P2P learning ties in with everything

This morning my internal cognitive network has a "small world" feel to it. There are very few degrees of separation between the nodes in my cognitive network. It's clear to me I have tons to share with you in the coming months but I don't know where to begin. That may be due to the fact that robust networks don't have a beginning.

Over the extended holiday weekend, I captured a lot of inspirations for how peer-to-peer (P2P) learning could occur. After taking time out to prepare "baked yams and apples in a sherry butter sauce" for 20 friends and relations, I got to explore how P2P learning ties into so many other possibilities I'm exploring. Each of these explorations seem like hubs enjoying power law scalability. The well connected nodes are becoming increasingly connected to each other and vast arrays of other ideas, books and bloggers.

P2P learning functions superbly within one of the disruptive innovations I've proposed will impact higher education in the near future. It appears to alleviate many of the adversities playing into the chronic 50% college dropout rate. P2P learning provides wonderful preparation for contributing to P2P production, property and governance practices that Michel Bauwens and many others are advancing. P2P learning also prepares people to function in a "world without Wall Street" that David Korten defines in his latest book, which I read last week, Agenda for a New Economy. P2P learning appears to be compliant with John Medina's Brain Rules which exposed the counter productive cognitive impacts of classroom and curriculum based learning. P2P learning is highly congruent with all I've written about as PLE 2.0 that combines DIY with DIT (do it together) serendipitous learning.

P2P learning links to another major cognitive hub I have not yet written about here: conflicts with and within collaborative networks. P2P learning functions as a collaboration that is vulnerable to external turbulence and internal dissensions. Formulating response capabilities to "buffer the core technologies of collaboration" serves many other purposes. It shows promise for resolving emotional baggage that individual collaborators bring to the interactions. It makes the collaborative networks more resilient, sustainable and supportive of disruptive diversity. It transforms a single-minded endeavor into a total solution which is much more likely to scale into widespread adoption.

P2P learning also solves some technical issues I've been wrestling with while preparing a business plan entry for the contest at the University of Pennsylvania. It reframes the business model as a support system for curiosity and creativity. It defines the value proposition as something that gets crowd sourced, rather than delivered with a factory model of production. It sets up the startup to launch "off radar" of rival incumbents by not serving the consumers of what could be called "anti-P2P learning". It defines the challenge of making P2P learning seem very appealing, accessible and easy to adopt by refining the "customer experience design".

Hacking a production system

Systems for producing comprehension are too often taken for granted. It's assumed the authority figures know what they're doing. It's accepted that deeper levels of comprehension are unavailable for some good reason. The learners figure they are at fault when they lose motivation, interest and commitment to the pursuit of deeper comprehension.

Let's take the example of comprehending ink cartridges. An academic comprehension could thoroughly grasp WHAT an ink cartridge is. That may include:

• what cartridges are not ink cartridges (toner, ribbon, etc)
• what cartridge is the right one to insert in a particular printer
• what to look for on a the box/catalog listing to verify the correct cartridge before buying
• what cartridges do when we're printing out a document
• what steps to take when replacing a cartridge

If the system for producing comprehension goes no further than an academic comprehension, there will be no comprehension of:

• how to connect the cables, install the software drivers and operate the printer
• how to be sure not to break the printer when removing and inserting cartridges
• how to interpret the signs that the cartridge needs to be primed again or replaced

This commercial level comprehension can get responsibilities handled, get jobs done, and get results. It pays to know this level. When a system for producing comprehension does not yield this level, it can be hacked. The peers can interfere with the imposed limitation. They can get printers to practice on, and give each other feedback on attempts to use the printers. Together they can get good at changing ink cartridges at the right time with the right model.

This level of comprehension falls short of the pragmatic level. The system can be hacked again to enable "qualified printer operators" to troubleshoot problems with printing out documents. By immersion in actual or simulated malfunctions, it will become understood how to diagnose problems, question possible causes, explore different subsystems, challenge convenient assumptions and rule out "false positives". Once again the peer production can liberate the commercial level of comprehension with hacks to mess around with breakdowns.

It's even possible to take comprehension to the deepest level of paradox. Then it will become possible to sense the best time to change a cartridge, when printing out is becoming excessive, and what to bring into balance beyond the fixated use of printers.

