Peeragogy Handbook/How to use this Handbook

Author: Howard Rheingold

This document is a practical guide to online co-learning, a living document that invites comment and invites readers to join the community of editors; the document does not have to be read in linear order from beginning to end.

If you and a group of other people want to use digital media and networks to co-learn together, this handbook is a practical tool for learning how to self-organize peer learning -- what we call "peeragogy." Material about conceptualizing and convening co-learning -- the stuff about getting started -- is located toward the top of the table of contents. Material about assessment, resources, use cases is located toward the bottom of the TOC. But you don't have to read it in sequential order. Hop around if you'd like. We think -- and some research seems to support -- that understanding how co-learning works will help you do co-learning more effectively. So we've included material about learning theories that support peer learning or that reveal useful characteristics of successful peer learning. For those who want to delve more deeply into the empirical research and scholarship, we've linked to a sister document -- a literature review of learning theory related to peeragogy. For those who want to study more deeply about the aspects of peer learning we summarize in our articles, we provide a list of links to related handbook articles, and a set of resources for further study. Think of our pages as both places to start and as jumping off points.

The short videos, most of them under one minute long, at the very beginning of many articles are meant to convey a sense of what the article and its supporting material is meant to convey.

If you want to see how we go about creating a handbook entry, see our guide for newcomers.If you don't want to go as far as joining the community of editors, please feel free to use the comment thread attached to each page to suggest changes and/or additions.