Pippa Buchanan - Photo by Mark Niehus

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller

Hi, I'm Pippa, an Australian living in Berlin, Germany.
I'm passionate about learning, particularly lifelong and self-organised learning styles. I currently work as an educator and developer of learning related technologies.
I make things such as clothes and at least one small boat and cook, eat and read. I like stories. I also like maps, hot cups of tea with milk, Arnott's Western Australian gingernut biscuits, well written songs and plants.

DIY Masters

I’m in the process of exploring the concept of a DIY Masters degree. This self-organised and experimental learning experience is taking place independent of formal learning institutions. Currently, the DIYMasters project is self-funded.

My DIY Masters degree is focused on representations of friendship, the German language, media art techniques and open and increasingly upon the topic of self-organised education.

As a result of thinking about my dream Masters program, I began to think and write about how best to organise this type of self-learning experience without relying on formal institutions. I’ve had to think about how to access teachers, mentors and fellow students, where to get funding and accreditation from. I’ve also had to think about how to access specialist resources from libraries when I’m not a formally recognised student who doesn’t speak the local language. I’m just at the beginning of this questioning and learning process and I’m sure that more challenges will arise.

The challenges I face are not just restricted to my experience. Around the world people are unable to access formal further education for many reasons such as lack of resources (time and money) and physical and cultural isolation. At the same time we live in a world where information, learning and communication resources are becoming more efficient and available.

How can we enable more people to have valuable learning experiences using readily available resources?

How can people share their experience of learning as well as the knowledge that they are acquiring?

Over time I’ll learn from these challenges and to gather together resources and tools to assist people in making connections which will aid in their learning process. So far I’ve had some great feedback from people thinking about very similar topics and I’m hoping that together we’ll be able to develop some amazing resources to help people learn everything they want to know.

I’m currently looking for people to get involved with my DIY Masters project as mentors, teachers, peers, task masters and sponsors.

You can read more about the beginning of the process here and you can follow my progress via the DIYMasters category.