Category: learning

From the Archives: Getting Real About “Experiments” and Learning from Eugene Kim

More from 2014, more form Eugene Kim, more that is still relevant 8 years later. Go figure. (And I am down to 100 drafts from the blog draft archives. FYI, I am deleting straight out about 30% as I go either due to bad links or unremarkable content. About another 30% are simple repointers, like this one. And the rest I’m either saving or reworking. The experiment, haha, continues!)

Child writing phonetically on a white board about having a good idea...
I have a good idea…

What does this mean for groups that are working on anything complex and are trying to learn?

First, be intentional, but hold it lightly. Know what it is you’re trying to learn or understand, and be open to something else happening entirely. Measure something. Be thoughtful about what you measure and why.

Second, be accountable. Track your learning progress. Review and build on previous results. Be transparent about how you’re doing. Don’t use “experiments” as a proxy for doing whatever you want regardless of outcome.

Third, be humble. Despite your best efforts, you may not be able to conclude anything from your experiments. Or, you might draw “convincing” conclusions you might validate again and again, only to discover that you are totally, entirely wrong.

via Getting Real About “Experiments” and Learning.

From the Draft Archives: Self Organized Learner Support from Jenny Mackness

Jenny’s reflections apply to far more than learning contexts! It connects with the recent post on Stewardship.

birds flying over bushes at dawn

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So a key aspect of support is fostering a sense of self-reliance and this might require some ‘de-schooling’. It gets away from the ‘what can we do to support you’ approach, to ‘what can you do to support yourselves’ approach. The support is still there but it takes a different form.What would this mean in practice? Some of the following thoughts come to mind:

  • Explicit, up front discussion about the meaning of ‘support’ in these terms.
  • Clarity about and discussion of expectations
  • Provision of an environment which is ‘true’ to these principles such as described by the factors we have used in our research on emergent learning
  • Provision of tools that maximize the power of individuals to manage their own learning
  • Modelling and demonstration of self-organisation by the course conveners
  • Standing back and letting the learners get on with it, i.e. letting go of control

And perhaps the last point is where the shift might be difficult to make. So much of a traditional course is based on authority and control. Learners will not learn to self-organise unless we ‘let go’, even if that means letting go of traditional ways of thinking about learner support.

via Learner support in MOOCs. An alternative perspective | Jenny Connected.

From the Archives: Reason, Purpose and Getting to the NUBBINS!

Close up of a piece of driftwood on the beach that appears to have a face on it.
What do we see when we look in new ways?

This draft post from 2013 was worth my time to go revisit and read the three blog posts in the list below (two from 2006, one from 2013, one re-found via the Wayback Machine/Internet Archive – donate!) I’ve decided to pluck one thing from each list and comment on it below (in italics). These three lists, these three BLOG POSTS still open up new vistas for me. For you?

I am not a fan of lists, but I appreciate the value of the form. What I really dig is when the lists open up a new vista or light up a light for me.

  • Half an Hour: Things You Really Need to Learn, Stephen Downes, 2006  
    • Stephen’s post still rings true, and one of his bullet points relates to a conversation-in-comments that Alan Levine, Ton Zylstra and I have been having in a recent post of mind about what we pay attention to and how we pay attention. #3, How to Read and #10, How to Live Meaningfully seen particularly salient and poignant in our times where consumerism meets climate change meets pandemic meets threats of war. What matters. I know I want to pay more attention to what matters. And WHAT MATTERS. 
  • Ten Things to Learn This School Year 2006 Guy Kawasaki (Via the Wayback Machine)
    • I agree with Stephan that Guy’s list is more about how to succeed in business. It doesn’t inspire. But I have to chuckle when I see #2, How to Survive a Poorly Run Meeting and #3, How to Run a Meeting. We really don’t learn, do we. Why is this still an issue? Oi!
  • How to Create Your Reason by Umair Haque, 2013
    • Umair is regularly thought provoking and this is no exception. Plucking one from his list is as hard as plucking two from Stephens, but I’m going to hit one that has resonance for me, right now, as I reexamine my work/life. Radical Simplicity. What can I/we stop doing, right now, to make space for what matters? Creative destruction, my friends, is a super power. 

From the Archives: Saying Just Enough: Judicious Use of Prompts

From the draft archives 2013. Yes, I’m up to 2013. The little gif is just for fun!

An animated giff of my grandchild dancing

One of my yoga teachers is really good and putting together a great flow sequence. She is observant and gives good verbal suggestions during poses. But her narrative runs non stop for the whole hour. Even the narrative about emptying our minds, turning away from the “monkey-mind” feels like my very own, well, monkey-mind!

Nancy back in 2012

Saying less, clear prompts, and space to listen to the answers. This one still resonates.

From Control to Free Floating Reverie

Fresh Post! No Archive redraft!

Johnnie Moore pointed to a great LinkedIn post by Laurence Barrett that resonates with my current “fallow” project. It is no accident that Johnnie is an advocate of “unhurried!”

Laying fallow, I can reflect, observe and cross-pollinate ideas and experiences that surround me because I have the free time and head/heart space to do that. I am not fully confined by a large set of obligations. Yes, the grandkids are still #1 priority and that is a place for much of my energy, but the freedom from deliverables is quite intoxicating. I am available for reverie!

I’m pulling out two quotes, but it will make much more sense if you go and read the whole post! And don’t miss the P.S. at the bottom, which is fodder for even more reflection and blogging!

Mr. Barrett is talking in the context of coaching and the dynamic of “containment.” When I read it, I immediately thought about how a facilitator may try and contain human interaction in the well-intentioned service of the goal or purpose of a gathering. As group process folks, we have the opportunity (motive! means!) to create containers where people might do something different and more effective if engaged in something more free floating than overly structured.

The older I get, the more I sense that a lot of group process practices are about how we actually make a space less welcoming, “safe,” etc. Instead, Barrett reflects on another way that is less contained, and more “free floating.”

Here we may think of it as a dynamic, mutual and rather messy process of meaning making. Images and associations arise from the unconscious to be exchanged and evolved in what Wilfred Bion termed a ‘reverie’; a free-floating dialogue without defined goals and objectives.

In reverie both coach and client are ‘in’ and committed to the dialogue. Both can potentially be transformed.

And…

If our need to be ‘masterful’ or ‘powerful’ (words I see in some coach training) prevents us from entering a reverie we do not contain our clients, we just limit them.

A client is contained not by the coaches calm, rational, objectivity, but by our engagement and involvement, and both parties may be transformed by the encounter.

Pretending we are wisdom figures may fuel our narcissism or hide our anxiety, but it is definitely not containment.

I have worked hard through my professional life to show up not as some sort of wisdom figure and to engage in reciprocal work and learning. But there are old patterns in there that creep up in my head saying “I know what to do here.” Fully recognizing those moments, and choosing to let go, is something quite wonderful. And a door to reverie. (Using a “door” metaphor also reminds us there are many ways to think about space and containers. See this wonderful piece about other ways to think of space.

P.S. I love the four fundamental principles Mr. Barrett’s company espouses. I love them so much I took a screen shot. Mr. Barrett, if that is not OK, let me know and I’ll take the image down!

Image of four principles of Heresy Consulting. Each has an image, then the words underneath including: All change is a step into the unknown, Only through difference can we learn, Leadership is an expression of the soul, and We are made through our relationships.
The four principles of Heresy Consulting https://www.heresyconsulting.com/