[p2pu-dev] Notes from this week's community call

Thu Aug 23 15:54:03 UTC 2012

Much like the Olympics, those of you who were there will know, it was
brilliant!
Especially the discussion about the usertesting - thank you, Vanessa!

All notes, and chat transcript can be found here:
http://pad.p2pu.org/p/community-20120823

*Attendees (welcome to any newbies)*

   - Add your name (and twitter handle) here

   - Vanessa (@mozzadrella)

   - Bekka

   - dirk

   - Piet

   - Philipp

   - Chris

   - Molly

*Standups **What have you been up to? Short **written** notes (we'll
discuss only if there are questions)*

   - Bekka

   - Finance handover

   - Community emailing

   - Writing up Berlin

   - Stats crunching (for newsletter)

   - Prepping next newsletter - any suggestions welcome

   - Watching a LOT of cricket

   - Vanessa

   - Mechanical Mooc stuff: blog posts, loose ends, begging Dirk for help,
   etc.

   - *Around 1700 signups as of yesterday :)*

   - User testing research presentation

   - Course creation research project

   - DML research coordination

   - School of Data coordination--helping shape the larger curriculum in
   light of interest-based learning

   - All of the DML webinars/hangouts/administrivia

   - Working on Project page for Mechanical MOOC

   - Googlehangout with OpenPhDs later today (possibly)

   - Chris

   - CSS framework has good progress made.

   - We will have all the styles in a good place for early next week to
   start using it

   - Philipp

   - Shuttleworth funding

   - Mechanical MOOC basking in the limelight

   - Getting back into the swing of things

   - Dirk

   - Learn page updates - see alpha.p2pu.org

   - School of Open in footer - see alpha.p2pu.org

   - trying to move archive.p2pu.org to shared hosting

   - Jane

   - School of open logo
   http://info.p2pu.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/schoolofopen-eh3-dark.png is
   the winner!

   - Piet -> I feel a bit uneasy about "CC" being on the logo. while CC is
   a main partner in the SoO, it's not the only group or set of individuals
   involved. plus, the SoO is about more than copyright or licensing. it's
   huge as it should be. the more the logo reflects CC, the less *diverse*
   participation we'll see (I think). I really want to see groups like
   FreeSkool and various Occupy movements get involved, and CC might be a
   deterrent.

   - I thought the same today. Does it exclude other open licenses like the
   OSS licenses etc.

   - Does it give us legitimacy and branding power that is useful? It can
   be CC-sponsored/supported--CC has like, 60,000 twitter followers

   - CC's participation and support definitly supplies great legitimacy and
   branding power. that can be leveraged in many ways, but doesn't mean the
   logo needs to include CC.

   - Philipp -> I agree that having a strong partner can drown out other
   partners, but it's a delicate balance - the reality is that CC brings a
   huge, and diferent audience, and providing support in terms of Jane's
   position, and other logistics. Perhaps we can find a way that the CC logo
   can be used in a more subtle way

   - I see no issue in putting the CC logo on the school of open site - I
   just think the school's logo should be more, well, open...

   - School of Data - Nice logo with OKFN branding in the logo
   http://schoolofdata.org/

   - Isn't that the OKFN logo?

   - I see that the Webcraft logo has Mozilla prominently placed and i
   understand why you want to do that. I do wonder what message that sends
   though (sponsoring a school gets you advertising space).

   - Running School of Open openly on trello
(https://trello.com/b/slWxdy0L) and
   elsewhere as noted in discussion list:
http://<http://groups.google.com/group/school-of-open>
   groups.google.com/group/school-of-open

   - the trello page is private, can we make it public?

   - Ready to rock at OKFest in Helsinki w/School of Data -- feedback
   welcome on workshop format:
   http://etherpad.creativecommons.org/p/Open%20Peer%20Learning%20Workshop

   - Going to be running mini-workshop for CC staff at in-town-week

   - Joint convening w/37 major funders, "open" leaders, and CC affiliates
   (including P + D) is coming along, now has a wiki page:
   http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Open_Policy_Institute/2012_Convening

   - Iterating on courses with Open.Michigan!

   - NWP has expressed interest in co-creating a future course for their
   educator community on CC tools-->that's *awesome* Jane

   - Add your name (optional)

*News of the week **Written** notes on what's going on in our world (bring
up special announcements on the call)*

   - Blog posts you wrote

   - From P:
   http://info.p2pu.org/2012/08/21/its-alive-the-mechanical-mooc-offers-gentle-intro-to-python/
(actually
   written by VMG - but i'll take the credit)

   - Articles you read

   - Google changing the algorithm for organic search:
   http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/08/21/new-google-serp?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRoiu67AZKXonjHpfsX/4uwpWKWg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YcHT8V0dvycMRAVFZl5nRtXCOSGaJJF%2B/g%3D

   - BostonInno:
   http://bostinno.com/2012/08/23/mit-opencourseware-partners-with-codecademy-openstudy/

   - NYT:
   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/education/mechanical-mooc-to-rely-on-free-learning-sites.html?_r=1

   - Initiatives you heard about

   - Connected Educator Month at the U.S. Dept of Ed - they want people to
   submit badges for educators to earn; maybe some tie-in with the School of
   Ed? (http://connectededucators.org/communities/submit-badges/) -- I
   heard about this from a post to the Mozilla Open Badges group

*Key updates*  *Super short updates about P2PU*

   - Exciting new courses to check out (Bekka)

   - https://p2pu.org/en/groups/data-cleaning-and-basic-spreadsheet-skills/ -
   please review!

   - https://p2pu.org/en/groups/data-wrangling-stage-2-multiple-data-sets/ -
   ditto!