Letting go of legacy practices

The first few times we succeed at anything we've tried to do for the first time, we regard it as an accomplishment. We've gained confidence in our new ability. We update our self concept of what we're good for and who we think we are. We realize we can face some different challenges with this new resource.

Once the thrill is gone, we begin to take this success for granted. We rely on it to be there when we need it and are not disappointed when it proves to be reliable. We assume it's good to go without a bunch of preparation or caution to pick a good time for it. We have formed a new habit. We've gone from "thinking about it to do it" to "doing it without thinking".

Without realizing it, we've opted to cling to this success routine as the right thing to do without question. We've become ingrained with a legacy practice. We have no choice in the matter. This is who we think we are. Our identity is contaminated with this success. We cannot stop being ourselves. We cannot back off, back down or admit we're wrong.

We've trapped in that pattern of "nothing fails like a proven success". The feedback that it's not working does not show up on our radar. The indications get quickly dismissed that we've been wrong all this time or our habit is too much of a good thing. We cannot conceive of doing it less or not at all.

Everyone of us who has been socialized by classroom educations carries a big inventory of legacy practices. Most of these habits sabotage any peer production of advanced levels of comprehension. These legacy practices work just fine with the superficial production of academic comprehension ("one right answer" and "doing what the textbook says is correct"). We feel justified by academic successes to "keep up the good work" and continue thinking we've got it right. We're trapped in single loop learning that cannot question our underlying assumptions or our epistemology for knowing how we know what we know. We're fixated on right answers, good grades, approval from authority figures, dependency on expert advice and pride in passive learning.

Making the switch to the peer production of advanced levels of comprehension involves letting go oft these legacy practices. The first step is to look for this pattern I've just explained. The following phase occurs most easily in a space that's safe from mockery, shame and rejection. It involves humbling realizations, confessions of fixations and admissions of error. That is nearly impossible when we're afraid, getting pressured or taking the heat for our habitual successes. However, when we can "see the error of our ways", we can let go of our trusted legacy practices and find new ways to handle current situations.

Co-producing comprehension

Each of us has too much experience producing comprehension in isolation. We reach our own conclusions among others doing the same. The co-production of comprehension will seem inconceivable, infeasible and far-fetched to many experienced learners. Here's a few of the attributes of successful co-productions:

• Shared interests in deepening a particular comprehension: Learners all have experiences sharing interests with others in getting good grades, getting through an ordeal, getting out of requirements and getting to advance to the next phase. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, there are shared interests in the subject matter, it's uses, varied viewpoints about it and much more. Where this is impossible in physical gatherings, online connectivity makes it possible to find others with these particular shared interests.
• Transparent disclosures: Formal instruction breeds learners who are acculturated to covering up ignorance, denying mistakes and making pretenses of competence. It appears self-defeating to be transparent when pressured to conform. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, it makes sense to reveal one's own actual condition. Admitting what is understood, what remains confusing, what appears useless, and what personal experiences relates to this -- all cultivate trust, respect and bonding.
• Making requests of others: When we're getting instructed without being in control of the timing, topic, approach or relevance, we feel powerless. We try to make things happen by eliciting sympathy from others. We create problems with our motivation, attention, retention and comprehension to get others to stop forcing us to learn. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, we stop seeking sympathy. We switch into problem solving mode and ask for help in finding solutions to obstacles as we deepen our comprehension. We see others as problems solvers who will easily understand where we're coming from when we request their help.
• Responding promptly to others' requests: When we're getting mismanaged, overworked, underutilized and exposed to lots of toxicity, we become unresponsive. We're wary of getting taken advantage and experienced with people who "take a mile when we give an inch". When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, we want to respond quickly to others' requests of us. We see how it pays intangibly to give to others when their request in specific and. Their transparency has built up social capital that facilitates our responsiveness.
• Utilizing the available diversity: When getting railroaded into the same understanding, diversity among the learners is a problem, distraction, setback or disruption in the uniform progress. The situation pressures the participants to think alike, suppress their differences and conform to expectations. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, the diversity among learners is essential, inherently valuable and cultivated by every participant. The deeper comprehension depends on differing outlooks, connections and uses for it. Each gets treasured for bring a treasure of uniqueness to the co-production.
• Phased development of deeper comprehension: When content is being delivered, it's too common that the instruction takes off without everyone on board, gets ahead of many and lets most fall behind. The pacing and depth cannot accommodate the variety of participants. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, each has a map or game board that lays out the terrain to be explored and integrated. It becomes obvious when an exploration is taking on too much, getting ahead of oneself or avoiding the next challenge. Each can support the others in moving forward in stages without imposing uniform progress on everyone.
• Contributing useful labor: When an instructor appears to be "going through the motions", offering useless information, or defying what makes content actionable, we learn by example to do the same. Our labor in groups is equally unproductive, heartless and useless. When deeper comprehension is successfully co-produced, each participant contributes highly useful work. Their efforts get appreciated in ways where they see how to be even more valuable and responsive. A virtuous cycle gets created with the transparency, requests, responsiveness and gratitude. This continues to energize and focus each contributors efforts.

