Sue's LS Activity

Sue's LS Activity

by Susan Glynn-Morris -
Number of replies: 4

Hi Bettina and Nancy

I'm going to give an online, asynchronous activity a try. I look forward to your feedback as well as to seeing the ideas you two are playing with!

Scenario:

The first asynchronous discussion forum in an online “Introduction to Project Management and Event Planning” course, which is part of a one-year certificate program.

Purpose:

The intention is to help students connect with the concept of Project Management - to see that we are all Project Managers, even if just informally. It’s also an opportunity to brainstorm what makes a project successful, to build connections in the course, and have everyone hear their 'voice' heard at the very start of the course.

Selected Liberating Structure:

1-2-4-All (Riff = 1-3-All)

Invitation:

Think back to a time you 'managed a project' or 'planned an event' - remember your project or event can be informal. What factors do you think contributed to its success (or lack of success)?

Space arrangement & materials:

Moodle discussion forum (standard forum for general use).

Participation distribution:

Everyone is included and has an opportunity to contribute equally.

Group configuration:

Start alone, then groups of three, then as a whole group.

Sequencing & Time:

  • Think back to a time you 'managed a project' or 'planned an event' - remember your project or event can be informal.
  • Write a post in your small group discussion forum, briefly describing your project or event (3-4 sentences). Include how it went and list what factors you think contributed to its success (or lack of success) by Monday night.
  • In your group of three, review your peers’ posts and work together to compile one list of success factors. Have one person from your group share your collective list of success factors on the class discussion forum by Wednesday night.

In reply to Susan Glynn-Morris

Re: Sue's LS Activity

by Nancy White -

Sue, thanks for getting us started. I'm always more motivated when I see someone has jumped in. Now, I'm going to pretend you have turned your back and I'm going to "talk/write" as if you were not here and hopefully soon with Bettina! (I'm super curious about this dynamic in an asynchronous text environment.)

I love that Sue is starting her class immediately with an LS because I think when we do this, it changes everyone's assumptions about their relationship with each other from the get-go. A friend observed that the most significant thing LS did in his teaching practice was create meaningful relationships with his students immediately, and relationships that were full of trust, curiosity and mutual learning. For me, if relationship is going from the start, versus a power dynamic of me/teacher/power, you learning/recipient, I'm super happy. 

Another LS that would also work well here is Appreciative Interviews.  They can be done simply in dyads, or 2-4 with the foursome being harvesting. The difference for me between AI and 1-2-4-All is the emphasis on listening, which is also a great practice to cultivate from the start, but takes a little more set up. So maybe starting simply is simply perfect!

Is there a moodle tool for shared editing (wiki, googledoc like thing) - I love when a group shares the capture/harvest work versus one person doing it. Keith McCandless, one of the LS founders, also often adds a bit of emphasis on the harvest to have people identify the most significant things on the list, not everything. What are the top 2-3 elements of success? What is the biggest challenge. In getting people to do their own sensemaking, I think we learn more than if we harvest EVERYTHING. 

In reply to Nancy White

Re: Sue's LS Activity

by Bettina Boyle -

Playing along...Responding to Nancy, and Sue has her back to us.. :-)

I can definitely see how Appreciative Interviews would be a another good way to achieve the purpose here. That being said, I feel there's great alignment between the purpose, the LS and the description of how. The instructions to “list factors” and “compile a list” are very specific, which I think will really help the learners online and make it manageable given the context of them just starting out in this course.

I wonder how the group will work together in the 3rd step. I struggled with this too. The forum is not the best collaboration space, but since they may not know the other group members yet, agreeing on a different way to connect may take too much away from the task at hand. Maybe there could be a google doc set up for them as you suggested, Nancy. Moodle has a wiki...but it's clunky. 

Another LS that may be fun to play with for an outcome of a list of success factors may be 25/10 Crowdsourcing. Everyone adds their bold idea (in this case, factors that contribute to a project’s success) and the ideas are ranked (1-5 by everyone). I wonder if your LMS (or another tool) could support this ranking so students won’t see other responses before they’ve submitted (ranked 5). The advantage of this is that you end up with a list of Our Top Ten Success Factors. Might be fun to discuss this and come back to this list as the term progresses. Does it still hold true, given what we know now? Why is it so? Why not?

In reply to Bettina Boyle

Re: Sue's LS Activity

by Nancy White -

Yes, Bettina, I'm seeing strings of subsequent LS to do something with the list that emerges. Min Specs to identify the absolute must/must not dos, Purpose to Practice. When we can keep advancing the learning/work, it goes beyond using an LS as something novel, to rethinking social learning in a course group. 

One of my challenges when I was working with professors was to focus on the purpose of each LS use to keep from using them simply for novelty (and I LIKE NOVELTY!!), and their feedback on use in the classroom was that sometimes they got pushback when they used the same LS repeatedly. So there is always this balance. And now I'm rambling. Probably posting before first morning caffeine is NOT a good idea!

In reply to Nancy White

Re: Sue's LS Activity

by Susan Glynn-Morris -

Thank you Bettina and Nancy for your thoughtful feedback. I have had a closer look at the LS options you recommended and can see how this activity could work well with AI and then a variation for asynchronous online of 10/25 Crowd Sourcing (What about using Padlet where people can post individual ideas and others can vote on them?). I like the listening aspect of AI and the way 10/25 comes up with a short list. Sounds like another alternative to 10/25 is Min Specs. Now I have a tiny string! (is two a string :) ?

Best wishes, 

Sue