   - https://p2pu.org/en/groups/play-framework-first-steps/ - feedback
   would be great

   - Development priorities (Dirk)

   - Release next week - not a major release

   - Learn page improvements

   - School of Open in footer

   - CSS framework

   - Psyched about this--will it make our CSS cleaner? Fonts, corners, etc?

   - Courses, Challenges & Groups -> Courses

   - Course creation

   - That research will be complete this weekend, Dirk :) I'll pass it to
   you ASAP.

   - Server upkeep

   - State of the mustard (Philipp)

   - Stats slightly down this month (5%)

   - Haven't had time to investigate but probably just be the post-Berlin
   blues

   - What about blog traffic? One sec ...  huge spike since the Mechanical
   MOOC announcement

   - info.p2pu.org exploded on the day, went from <100 to 900 :)

   - p2pu.org also received increased traffic

   - http://mechanical
<http://mechanicalmooc.org/>mooc.org<http://mechanicalmooc.org/>
received
   2835 on the day

   - http://cl.ly/image/3l0B0544303P

*Agenda **Core of the call. Focused on four types of conversations (invited
guests, challenges you need help with, proposals you want feedback on,
ideas you need collaborators for). *

   - Support for Schools

   - Community: so many google groups and mailing lists... how do I
   encourage more participation in mine? School of Open discussion list...

   - Home page, Learn page: We have a logo -- can we feat. School of Open
   on the home page now?

   - Yes - DU working on it (quick fix is to add to footer, longer-term we
   might bring back the Schools drop-down in the header)

   - see alpha.p2pu.org with short term fix

   - P2PU Turning 3

   - Dates for timeline

   - Thank yous to community

   - Who wants to bake a giant cake? ME!!!

   - Photos of people blowing out 3 candle cakes

   - Illustrations by Alison? (I'm still waiting for my profile picture)

   - have asked her to do this for the thank-you's, she's keen

   - We need key dates from the community--let's ask them

   - User Testing of P2PU Homepage Mockups

   - Pop on over to the slideshare

   -
   http://www.slideshare.net/VanessaGennarelli/user-research-p2puorg-home-page

   - VMG -> There are several collaborative design tools out there, and I
   think that they are a way to combine ways of group
   collaboration/participation beyond a mailing list

   - Slide 2 -> 2 key questions: can new learners find info they need to
   enroll? and Can organisers find the info they need to create a course?

   - Slide 3: We used VerifyApp, and decided on 2 tests - a labelling test
   to see if new users "get" p2pu when they come to the site, and an
   annotation test, to see if organisers can get what they need

   - Slide 4: We got 100 responses on the labelling test (1000 people
   looked at it)

   - Slide 5: Results (some): our labelling does not come across as clear,
   the cover looks like a price tag (people expect to see a price there),
   create a course is an intimidating ask

   - Slide 6: People HATE the activity feed.

   - Current activity stream is not useful. Let's get rid of it.

   - Long-term -> It's nice to get a sense of "activity" on the homepage,
   to feel like there is something going on here. Could put on the backburner
   and try to build a better activity stream at some point.

   - Slide 7: suggestions: tweak cover slide (people want to know an
   organiser's name before they enroll), include signup button, include a
   "tour" function, insted of activity feed, could feature schools, badges,
   pictures and profiles of power users (+1 from Bekka)

   - maybe we can show awarded badges instead of activity or pending badges

   - Slide 8: Annotation test: this slide is a visualisation of this test's
   results

   - Slide 9: "create a course" button more frequently used, people don't
   understnad why it's important to learn with peers, people are cinfused
   about the call to action,

   - Slide 10: Reconsider the "find" versus "create" flow - let people see
   the courses before asking them to create - that way they become more
   familiar with the culture of P2PU.

   - I like Option 2 (and would add schools and people)

   - "Learn more" -> "Take a tour" (also recommended on slide 7)

   - Slide 11: realisations for next time -

   - Slide 12: talk to Dirk and Chris about implementation, Always Be
   Testing, results are on dropbox:

   - Applause!! +1 (this is fantastic!)+1 many many times

   - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxAKFlpdcfc

   - Philipp -> What I really like is the idea of using the home page to
   help people learn about the culture, and this should guide the design of
   the home page.

   - It would be useful to show people courses, schools and people on the
   home page

   - I like "take a tour", I think it's better than "learn more"

   - VMG: I can write that content :) and I'm happy to help...

   - Feedback seems to be that we need to get rid of the activity feed. Not
   that acivity feeds are bad, but right now ours sucks. So if we have one
   that listed interestng things, it would be a good idea to bring it back,
   but not right now.

   - Philipp -> I don't think a designer is what we need right now, if we
   can get the CSS stuff up, then a lot of the design elements are in the
   framework, and we have a grid so it's about getting material into the grid.
   Then Chris and/or a front end developer can work on that

   - Chris > I think we still need a look and feel though, because then we
   can implement stuff faster

   - Dirk -> perhaps we can get a designer to come in and look at things
   every now and then, do evaluations, and fix the worst stuff, rather than
   overhauling the design completly.

   - VMG -> So our workflow would be: I work with Chris to see what can be
   implemented now, and what still needs to be designed?

   - Philipp -> I think a lot of it depends on how far we are with the CSS
   framework, becuase if we're close to having that ready, then we can get
   going on that quite quickly.

   - Chris -> I think the CSS will be ready next week, so then we don't
   have to worry about duplicating stuff.

*General discussion and questions*

   - Anything else that just needs to be said out loud

   - South Africa is at the top of the ICC Test Cricket rankings!

   - Vanessa is heading back to school---grrrrrrrr
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