Making Spaces for Connecting, Probing, Reflecting, Creating
A Collaborative Exploration (CE) in which participants investigate the principles or theory about personal and group change that underlie workshop and related group processes
- In brief, CEs are an extension of Problem- or Project-Based Learning (PBL) and related approaches to education in which participants address a scenario or case in which the problems are not well defined, shaping their own directions of inquiry and developing their skills as investigators and prospective teachers (in the broadest sense of the word). (For more background, read the prospectus.)
- If you want to know what a CE requires of you, review the expectations and mechanics.
- on hangout for 1 hour each week in October at date and time TBA to match applicant's schedules. The URL for the first hangout will be provided only to those who register (via http://bit.ly/CEApply), which entails making a commitment to attend that 1st session and at least 2 of the other 3 hangouts.
- If you are wondering how to define a meaningful and useful approach to the topic, let us present a scenario for the CE and hope this stimulates you to apply to participate. We will then let CE participants judge for themselves whether their inquiries are relevant.
- Intended outcomes for participants of this CE are of two kinds:
- a) tangible: that reflect your inquiries and plans about the principles or theory about personal and group change that underlie workshop and related group processes; and
- b) experiential: being impressed at how much can be learned with a small commitment of time using the CE structure to motivate and connect participants.
Applications are sought from teachers, researchers, graduate students, facilitators, and activists who are interested in facilitating discussion, reflection, avid learning, and clarifying one's identity and affinities in relation to the CE topic. Newcomers and return participants are welcome.
Scenario
“Most workshops are dysfunctional—this one wasn’t!” read one evaluation from the first
NewSSC workshop in 2004. Appreciative feedback like that may feel like validation for the any workshop or collaborative processes that you facilitate, but how well can you articulate or support the principles or theory about personal and group change that underlie those processes? Moreover, how would you lead people who experience the dysfunction in many workshops, collaborations, conferences and meetings into making the effort to create something more fulfilling?
This four-session
Collaborative Exploration (CE) is intended to allow participants to delve into the principles or theory that underlie your own workshop or collaborative processes and develop plans to make those processes more effective in some sense(s) that you deem important. Activities will, as they have in CEs since 2013 (and
NewSSC workshops since 2004), build on what the particular group of participants contribute and employ a range of
tools and processes so as to support and learn from each other's inquiries. The topic means that the processes of the CE (and NewSSC workshops) and the ways they make space for people to "connect, probe, reflect, and create" will end up being subject to compare-and-contrast with other approaches to workshops and generative group interactions.