Study groups?

TPS could create a lot of social capital.

Some things that come to mind. Not sure if these are the sort of comments you're interested in.

Supporting groups

There are some good practices for study groups, according to sources like http://www.lehigh.edu/~inacsup/cas/pdfs/StudyGroups_info.pdf , http://www.collegeboard.com/student/plan/high-school/50432.html and http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/khdraft.pdf . Does TPS help groups use these practices?

For example, if there is Web support with Drupal, there could be a content type called group meeting. It might have CCK fields for agenda, location, leaders, and results. Results could be from communal card writing, where each person contributes two or three sentences about the meeting. A collection of group meeting nodes would form a good record for the class.

Meeting mode

Are meetings all face-to-face? The TPS site implies "yes." However, synchronized audio meetings can be effective as well (Skype-ish things), and may be preferred for people who can't drive a long way.

For F2F meetings, maybe the site could help people find places to meet that are more convenient. For example, maybe there are 5 people within a few blocks of each other in east LA who would like to get together for a class on, say, Gregorian chant as the new street music (wouldn't that be cool?). Maybe people could place themselves roughly on a map (just thinking out loud here), so they could see where there might be concentrations of people in various neighborhoods.

Portfolios and blogs

Not sure if this makes sense either. Each user could have the ability to create a portfolio of stuff created in the classes, or blog about things s/he learned. There could be class blogs as well, where maybe there's a new post after each meeting. Or something.

Kieran