System Conveners in Education

Last week I was invited to participate in the Connected Educators event: Systems Convening in a Complex Landscape. This all came about following the Cutting Edge BEtreat workshop in Grass Valley California. More about the workshop itself when I get to my backlog of draft blog posts!

I offered to prepare a bit of a summary of the session. I thought it would be a good way for me to dig in a little further on this topic because the draft chapter shared by Bev Wenger-Trayner during the workshop completely grabbed my attention.

The above image is my first attempt at graphic recording on an iPad. I've doodled here and there, but never actually created a summary, saved it, then shared it. Any other graphic recording work I've done was with paper, markers and pastels. For this I used Sketchbook Pro. I need lots more practice, but was happy that I managed figure out a few things! Layers are now my friend, and I'm about to purchase a new pen. :-) 

Summary

Panelists and Facilitators 

• Bev Wenger-Trayner: Social Learning Theorist and Consultant
• Etienne Wenger-Trayner:  Social Learning Theorist and Consultant
• Patrice Cunniff Linehan: National Association of State Directors of Special Education, IDEA Partnership
• Nancy Movall: K-12 Online Learning Specialist, Iowa Communities of Practice and Innovation
• Leisa Gallagher: Director of a Dropout Prevention Initiative, Michigan Department of Education, Office of Special Education
• Sylvia Currie: Director of Professional Learning at BCcampus, Canada
• Julie Duffield: Director at Schools Moving at WestEd
• Darren Cambridge: Director of the Connected Educators initiative at the American Institutes for Research

Format

• 90-minutes, WebEx
• Conversational style, maximize time for Q&A
• Open invitation, no cost

Agenda

• Overview: learning landscapes of practice 
• Overview: system conveners in landscapes of practice
• Panelists: briefly discuss one thing that resonates in own context
• Concluding summary

Participation

There were approximately 19 participants. As with any open web conference the numbers went up and down.

Roles and interests of participants included:

• Technical Assistance Provider/ Consultant 
• researchers, consultant, learner …(I'm not entirely sure!) 
• Technical Assistant provider working with states and national organizations 
• Learning theorists and learning consultants 
• Education Marketing Manager with Cisco 
• director of professional learning - higher ed in BC
• high school teacher director of a dropout prevention initiative for the Office of Special Education in the Michigan Department of Education 
• WestEd, working at schoolsmovingup 
• 21st Century Digital Learning Environments (a design consultancy) - Narrative Design 
• Curator for the NROC Project's Connected PD 
• Senior Associate w Natoma Group, consult on Future of Learning, Participatory design 
• build designs that link Education to Real World participatory designs (Michigan) 
• developing National Center for Literacy Education
• convener 

Participants wanted to learn more about:

• the characteristics of 'boundary spanners' 
• presenters' and participants' real-life experiences sustaining communities of practice
• system convening how we might benefit from mutual sharing of our experiences and stories

What popped?

Word used most frequently during session:

Characteristics of a system convener:

• strategic
• upbeat
• patient
• W I D E  vision
• passionate

What is REALLY important to keep in mind?:

• Find ways to have meaningful encounters across boundaries
• Trust in what we know
• Keep message consistent but adaptable
• Focus on the students (not on the organizations)
• Honour the work that came before
• See how to continue to the work TOGETHER
• The convener is often the only one seeing the vision
• What is consequential or relevant is open for negotiation
• Go at other people's pace
• Never give up!

Our work/challenges

• Helping people to reframe what they are already doing/ have invested in in terms of the vision you have for how the system could look in the future
• Negotiating and understanding the different viewpoints
• Telling the stories - aspirational narratives --  robust and also emergent
• Reconfiguring spaces across the landscape (rather than creating something new)
• Developing leadership among different groups (rather than being the leader)

Conclusion

We need a community of systems conveners!

BC Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses Community

At BCcampus we support communities of practice as a key component in professional learning and sharing across the BC post-secondary sector. The range of support we offer in these partnerships is tailored to specific needs, and includes consultation services, workshops, and online infrastructure for collaboration and sharing.


The BC Healthy Minds/Healthy Campuses community is an example of a multi-institutional community that not only spans colleges, universities, and institutes in British Columbia and beyond, but also many roles are represented in the dialogue to promote healthier post-secondary environments -- from presidents to student service professionals to students who have many challenging stories to share. 

In this video I interview Jonny Morris. We chat about the community growth and success, his experience in the community steward role, and the many activities that help to shape the community. Special thanks to our talented co-op student, Heather Kincaid, for her editing work!


Cross-posted on the BCcampus blog.

Cutting Edge BEtreat

I'm in Grass Valley, California this week for the "Cutting Edge" BEtreat, a workshop that's I've had on my wish list since it started in 2010. 

