Interested in Peer Assists?
Check out this great Flash tutorial on Peer Assists. Created by a partnership between Bellanet and the University of Ottawa, this is the first in a series of tutorials that will be translated into a variety of languages. This one also comes in French.
Oh, and don't forget to enlist your friends. 
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posted by Nancy White at 4:17 PM
6 Comments:
Too cute, if a little dry. I mean that's a LONG tutorial for conducting a brainstorming session...I'd love to see something like this on tools like those in the Change Handbook...imagine a cutre little flash app with basic Open Space directions?
The music is great though, and I love the part when th epeers show up and say "We're here!" That must have been a gratifying moment for poor blue Bob, stumped by a tangram
Too cute, if a little dry. I mean that's a LONG tutorial for conducting a brainstorming session...I'd love to see something like this on tools like those in the Change Handbook...imagine a cutre little flash app with basic Open Space directions?
The music is great though, and I love the part when th epeers show up and say "We're here!" That must have been a gratifying moment for poor blue Bob, stumped by a tangram
I like it. Now.. were can I find a good facilitator - rare as hens teeth :(
come to think of it, I think face to face is too problematic. Online peer assist through web conferencing on that larger scale of multiple circles, would be great!
Chris, it would be great to have them for methods in the book.
As to length, I suspect that is context dependent. One of my pieces of feedback was to have a slider and key marks so you can zoom ahead if you need less instruction.
These were designed to introduce the idea to folks with little or no background. Lots of different cultural settings too, in international development. I'll be really curious to see how they are received across those contexts. (I certainly don't know the answer!)
Leigh, it is funny you brought up the online variant. I had been thinking about that a lot as I reviewed the module. On the KM4Dev list we have tried email-list based peer assists with limited success. My sense was we did not get enough attention/energy focused so people could play off of each others' ideas. So it was technically feasible, but with this group, we never got the social dynamic right. I have done it successfully in online forums when again, there is sufficient intent and attention. I rarely call it Peer Assist, though! ;-)
In a very open environment perspective, I think of my blog as an ongoing peer assist. I'm always asking questions of you all, and likewise find it easy when my friends ask questions on their blog. So the wide openness of blogs replaces focused attention of a few peers, with the wider, more random net of many (assuming decent blog readership.)
It is a practice we bloggers have developed and I'm grateful for it, but it is not familiar or easy for others.
Hm. This is probably worth a blog post of its own.
I just blogged about this today before coming back to read the comments. I see a peer assist as essentially the same as an action learning "learning set". As you can find through some of the links I provided, the original concept Reg Revans had of learning sets was as unfacilitated groups.
Leigh mentioned online learning sets (peer assists). I participated in one on the actlist-l mailing list about a decade ago, and it was a very powerful experience for me. I described it briefly in Effective Change Management Using Action Research and Action Learning: Concepts, Frameworks, Processes and Applications. While it's a pretty quiet group these days, you can review their archives if you join the list.
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