Group items tagged

Seth Kahan on CEO peer groups--way to control risk-taking with small group of co-learners 3. CEO Peer Groups form in DC & Chicago - Chicago has One Opening I have been leading CEO Peer Groups since 2009. They are an opportunity to take a year long journey together with 3-4 other CEOs under my facilitation. These special groups are made up of 4-5 leaders who work together to develop leadership performance, improve their results, and dive deep into both strategy and tactics. It is a safe place to expose vulnerabilities and get powerful assistance for the most challenging situations. Ultimately it is about raising the bar on your leadership performance through a community of peers."

Connected Learning, a new research-driven initiative was introduced at the Digital Media and Learning Conference 2012. This blog post by Jackie Gerstein discusses its essence and includes TED video of Henry Jenkins and separate video of Mimi Ito. See excerpt on core values and principals of connected learning: At the core of connected learning are three values: Equity - when educational opportunity is available and accessible to all young people, it elevates the world we all live in. Full Participation - learning environments, communities, and civic life thrive when all members actively engage and contribute. Social connection - learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity (http://connectedlearning.tv/connected-learning-principles). This initiative is being driven by the following design principles: Shared purpose - Connected learning environments are populated with adults and peers who share interests and are contributing to a common purpose. Today's social media and web-based communities provide exceptional opportunities for learners, parents, caring adults, teachers, and peers in diverse and specialized areas of interest to engage in shared projects and inquiry. Cross-generational learning and connection thrives when centered on common interests and goals. Production-centered - Connected learning environments are designed around production, providing tools and opportunities for learners to produce, circulate, curate, and comment on media. Learning that comes from actively creating, making, producing, experimenting, remixing, decoding, and designing, fosters skills and dispositions for lifelong learning and productive contributions to today's rapidly changing work and political conditions. Openly networked - Connected learning environments are designed around networks that link together institutions and groups across various sectors, including popula

I like this term "free-range learning" and believe it might be part of the Studio language. "Ms. Morgan borrows the phrase "free-range learning" to describe students' behavior, and she finds that they generally shop around for content in places educators would endorse. Students seem most favorably inclined to materials from other universities. They mention lecture videos from Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology far more than the widely publicized Khan Academy, she says. If they're on a pre-med or health-science track, they prefer recognized "brands" like the Mayo Clinic. Students often seek this outside content due to dissatisfaction with their own professors, Ms. Morgan says." Also this comment: I don't think academe has really come to grips with the very large role peer-to-peer sharing plays in the way students learn. We proved this interesting phenomenon this year in a very large online course that we were in the process of redesigning. One section of the course piloted the redesign, which had dropped the former textbook in favor of all online content, cut out 1/3 of the subject areas covered in the old version of the course and changed the assignment instructions and interaction modalities radically. Despite the fact that all students in the pilot section were fully informed that they were in a different and new course, and were required to go though an extensive introductory module covering all aspects of the new version of the course, including the syllabus, and were required to pass a test covering the course requirements and structure, we still had something like 5% of the students turn in work that was based on the old course assignments and old course structure. Some of them had apparently not read any of the assignment instructions from their own section, and were relying entirely on peers in other sections for information on how to complete assignments.

article on business owner-peer support groups, NYT, May 24, 2012. Ken Prest sent me this article. Interesting set-up. What is/should be transferrable to Studio idea?

"Enrolling in MOOCs has a lot to do with what drives me, and what I think drives most adult learners: the desire to understand, to know and to increase personal competency." Organic learning communities are replacing formal lectures. Self-discovery coupled with peer-to-peer interaction, sharing and co-learning is transforming the learning landscape

example of structure peer learning exchange

Great post on Resource Link, October 19, 2011, on value of twitter to professional learning community building. Found it via my Twitterers. Research has identified six 'common patterns of participation' for users of Twitter: Sharing Knowledge and Resources - sharing links to blogs, images or video clips of interest. Monitoring Educational New Sources - sourcing professional readings and research Digitally Attending Important Conferences - sharing thoughts and reflections from professional development sessions or conferences. Encouraging Reflection - engaging in a reflective conversation with others Gathering Instant Feedback - turning to Twitter as the first point of call when needing answers about their practice Mentoring Colleagues - turning to Twitter to find a digital mentor for yourself or a peer. (From Ferriter, W. M., Ramsden, J. T., & Sheninger, E. C. (2011). Communicating and Connecting with Social Media. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.) How to get started: 1. Set up a Twitter account 2. Find people to follow 3. Learn some hashtags #_____ 4. Manage your posts

announcement on peer support groups on Facebook for Nonprofit staff members and EDs of nonprofits

