P2PU: Introduction to Ruby and Rails (Signup Closed)

2011-01-19T00:00:00-08:00

As I mentioned previously, I’m organizing and facilitating a free (as in cost and content licensing) Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) course called Introduction to Ruby and Rails.

The signups for P2PU were scheduled to close on 19 January and because of high demand, I interpreted that to mean the beginning of the day. I ended up having over 120 complete applications, and probably closer to 200 including people who expressed interest, but did not complete the sign up task.

To those 50 or so who I accepted to due obvious enthusiasm or otherwise interesting background, congratulations! I’m really looking forward to working with you to expand our knowledge of Ruby and Rails.

To those who I could not accept, all of the coursework will be open and freely available for you to lurk or otherwise follow along. We’ll be using:

A moderated Google Group for high latency mailing list communication
An unmoderated IRC channel for low latency, informal chat
Some sort of wiki/collaborative document editing platform (to be determined)
Weekly coursework with reading assignments and exercises

The course officially starts on 26 January, though I’ll aim to have the week 1 coursework finished and available by the beginning of that week.

P2PU: Introduction to Ruby and Rails

2011-01-07T00:00:00-08:00

A few months ago, as I was diving into learning Ruby on Rails, I saw a tweet by @johndbritton about a need for organizing an Introduction to Ruby and Rails course for Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). I volunteered to organize and facilitate it.

A little background on P2PU:

The Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) is an online community of open study groups for short university-level courses. Think of it as online book clubs for open educational resources. The P2PU helps you navigate the wealth of open education materials that are out there, creates small groups of motivated learners, and supports the design and facilitation of courses. Students and tutors get recognition for their work, and we are building pathways to formal credit as well.

P2PU courses do have a facilitator, but the learning mostly happens via interactions among those taking the course, as opposed to one professor-like figure doling out knowledge to students who do not necessarily learn much from one other.

Those who take the Introduction to Ruby and Rails course can expect to complete weekly reading assignments from freely available material, practice with programming assignments, and collaborate with others to explore Ruby, Rails, and the surrounding ecosystem .. as well work through any problems that will inevitably arise! I will also mentor and nudge as required.

The course is targeted at those who already have basic web design experience and basic programming knowledge (in any other language), but applicants certainly do not need to be an expert at either though.

If you are interested .. or know someone who may be interested, please see the course webpage on p2pu.org. Course applications will be accepted starting 12 January 2011, but motivated folks can feel free to complete the required sign-up task now.

Questions? Post a comment here or on the course page.

Andy Lindeman

P2PU: Introduction to Ruby and Rails (Signup Closed)

P2PU: Introduction to Ruby and Rails