeragogy quest” as an example in a linked topic.
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Initial thoughts: @holtzermann17 what do you mean exactly by time available? is this for the person submitting, or you are looking for someone to join with a certain amount of time available? or is this how long the project will go on for…?
I like the questions you proposed of “how was the world before” and what the great challenge is… haven’t ever though about framing it this way. Works for larger projects, i wonder if it would work for a mini quest like “we need to make a shared calendar” - i imagine this being funny to answer what the great challenge is in this instance, hahaha.
I’m going to try answering these questions for a project I"m working on this week and see how it feels 
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Regarding the time-available question, I was adapting this:
So, yes, it’s your “how long the project will go on for”.
I agree that this sort of framework would be overkill for small tasks!
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