Post by Katie Salen, July 26, 2012, Leveling Up project at Connected Learning Research Network. I like this emphasis on individual and collective gains in connected learning networks. And how connected learning is "value additive." Excerpts: "Further, because connected learning, as a model, advocates for experiences that offer low barriers to entry and information, social supports for learning, and diverse opportunities for the development of interest and expertise, it must also advocate for outcomes that are both individual and collective in nature. It is no longer enough to develop metrics and pathways for individual outcomes; we must also find ways to recognize outcomes produced by groups or communities and provide pathways for collective participation. Or so our hypothesis goes." As a community, the members of Ravelry produce knowledge and expertise, projects and products with academic, civic, and peer value. The welcoming nature of the site and the mere existence of the thousands of groups it hosts are mechanisms inviting participation and the development of shared knowledge. Conversely, the environment provides individuals with opportunities to acquire social, economic, and cultural capital, to learn domain-specific content and skills, and develop metacognitive skills and learning dispositions. Unlike models of learning that center solely on individual outcomes and competition for zero-sum resources and rewards, like those seen in most schools, Ravelry exemplifies how connected learning is value-additive, elevating individuals and collectives in an integrated way. High-functioning connected learning environments are characterized not only by engaged learning at an individual level, but by high quality content and standards and collective purpose that is shared by all participants.

article from Mazur group on active learning methods that students engage in

Blog post by Chris Collison on 2.26.13, that discusses reciprocity in fostering a learning atmosphere and adoption of best practice in an organization. Excerpt: "Reciprocity is an important principle for knowledge management, and one which underpins the idea of Offers and Requests. Offers and Requests was a simple approach, introduced to make it easier for Operations Engineers at BP to ask for help, and to share good practice with their peers. The idea was for each business unit to self-assess their level of operational excellence using a maturity model, and identify their relative strengths and weaknesses. In order to overcome barriers like "tall poppy syndrome", or a reluctance to ask for help ("real men don't ask directions"), a process was put in place whereby every business unit would be asked to offer three areas which they felt proud of, and three areas which they wanted help with. The resulting marketplace for matching offers and requests was successful because: i) The principle of offering a strength at the same time as requesting help was non-threatening and reciprocal - it was implicitly fair. ii) The fact that every business unit was making their offers and requests at the same time meant that it felt like a balanced and safe process."

excellent explanation by Tom Vander Ark on why parent-managed learner profiles are becoming more important all the time for young people.  Is the corollary true for adults owning their learning in portable, digital carry-alongs for sharing with potential employers, etc.  

Wonderful blog post on social learning by Sahana Chattopadhyay, October 19, 2014. Identified by Jane Hart. Excerpt: "Then comes the dichotomy of having an enterprise collaboration platform where no one is sharing, where there are no conversations happening, no debates and questions. It's a ghost town. At the end of the day, the platform doesn't matter. The culture of the organization does. An organization with an essentially command and control approach, an overly competitive outlook, and a repressive environment is not yet ready for social learning." Does this mean the employees are not engaging in "social learning"? Not at all. Learning has been social ever since human life was born on this planet and will continue to be so, with or without technology. Individuals will get their work done by talking to peers, reaching out to their network, and bringing their #pln and #pkm to work.

excellent article by Jennifer Chandler and Kristen Scott Kennedy on building capacity through networks, February 5, 2016. 

Article in Bloomberg Business by Brent Arslaner, Unisfair, Inc. and Spencer Jarrett, InVision Communications, 2009 on pros and cons of virtual meetings replacing f2f meetings.

Blog post by Lisa Lane early this month (November 2012 explaining to another online instructor how she built a system for aggregating students' blog posts that may be relevant to WLStudio series and "sharing" activities? She uses FeedWordPress. Excerpt: "Participants set up their own blog wherever. Then I need to get the feeds from those blogs into the Pedagogy First! aggregated blog, using FeedWordPress. I use the Add Link widget (yes, I know it's old) so participants can add their own, and have provided more extensive instructions for them about blogs and feeds. In particular, we want people who post on many subjects to not only use the "potcert" tags for their posts, but use the feed for that tag only. This is so only their class-related posts show up on the class blog. The back end of this process is a little more complicated. When participants enter their information in Add Link, it goes directly into the Blogroll. The Blogroll is what feeds into FeedWordPress as a default. I customize the titles of feeds and the names of participants to use their real names for everything. I change the titles of feeds by going into FWP's Syndication area and using Feeds & Updates. Using the drop down menu to bring up a particular blog, I change the title and click manual control so it doesn't revert back the next time the feed updates. When I do this, it seems to update automatically in the Links area. Then I go to Users and make sure their names are their full names by editing them individually."