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In the spirit of peer learning, the workshop was active and peer-driven. We all walked out of the workshop with something we could do or share to help one another. The effect was especially powerful for some participants who uncovered very deep emotions when the conversation turned to things that really mattered to them and ways they could accomplish some of their goals together. We look forward to doing more of these workshops at different community gatherings, universities, and conferences in the future.

The overall process we used to run this workshop was roughly*:

• A few weeks before the conference, we started a conversation about the workshop on an online social network tool Ashoka U set up called pathable. We told participants that this workshop would be an opportunity for them to develop their own peer-led courses and asked them to brainstorm some course topics in advance. The community came up with many great ideas, including: engineering for non-engineers, social change theory, and arts for social innovators. The diversity of the suggestions, and excitement about them, helped illustrate that there is a lot of need for this type of learning.
• Finally, on the day of the workshop, we greeted all participants at the door with a handshake. We informed them that this would be a participant-driven workshop, which meant that they would run the majority of the session. Therefore, we asked them to mingle with each other about what they wanted to learn and what they hoped to get out of our time together.
• While participants talked at tables, we walked around and made sure groups understood the discussion prompts. After five minutes, we walked around again and recorded ideas for topics people hoped to cover in this workshop. The topics fell into two categories: topics for courses they wanted to brainstorm together that day, or technical issues of peer-led courses at universities (e.g. how to award credit for student-initiated courses).
• We gave a very brief (~2m) introduction that established why we think P2P and DIY learning is essential if we hope billions of people will educate themselves to their full potential.
• Next, we shared a list of resources with each table and asked each group to discuss it and add their own resources to it, including themselves if they had some experience they wanted to offer up to others. We promised to add their contributions to the final list we would share with everyone afterwards.
• We then gave an overview of the many types of peer learning models out there, including peer-led courses, student-faculty co-created courses, peer-advising, DIY learning plans, challenges, mentorships, skillshares, and more. In particular, we gave an overview of our experience with the Citizen Circle model of peer learning.
• All of that ground was covered very quickly. From that point forward we turned the workshop over to the participants. We asked participants to go to one side of the room if they were interested in talking about technical issues of peer-led courses and to the other side if they were interested in brainstorming actual courses they could go back and create.
• In the technical details track, Laura facilitated a bigger conversation to get key questions on the table and to start to answer them together. After 15 minutes of initial conversation with the larger group, they decided to break off into smaller groups to use the rest of the time to discuss 1) evaluation of outcomes in peer learning, 2) what teachers could do to support peer learning, and 3) ways to create more physical spaces for peer learning.
• In the courses track, Jenn invited participants to stand in a circle and shoot out topics for courses they wanted to create. Then participants were invited to move towards ideas that they were attracted to, until we had all formed small clusters. In these clusters, we used the rest of the time to brainstorm ideas for courses they wanted to create, including, for example, creativity and exploration (as a tool for cultural understanding), “making peace” with troubled communities, and industrial arts.
• We closed by offering that anyone who went back and actually tried something- for example, doing one experiment in peer learning and sharing it with their friends back home- and told us about it, would be featured in our blog.

Jenn, Laura, and I got a lot out of planning this workshop together.  We tried a few techniques we’re sure to use again- for example, the ‘popcorn’ style of suggesting and self-sorting participants into groups.  We also identified things we can improve the next time we are facilitating conversations about DIY and peer learning in universities.  For example, we were prepared to help participants go back and create learning experiences together, but, for the future,  we realized that many in this type of audience would be especially interested in technical issues of organizing peer-learning programs.  In the future, we plan to be prepared to offer more tangible ways to help participants leave with plans to take action toward starting or improving their own programs (not just individual courses) after the workshop.

We look forward to hearing about what impact the workshop had on participants’ lives and their universities!

You can see the full notes here, including the resource lists we handed out (which was added to by the participants).

* You can also see the full agenda we wrote beforehand here, but one should note that this plan required considerable flexibility and improvisation on the fly.

Thanks to everyone who made Tuesday night’s launch of the Winter 2012 round of Citizen Circles a lot of fun and really generative.