The successful co-production of deeper comprehension is a radical change from conventional instruction. It involves these highly evolved ways to inter-relate and depend on each other. It comes from a place of significant compassion and creativity that indicates the absence of fear. It calls for us to evolve our consciousness to join in so much harmony and mutual benefit.

Democratizing diagnostic protocols

The peer 2 peer (P2P) production of advanced levels of comprehension eliminates a vast variety of breakdowns in learning processes. Problems generated by the classroom delivery of expert content, anonymity in large gatherings, boring textbooks, flawed instructional designs, objective grading pressures, and mass produced comprehension -- don't happen when peers collaborate effectively. Diagnosing what's gone wrong in when working together is potentially much simpler than figuring out why learning is not happening in conventional settings. It's relatively easy to democratize diagnostic protocols so the peers are equipped to solve their own comprehension problems.

Here are some of the patterns for every peer to red flag when they get identified:

• Inadvertent consolidation of power: Collaborations thrive on the distribution of power, the disaggregation of control and the dissemination of personal discretion. Peer production of comprehension can breakdown when power, control and discretion become concentrated in a few individuals. Power naturally gravitates to those in a gathering who get perceived as exceptionally competent, articulate, outgoing, resourceful or popular. Power can also be grabbed by those who are exceptionally ambitious, controlling, domineering or intolerant of others. Resilience and sustainability can be restored by expecting the few "power-trippers" to empower their peers and delegate their confiscated control with commensurate authority to then make changes on their own.
• Depletion of intrinsic rewards: Contributing to collaborative outcomes can be deeply significant, satisfying and self sustaining. The more we give in a personally meaningful way, the more we want to give. Our altruism repays itself with enhanced self concepts for relating effectively to others, self respect for trusting one's own judgment and self confidence for expressing oneself amidst potential critics. This vast payback from contributing to peer production can be eroded by time pressures, personal anxieties, guilt trips, blaming, and other forms of toxic interactions. The efforts then feel heartless, like merely going through the motions or keeping an empty commitment. Intrinsic rewards get restored by cleaning up the toxicity.
• Covert rewards for disengagement: Shared expectations can emerge to hold back, to "wait and see" or to keep involvement to a minimum. Those that meet these expectations then get rewarded with inclusion, validation and tribal identity. This occurs when a subset of the gathering takes off with early successes while the others feel left behind or labeled as losers. It also occurs when the initial challenges are too difficult for everyone to realize an early success which spawns personal misgivings and collective cynicism. It sometimes occurs when the challenge is too easy or too irrelevant to count as a significant accomplishment. Engagement can be restored by starting over and creating early successes for everyone involved.
• Activation of emotional baggage: Particular interactions during P2P collaborations can push individual hot buttons. It suddenly seems like old times, previous losses, or familiar dangers. People overreact, lash out, flip their lid and misdirect their anger. When others take the outbursts too personally, a meltdown can occur. Damage control gets introduced with a play-by-play commentary that covers what happened, what reactions got provoked, and what that reveals about the baggage that got activated. As everyone gains competence at making play-by-play observations, individual outbursts more often remain contained and observed with detachment.
• Shortchanging fair exchanges: Most of us have experiences with "class participation","team projects" and exercises completed in groups. These practices usually create no expectations of justice among peers. Giving to the group, team or class is expected without any concept of mutual fairness. P2P production of comprehension balances requesting with contributing to others requests and self valuation with valuing others. The production of comprehension can break down when participants feel exploited, abused or depleted by others who fall short of reciprocating. This is an emotional consideration, not a question of formal accounting. When people feel that justice has been restored and they're getting treated fairly, the problem has been alleviated.

