P2PU was born out of the 2007 Cape Town Open Education Declaration and has been active in the field of open education ever since. Founded by Philipp Schmidt, Delia Browne, Neeru Paharia, Stian Haklev, and Joel Thierstein, P2PU was originally driven by the belief that with adequate social support, anyone can learn almost anything online for free. This strategy reached tens of thousands of learners in more than 50 countries across a number of projects and collaborations, including The School of Webcraft (with Mozilla), School of Open (with Creative Commons), Mechanical MOOC (with MIT), and Play With Your Music (with NYU and Peter Gabriel). P2PU also pioneered early massive open online courses through it’s courses platform and developed some of the first open badge prototypes in collaboration with Mozilla.
In 2014, P2PU made a strategic decision to stop working exclusively online because we were not reaching people who stand to benefit the most from the promise of free and open online education. In hopes of reaching new audiences, we partnered with Chicago Public Library to run in-person study groups for library patrons who wanted to learn together. This project became known as learning circles, and over the course of 18 months, P2PU and CPL managed to dramatically increase completion rates and reach new audiences who were new to both online learning and postsecondary education. Learning circles also formed strong social bonds for citizens from diverse backgrounds who shared common goals, and helped to highlight the library as a hub for community learning experiences
Given the success in Chicago, P2PU created an open source learning circle toolkit that is now being used by library systems and community centers around the world. Through learning circles, we have maintained our vision of providing viable alternatives to mainstream higher education with a deeper commitment to equity, access, and empowerment. All of our learning circle materials and community tools are openly-licensed and free to use. You can get started with learning circles today.