Thanks to Hub DC, Monday Night Activity Club, and the JamJar for hosting us. Thanks to the many organizations and individuals who also helped promote the event, including Bread for the City, IDEA, the Washington Peace Center, the Future Project, the World Bank Junior Professionals, Knowledge Commons DC, and the DC Learning Collective.

Be sure to signup to join the following Citizen Circles that formed as a result of the brainstorming.  Each of these groups are planning their first meetings in the next two weeks (by the first week of February).

• Privilege and Social Justice
• Community Organizing
• Systems Mapping in the Community
• Creative writing
• Exploring the City
• Climate Action Organizing
• Education Organizing
• Responsible Fatherhood
• Food justice
• Urban Farming, Picking, and Preserving
• Building community wealth
• Social Justice, Diversity, and Inclusion (already in progress)

We welcome feedback on the event in the comments or by emailing us at cocreate@citizencircles.com.

If you missed it, you can always propose a topic at any time!  We’re here to help you promote your idea, find members, and get started.

Why are we learning in Citizen Circles?

• To develop personal relationships with others who share our values
• Apply ideas we’ve had in our head into practice
• Learn more efficiently by learning from each other’s experiences and splitting up reading with a group
• To fill a void felt after college
• To learn in a way that’s fun!
• To learn something wildly different from what we are used to

Whatever your reasons, it was clear that we all learned not just about resilience or building community wealth, but also about the  process of learning.  Here are some of those lessons that got shared with the larger group.*

Going forward, we’ll be sure to…

• Remember to incorporate some fun! Even if the topic is serious, it’s easier to get excited about coming to an evening that includes dinner, a fun activity, or even a bottle of wine!  One group made it a ritual to start each week with a 10-minute activity led by one member of the group.
• Create informal times and spaces (perhaps before scheduled metings) for people to come early, have some coffee and do some planning, reading, or work to prepare. Greg in Systems Dynamics offered this at his house a few hours before their meeting each Saturday, and found it helped everyone be able to do what they needed to come prepared.
• Surface expectations and goals by no later than the first meeting. We shouldn’t be afraid to break into smaller groups with more focused interests.  Some Citizen Circles this summer tried to hang on too long to bigger groups with too diverse interests. They could have split up earlier, but either did not know this was an option or felt like it was a disappointment to go from 9 people to 4.  In fact, some of the most successful Citizen Circles had only 4 people.
• Think about chemistry. Are you experienced in the topic and looking to deepen your knowledge, do you just have some interest in the topic and want a good survey of the field, or are you experiencing a transition and want to learn something to help you navigate it?  Getting that information out in the open with your group in your first meeting is really helpful in building a team that helps everyone reach their goals.
• Schedule the rest of the meetings at the first meeting. It takes a few minutes, but it frees the group up to focus on content and discussion for the rest of your time together.
• Whoever initiated interest in the topic should plan the first meeting. The first meeting is really important.  You’ll want to plan a good “hook” for the first meeting (a TED talk, a great discussion question, food, etc.) so people have an idea of what it can become. Chemistry and alignment of goals is important, so no hard feelings if anyone doesn’t want to continue after the first meeting.  There was one suggestion to actually sign contracts with each other after that to get all of your goals on paper.
• Draw on existing resources. For curriculum planning, it helps to find a good existing package of curriculum to discuss and pull ideas from.  Even if you don’t end up using it, it’s a great exercise to get some tangible ideas for activities and topics on the table.
• Unless you don’t work, stick to one at a time. It seems that people that participated in only one Citizen Circle got the most out of it.  While some did pull off doing two (one person did three!), we’re not recommending it if you want to get the most out of the experience.
• Use the platform that’s right for your group. Google docs worked well for many Citizen Circles, but there are other options for organizing your group’s conversations and content online, such as P2PU.  For those that used email, keeping one long thread going helped keep everything organized.

* While we hope these tips will be useful to you wherever you are, keep in mind that these reflect our experience in DC.  Your experience- and the methods that work for you- may be very different.