When any peer has red flagged one of these patterns, a timeout needs to be called as soon as possible. A different process gets launched from the process of producing comprehension. Each member has this power to "stop the production line" and switch the gathering into problem solving mode. It has become each individual's right and duty to call the shared effort on these malfunctions. The democratic dynamics of the peer production processes get strengthened when any diagnostic protocols get invoked and explored.

Prereqs to peer production of comprehension

The peer production of advanced levels of comprehension is a significant change from going to school. For peer production to become resilient and sustainable, the production designs need to accommodate these significant changes. Here are the particular changes I'm currently considering:

Democratizing diagnostic protocols: When learning is not happening, peers need to respond to the situation. With pragmatic comprehension to troubleshoot the malfunction, remedial or re-conceptualized efforts can follow. Apparent successes with restoring learning will elicit more personal confessions about breakdowns in learning and generate more requests for a diagnostic appraisal of individual problems. A shift will occur from feeling inadequate to feeding confident about changing approaches when learning is not happening.

Explicit framework for producing comprehension: When we take comprehension for granted, we lose the ability to admire progress, celebrate accomplishments and encourage particular production efforts. Achieving comprehension takes a back seat to the measurement system of scores and grades. An explicit framework for the identifying levels and changes in comprehension will upgrade peer-2-peer interactions to become supportive of each individual and encouraging of personal progress.

Letting go of legacy practices: Relying on past experiences with "getting educated" could tragically disrupt the peer production of advanced levels of comprehension. Members of production cohorts will need to regard this approach as an new adventure. Peer production is a game changer with different rules to play by. This transition involves peers leaving their comfort zones, abandoning familiar success routines and changing long-standing habits.

Production system redesigns: The "peer production of advanced levels of comprehension" applies a different metaphor from familiar stories about cramming, regurgitating and getting grades. Participants in peer collaborations need to perceive the production system and make changes to that system when it's not working. Peer sourced upgrades to the production system will not only make it more resilient, but will spawn deeper commitment, motivations and initiatives to keep the peer production alive and well.

I'll explore each of these further during this week.

Four kinds of comprehension

This morning I've been pondering the possibility of comprehension getting produced by peer-2-peer dynamics. I'm foreseeing wonderful possibilities in collaborative approaches that reduce the expert content to being a mere catalyst. I'll write more about all that in the near term. When I'm exploring different ways to cultivate comprehension, I rely on a framework of four kinds which call for four different production strategies. Here's a brief look at that framework:

• Academic comprehension can be machine graded. The complexity of any deeper or more useful comprehension gets reduced to one right answer on multiple choice questions. Academic comprehension grasps definitions, categories and conceptual abstractions. It avoids those messy gray areas where categorical precision breaks down. Materials designed to cultivate academic comprehension include textbooks, visual aids. study guides and lectures.
• Commercial comprehension can be demonstrated by personal conduct. The skill, method, technique or routine gets comprehended by doing it repeatedly. Comprehension yields reliability, self-correction and consistency. It pays to know how to do these things the right way to comply with an employer's policies, job descriptions, work flows and best practices. Experiences designed to cultivate commercial comprehension include imitation of an exemplar, practice drills and games to be played by the rules.
• Pragmatic comprehension can be demonstrated by successfully troubleshooting a malfunction. The diagnostic protocols, analytical frameworks and predictive models get comprehended by applying them to many varied situations with feedback about the outcomes. Pragmatic comprehension is intended to effect the situation getting understood. The comprehension may resolve, alleviate, de-escalate, redirect, liberate, transform or eliminate the situation. Experiences designed to cultivate pragmatic comprehension include scenarios, immersive role plays and internships.
• Paradoxical comprehension can be demonstrated by knowing when to forego this comprehension. The understanding of the comprehension in context realizes how to keep it in balance with other concerns, time it's application, disrupt excessive pursuits and apply it judiciously. Paradoxical comprehension grasps a whole understanding of it's categorical opposite, reversed application and larger set for which it is a subset. A paradoxical comprehension may show how to get the result by doing nothing and how to solve the problem by making it worse. Experiences designed to cultivate paradoxical comprehension include contradictory valid arguments to resolve and recursive phenomena to explain.