To prepare for this 4-day workshop we were asked to:

1. Introduce ourselves. We're using Wikispaces so the bios are collecting on one page. So nice to see the growing list of friendly faces and interesting backgrounds. 

2. Think about our challenges and questions. During the flight, a meandering drive from Sacramento, a couple relaxing walks around the town, and breakfast I've been jotting down notes in Evernote and on napkins. It seems I have a few challenges and questions.

3. Bring some artefacts that represent my work. From what I gather, these pieces will become part of our booths which we are creating this afternoon. We'll each be building an online "booth" in wikispaces as well so I'll share some of that out. 

4. Read a couple draft articles written by Etienne and Bev Wenger-Trayner. One was about the role of the systems conveners, and woah could I ever relate to that one. I think this is prime time for me to be engaged in these conversations.

5. Choose a leadership role. I decided to pair up with another workshop participant to take on the role of Social Reporter. This is something I did during the 2011 Graphic Facilitation Workshop in Rossland, and feel I could freshen up my tool list and see what else is possible. 

Heading out the door of my room at the historic Holbrooke Hotel to walk up to the Wenger-Trayner residence with my knapsack full of hardware, sunblock, and a blank notebook. More as it happens!

2012 Gathering of Online Community Enthusiasts

Logo design by Diana Chan

The 4th Annual Gathering of Online Community Enthusiasts, hosted by BCcampus, is next week! As in previous years, we have lined this event up with Northern Voice since there is considerable overlap in participants. Once again we are blessed to have many helping hands to make this day happen. This year John Smith, Michelle Laurie, Nancy White, Dave Pollard, and Alice MacGillivray have all volunteered their time to plan and facilitate.

The theme this year is facilitation. It's a huge topic, so we narrowed it down to focus on facilitating scheduled activities. The idea is to use a variety of facilitation techniques, provide plenty of opportunities for the participants to guide the selection of topics, and include a lot of meta-conversation about the techniques themselves. Being a group of online community enthusiasts a common thread throughout the day will be to think about if and how each activity could be implemented online.

We're using etherpad for our rough planning notes, then organizing everything in the OCE2012 wiki. Here'a a wordle of today's meeting.

Are you interested in community of practice work and are able to get to Vancouver, BC? You should join us! There's no cost but you should sign up soon so we know for catering.

What: The 4th Annual Gathering of Online Community Enthusiasts
When: June 14, 2012, 9am - 4pm, then we'll head out for eats and drinks
Where: SFU Woodward's, 149 E. Hastings Street, room 2555

Tag: OCE2012

Update! Join the 1-hour Twitter Un-chat: Facilitating Scheduled Online Activities.

What a team!

Recently at a BCcampus all staff meeting in Sidney, BC I was called upon to say a few words about our outgoing co-op students, Diana Chan and Hilda Anggraeni. I stood up and blurted out "They have changed our lives" then went on to try to explain, which was impossible in a short couple of minutes.

Hilda came to work for BCcampus in fall, 2010 and Diana followed the next semester. Then we latched on to them and wouldn't let them go. :-)

Skype Team Meeting: L to R - Leva, Diana, Hilda, Heather

These co-op students brought so much to the workplace -- talent, enthusiasm, humour, energy, and everything else you can think of when imagining a perfect employee.

But employee is altogether the wrong word; it just wasn't that kind of relationship. As a team we absolutely gelled. We all shared this desire to try out new things, and take risks. We also seemed to be able to thrive in the middle of chaos and uncertainty. But most important, we each had something unique to bring to the table, and we all listened to, and appreciated, all contributions.

It sounds pretty straightforward, but this kind of collaboration is really quite rare. What is even more impressive is that I can probably count the number of times we met face-to-face on one hand. I work from my home office. Leva Lee, Client Services Manager, works from a school district office in New Westminster. Diana and Hilda worked from the Vancouver BCcampus office some days, and other days from their homes or Simon Fraser University. Yet we felt very connected. And we had so much FUN!

Diana has already written a blog post where she shares her experiences working at BCcampus, and also showcases some of her work. Hilda is working on one as well. One thing I'm sure they'll neglect to say as they modestly display the many artefacts they produced --  logos, websites, prototypes, videos, blog posts, help documentation, guides, and on an on -- is the break neck speed in which they worked. They were able to make sense of complex issues and needs, sometimes requiring a lot of digging into the history of communities or earlier conversations and decisions. Then they would come back with brilliant, clear proposals, or the perfect logo, or website design solution, or whatever. WOW. All I could say, everyday, was WOW.

Lately I've been reflecting on why our experiences with working with co-op students was so successful. Obviously what Hilda and Diana each brought to the workplace was outstanding, but there was also something about the team dynamics, and our use of technology to support our work.

