Dive Brief:

• Imagine a university where students don't have to answer to a strict instructor, can design their own learning experiences and are in complete control over what they and their peers learn. That's the concept behind '42,' a brand new university that just opened its flagship campus in California, according to a report from the BBC.
• The school is based off of the work of French technology billionaire Xavier Niel, who founded '42' in Paris, France in 2013. The university operates on a unique form of peer-to-peer learning, sans instructors, whereby students teach each other and achieve certain levels of completed projects, mainly in programming and other technical fields. Upon graduation, students of 42 in Paris have gone on to work for large companies like Amazon, Tesla and IBM. 
• The US campus of 42 is geared towards those who have been turned off or short-changed by traditional educational systems. Brittany Bir, COO of 42 in CA told BBC that feedback from employers has been positive; many have said that 42 graduates are more self-motivated to find information and problem solve.

Dive Insight:

Corporate learning could easily model after the example that 42 is providing, encouraging employees to proactively discover knowledge that they can use to complete work projects. While there are some who criticize this extreme form of peer-to-peer learning, there are many who believe it to be a refreshing way of looking at human learning.

With so many more resources available at our disposal, companies can tap into some of the hands-off learning ideals that 42 incorporates -- such as giving employees a chance to research, having them work collectively on projects, challenging them to come up with new and better ways of doing things, and recognizing their achievements.