{"id":779,"date":"2011-10-01T17:37:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-02T00:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/?p=779"},"modified":"2011-10-01T17:37:41","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T00:37:41","slug":"the-intricacies-of-designing-a-platform-for-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/archives\/779","title":{"rendered":"The intricacies of designing a platform for many"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love P2PU<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to understand why it didn’t start with one of the great open source LMSs, like Moodle, instead of trying to build from scratch.<\/p>\n

I’ve come to understand (sort of) that it has to do with a preference for simplicity and ideas about what might scale massively<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An interesting breakthrough for me was the realization that different people react differently to the design of P2PU as a platform. In particular, those who have little online course experience generally really like the platform and jump into it quickly. Those who have a lot of online course experience (especially building) seem to have a less favorable reaction. This seems to apply to participants and organizers alike. Like me, many say “Why not Moodle?” As participants, they often have a hard time figuring out what to do in a P2PU course. (I’ve gotten some funny messages that have left me unsure of whether to laugh\u00a0 or cry.)<\/p>\n

I’ve been thinking about the many design and development challenges, and it is clear to me that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. What might work for one\u00a0 school or even for one course won’t work for another.<\/p>\n

An elegant solution to this might be a solid API and a series of plug-ins that can be incorporated into various courses as appropriate.<\/p>\n

Need a better discussion board platform, a portfolio module, a social network tool, or an RSS reader? Add the plug-ins. Like the simplified design as it currently exists? Just leave it as is.<\/p>\n

Granted, designing an API is not an easy project, but it’s how most social tools are developed and we’ve done it before. And it’s a lot easier to design an API and good plug-ins than to try to patch together a design that tries to be everything to everyone.<\/p>\n

Thoughts?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love P2PU. But I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to understand why it didn’t start with one of the great open source LMSs, like Moodle, instead of trying to build from scratch. I’ve come to understand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,62],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-p2pu","tag-p2pued"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6mlV-cz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.k12opened.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}