From the beginning we agreed that email should be used only when necessary. It's too easy to default to email, and then regret it when you lose track of the history of conversations and decisions. For several months we combined Beluga group messaging (since acquired by Facebook then shut down) with Skype voice meetings. In addition we used Confluence wiki where Hilda and Diana each had their own "job jar" space to keep track of projects and progress, as well as store sample work and files. We also used Dropbox for many of our shared files, and Google Docs for some work-in-progress. We experimented a lot, and the conversations around what worked and why was part of the fun.

Eventually we settled on Skype as our main venue for communication, and set up a "perpetual chat". The result is that in a single space we have a record of all of our conversations for the past 15 months. If you go back to the beginning of our history, it takes a long time to load! And every Friday we scheduled a check-in (also Skype, and combined with our perpetual chat) for an hour or so for project updates and to brainstorm / problem-solve. If, at any time, the text conversation was getting hard to follow or we need to quickly reach a consensus, we'd just switch to audio.

When it came time to hire a co-op student for the summer semester, it only made sense for Hilda and Diana to be involved in the interviews. In fact, they took charge of the entire process -- resume reviews, short list, interviews, welcoming committee, and training. Enter Heather Kincaid, the new, energetic member of our team. It has been such a smooth transition.

Last week I smiled when Diana popped into the perpetual Skype chat to offer some WordPress expertise. It made me realize that the team was still connected after all.

The Impact of Open Practices

Cross-posted from BCcampus Opening Education

At the spring meeting of  University College and Institute Professional Developers (UCIPD) hosted by University of Victoria's Learning and Teaching Centre, Karen Belfer shared a story that exemplifies the impact of community of practice engagement and open practices.

Karen is Dean of the Centre for Instructional Development at Vancouver Community College. She attended the fall workshop of the Educational Technology Users Group in Vancouver where Mary Burgess, Director, and BJ Eib, Instructional Designer, at the Centre for Teaching and Educational Technologies, shared a colour-coded poster type resource they use at Royal Roads University for communicating the professional development opportunities available to faculty.

Karen decided to adopt the idea at her own institution, and implemented a modified, online version. It was easy for her to find the original resource because it was located on the Royal Roads University Open Educational Resources site, a project made possible through funding support from BCcampus. The results are quite remarkable. Here, I'll let them tell the story...

  Incidentally, I was also inspired Mary and BJ's presentation, and used their ideas for a similar resource to outline BCcampus Professional Learning opportunities. Here's a sneak preview of the draft created by our talented co-op students, Hilda Anggraeni and Diana Chan.
 

Opening Up Events: Technology Trends and Courage to Adapt

This 2-hour event, Technology Trends and Courage to Adapt, facilitated by Tony Bates and Gary Poole was held yesterday at Vancouver Community College in Vancouver, British Columbia. The organizers connected with the Professional Learning team at BCcampus to see about helping to open up the event to the outside world. We jump at any chance to experiment, so of course we said yes!

We looked into costs for streaming the event -- the high quality route -- and decided we weren't able to go down that path. The VCC Centre for Instructional Development would be video recording the event for later viewing, but we wanted something to do something LIVE. Robin Popow, Leva Lee, along with (amazing) SFU co-op students Diana Chan, Hilda Anggraeni, and Heather Kincaid, came up with a plan:

Before the event

1. Announce the event on the Opening Education blog
2. Circulate the announcement using a variety of channels (email, Twitter)
3. Decide on a hashtag that is not currently being used #techcourage
4. Contact people with DS106radio experience to see what steps we need to take to broadcast the event
5. Determine what equipment/software to use and where it will be placed (Ask: Will the speakers be moving around a lot? Can you monitor the broadcast where it is placed? )

During the event

1. Have one person responsible for broadcasting the event via DS106radio 
2. Take photographs and post them via Twitter, or later somewhere else
3. Designate a couple people to tweet, using #techcourage and also #openinged and #ds106radio as appropriate
4. Follow the twitter stream for any alerts that the broadcast isn't working, or links are broken, and all the other usual stuff that goes awry!

After the event

1. Storify the event
2. Blog about it

I participated from my home office and the others were on site. From my end I had difficulties with the broadcast. Others reported that they shared my "chipmunk" experience, yet it seemed to work fine for the rest. Overall I think a radio broadcast combined with sharing of images and highlights through twitter is an excellent low budget way to open up an event to the rest of the world. Better than low quality streaming? Probably! 

Diana Chan created this storify and wrote this blog post (to come soon!) from the participant's perspective.  I gathered together the artefacts into a different storify below because I wanted to include everything so it could be reviewed as a process.