Based on your feedback, going forward we will…

• Focus on the first meeting. We are going to put a lot more emphasis on helping groups pull together great first meetings, where we’ll work to surface expectations and to come to a consensus on a burning question or purpose that unites the group.  We’re going to invite people who were involved in past Citizen Circles to those first meetings to pass on nuggets of wisdom and help answer questions and avoid common traps.
• Make it clearer that Citizen Circles require co-leadership. We’re changing our language to make sure people know that Citizen Circles require co-leadership and that there are many ways that can be exercised (e.g. suggesting an outline for the course, volunteering to lead a session, setting up an organizing tool for the group, etc.).  Groups where each person lead a session (identified readings or other resources which others could access before the meeting) were very successful.
• Have a check-in after 6 weeks. We’re going to treat the 6-week mark as an opportunity to check in and re-evaluate next steps for a Citizen Circle.  Many groups that started this summer wanted to continue, but enjoyed the opportunity to regroup.  It’s great to have the expectation from the beginning that 6 weeks is a check-in and not necessarily an end.

We left the reflection with more energy than ever.  Filled to the brim with so many interesting people and problems that need attention, DC needs this form of learning more than ever.  We look forward to seeing the great things that Citizen Circles will do this Fall!

The basic tool will be piloted early this year, primarily as a learning evaluation tool at first.  Later this year, the tool will be expanded with additional features to help changemakers reflect more deeply on their experience, earn changemaker credentials (badges), and get matched with companies that want to hire talented changemakers.

We are recruiting a team member to help deliver this first phase of work in August and September.  The ideal candidate is:

• Strong in either Django/Python (preferred) or Ruby on Rails,
• Strong in javascript, and,
• Excited by the mission of helping changemakers, and the institutions and companies that want to hire them, recognize talents that matter in this century, like working well in teams and creativity.
• This project has strong ties with P2PU, so depending on your skillset, it may be built as fork of the existing code of the Lernanta project, itself a fork of Mozilla’s Batacuda project.  Familiarity with either is a plus, but not essential.

Compensation and timeline: $4,000 (USD) for phase 1 completion by September 30, 2011.

Contact Jeff and Alan at cocreate@citizencircles.com.

Since December, Julie and co-organizer Laura White have been building a menu of existing resources, activities, discussion topics, project ideas and more which participants will be invited to mold into a learning plan according to their needs and goals in their own local citizen circles. They have also created an example of how to organize those resources to help participants get started, which you can preview on the course profile on P2PU.

Laura, an undergraduate student at Tulane in the Teacher Certification Program, said that “Women as Social Innovators is shaping up to be an exciting learning opportunity for students on our campus. We’ll be exploring opportunities and challenges female changemakers face, and from that, we’ll be better able to make change ourselves.”

Why did you decide to launch this citizen circle?
I think there’s a real information gap in what’s available for women in the business and innovation world. The more I’ve researched for this citizen circle, the more I’ve realized that we’re filling a niche. So much of the material that exists on “women’s empowerment” is targeted at women pulling themselves out of extreme poverty and social inequalities in developing countries. We may share some of the same root issues, but the resources required are very different. There’s very little available in terms of concrete and practical information for educated women who have fresh and innovative ideas, but feel held back by societal pressures, by workplace discrimination or by their own struggles to recognize the assets they have to offer. I want to create a space for participants to think about and work through these issues as well as the strengths and challenges they possess both individually and as a group.

What goals do you have for this citizen circle?
I hope participants will leave the course feeling empowered, self-aware, and more cognizant of the general landscape of challenges and opportunities they will face in their careers. And since this is peer-to-peer, I also hope to learn from my fellow participants and come out with a renewed confidence, better able to pitch myself and my ideas.

What kind of people are you hoping to join? What interests should they have?
Most of our applicants have been women, but that’s certainly not a necessity. We hope to have participants who are passionate about social innovation and who appreciate the need for viewing innovation and entrepreneurship through a gender lens. We want participants who are open to meaningful self-critique, who can identify specific skill sets that will serve them as innovators and who are driven to pursue these skills in an action-oriented way. We don’t want this to be a chore, but an opportunity for participants to engage in meaningful conversation and experiential learning in a topic that they find relevant and pressing in their own lives.

