Educational offerings guidelines overview

From [[http://cpsquare.org CPsquare]], the community of practice on communities of practice.

A note about these guidelines

This is a collectively-produced document that seeks to describe somewhat rigorously what we've been doing in the Foundations and other CPsquare workshops over the past 10 years. Writing it is part of our own reflective practice, to make sense of and articulate some of what we've learned over the years. Beyond that, it tries to describe the logic of what we're doing so that prospective participants can better understand what is on offer. It also tries to distill the essence of CPsquare educational offerings to help us remember what is essential and to help us think through what's important as we design and offer workshops on different topics in different settings. It may also help focus attention on what we do not yet know.

See also: Educational offerings guidelines - workshop elements and Educational offerings guidelines - module elements.

Goals and outcomes

• Topics of CPsquare educational offerings are relevant (or adjacent) to CPsquare's domain focus: communities of practice and social learning processes.
• CPsquare's educational offerings are an entry point into the community, serve its members as a laboratory, and showcase member expertise (as leaders, guests, or contributors)
• Our educational offerings give participants the opportunity to stay connected to other practitioners, in the same workshop, in previous or future offerings, through membership CPsquare, or through participation in other CPsquare events.
• CPsquare educational offerings seek to give access to coherent and intact practices, not disembodied bits of information.
• Our educational offerings are inspired and shaped by our understanding of social learning processes and communities of practice:
  • We offer access to conversation, new ideas, authentic practice, and thought leaders.
  • Models and theory (like community, practice and domain) shape our offerings at many levels in addition to being the object of study in the Foundations Workshop.
  • We look for opportunities to demonstrate the power of new participation / reification cycles offered by new technologies and different event designs.
  • Many people take on one of the leadership roles in our workshops and we invite everyone to take the initiative to innovate and improve our offerings.

Context

• The community of practice concept has to do with structure and process rather than specific content or purpose. CPsquare offerings explore successes and failures in social interactions and communities, with the realization that communities of practice can enable learning for a range of purposes, some of which might represent values not held by members and participants.
• The topics that interest CPsquare as a community and its members are relevant to a global audience that spans very different organizational settings and sectors
  • CPsquare is a global community that makes its educational offerings available to an international audience. We regard the effort it takes to deal with diverse time zones, languages and other factors as a learning opportunity.
  • CPsquare is equally committed to serving people in diverse sectors and kinds of organizations. Although that places a demand on everyone involved, contact across our differences is an important benefit of participation.
  • Participants in CPsquare's educational offerings bring significant experience with a variety of tools, technologies, and organizational contexts. Our workshops seek to leverage and build upon that diversity.
• As a community we recognize that offering educational programs requires work. Where possible, members are compensated for their effort.
• CPsquare workshops are inherently labor-intensive both for those who offer them and those who participate in them. The cost to organize, design, deliver, or participate in them is substantial. Where possible, we seek to make them accessible to people with limited time or financial resources.
• CPsquare educational offerings are guided by the conversations within CPsquare about our practice and the world that gives meaning and context for our practice. As a community CPsquare has benefited from its educational offerings; they are organized separately but the benefits of the activity accrue to the community.

Learning mechanisms and processes

• The nature of CPsquare workshops:
  • We deliberately attempt to blur traditional time boundaries around workshops:
    • We seek to make the admissions, preparations, and orientations processes as meaningful as possible.
    • We seek to provide connections for people after the end of a workshop, both in "reunions" and in participation in CPsquare activities. All CPsquare workshops include a free membership in CPsquare for up to 6 months, and participants are invited to consider the value of ongoing participation. Spaces like Facebook groups provide ongoing access as well.
    • We use a "getting to know you" process that allows people to withdraw without penalty.
  • Most of CPsquare's educational offerings are online. We have not offered face-to-face workshops, apart from a few informal dialogs, some informal meet-ups at conferences, and conference sessions or presentations organized by CPsquare members.
    • Our practice is to repeat workshops so that they evolve and improve over time. The design of one-off conferences seeks to apply insights from previous conferences to the current design.
    • We design workshops to maximize the contribution of participants (including people who pay to participate, mentors, and people who are paid to lead workshops).
    • Our choice of tools is guided by considerations such as access, ease of use, kind of engagement supported, cost, and even fashion. Those considerations suggest different tools and the actual tools used need to make sense as a working, integrated configuration of tools.
    • Learning activities variously include synchronous, asynchronous, individual, group, formal and informal elements.
• The nature of workshop participation
  • Participants are encouraged to share experiences, connections, resources, and their best thinking with others during a workshop.
    • Workshop activities emphasize the negotiation of meaning and the construction of collective artifacts. The formation of teams, subgroups and one-to-one relationships are part of the learning process, so our workshops encourage people to engage and reflect on the participation choices that they make.
    • Roles and responsibilities of workshop participants are meaningful, ranging from peripheral participants who mainly read and listen, to very active contributors, to mentors, and workshop leaders.
    • When one participant either has an insight, has a negative experience or drops out for some reason, it affects the learning of the entire group. Therefore mutual accountability and learning partnerships are important design elements in CPsquare's educational offerings.
• The nature of workshop leadership
  • A good online social presence is essential and we design the schedule and our choice of technologies to make interaction with workshop leaders a productive experience all around.
  • Effective leadership of a workshop includes good facilitation, mentorship, one-to-one engagement, back-channel support as well as thought leadership.

See also: Educational offerings guidelines - workshop elements and Educational offerings guidelines - module elements

This document reflects the direct contributions of Alice MacGillivray, Barb McDonald, Bronwyn Stuckey, Etienne Wenger, Jenny Mackness, John Smith, and Naava Frank.