There are many ways you could have organized this course. What was it about the citizen circles model in particular that you were drawn to?
So much of this course is about empowering the participants to recognize the value of their knowledge and experience. Peer-to-peer learning, and particularly study circles, are such a powerful way to actualize this empowerment. By encouraging co-created curriculum, we’re sending the message that every participant has something of value to bring to the group and creating the space for this self-reflection to occur.

The face-to-face component, to me, is essential. Working in small, local groups, participants will have the opportunity to engage in substantial, project-based learning, all the while receiving feedback and positive critique from their peers. In connecting with citizen circles in other areas, we can then share insights, best practices, and generally broaden the scope of our learning. In combination, I think these will create a dynamic forum for inspiring confident and purpose-driven citizens.

Sign up for new citizen circles launching now on the P2PU School of Social Innovation or suggest your own at cocreate@citizencircles.com.

The Sustainability Studio is a project-based course where you’ll make a difference locally with a small group that focuses on one of the core environmental, social or economic aspects of sustainability. Along the way, you’ll build your knowledge and skills, have support from peers in Sustainability Studio, hear from guest speakers and share the story of what you’re doing.

There are many ways you could have organized this studio. What was it about the Citizen Circles model in particular that you were drawn to?
There were three things: first, meeting Alan Webb and Amanda Drozer, I got excited about what they are doing with Citizen Circles. Second, ‘blended’ learning, where you combine on-site and on-line experiences, works really well. Third, sustainability requires action, and citizen circles are small groups of peers co-creating those actions. Seems to me like an unbeatable – and fun – combination!

P2PU and the School of Social Innovation are communities of innovators covering a wide range of social issues – what better place to focus on sustainability for the planet?

What goals do you have for the studio?
To deepen our understanding and to increase our impact in our local communities. I’ll know the studio is a success when everyone in the course reaches the goals they set for themselves – for me, it’s rewarding to be a part of that process.

How do you hope that MSU and MSUglobal will benefit from this project?
I hope that a lot of learning comes out of this; for the participants in the studio, for the MSU faculty that developed the competency framework and openly licensed it so others could build on their great work; for the team at MSUglobal who are always seeking learning innovations to make a difference at MSU; and for our peers in the open education movement who may find our work useful for remixing into their own materials.

What kind of participants are you hoping to attract to the studio?
People who are interested in working on a project with others locally and online, and who are interested in delving into the social, environmental or economic aspects of sustainability. Ideally, you are looking for a way to get involved, you have an idea for a project in the back of your mind, or you just want to try a new way to make a difference – this course will provide the support to make it a reality in seven weeks.

Karl, Kristin, and Stephanie are planning an Art Puzzle on the Farm project in East Lansing Michigan. Joy from Virginia Beach, VA is working on raising Eco Consciousness. Alan is planning to take on a project to help get a local account of wellbeing started in Washington D.C..

Monica, a participant in the Sustainability Studio describes her project:

“Our Jackson Water Stewardship Adventure is an effort to move to the forefront of water stewardship in metal manufacturing, fabrication, and machinery manufacturing. If we do it right, not only can we become better stewards of our part of the Great Lakes basin, which protects current and future generations, but we can spur economic development so badly needed. This venture will seek to reach out to the 5,473 metalworking employees in Jackson County Michigan from 175 establishments and ask them to join us in remaking Jackson Michigan into a green advanced manufacturing hotspot. In this first step we are seeking people who want to help green their practices and who will discuss what that means to them. We plan to video record their stories to share widely through the Sustainability Studio network and other networks.”

What will participants have to show for their work?
“Participants will create a digital story to share their project and inspire others – and possibly some of the new P2PU badges to recognize their efforts.”

Sign up for new citizen circles launching now on the P2PU School of Social Innovation or suggest your own at cocreate@citizencircles.com.