G'day Neighbour Michael Great story - great learnings - great facilitation!
Thanks for posting on List. I'm so delighted that these young'uns are having an early exposure to this way of working with wisdom! AND - the additional riches from intentionally expanding and embracing diversity. AND - here in Western Australia Cheers Brendan On 19/04/2013, at 9:32 AM, Michael Wood wrote: > Had a lovely experience yesterday setting up a little ‘taster’ of ‘self > organisation and Open Space principles’ with a bunch of Engineering Students. > The unit is focussed on Engineering and Social Justice. > > The focus for the students this week was ‘Community Engagement in Engineering > Projects’ so we set up a 2.5 hour session of self-organised conversations on > this theme and asked each student to invite a community member to come along. > We kicked off with 33 students and about 10 guests including experienced > Engineers from industry and some fellow students from other (non engineering) > faculties. > > In opening the circle I briefly explained that we were inviting the group > into some self-organised conversations based on Open Space principles, and > that Open Space would typically be over a 1-2 day period, but that we were > really there to get a feel for how self-organisation works in a relatively > short period of time. I continued with classic Open Space intro (four > principles and one law), structured 2 x 45 minute conversations and a 15 > minute closing circle. In the closing circle I invited participants to > reflect on ‘what did I notice and/or what did I learn from the conversations > I participated in’. > > In opening the circle I was carrying a bit of background anxiety because the > ideal condition for OS of voluntary participation was compromised by the fact > that students were ‘expected’ to be there as part of the course, combined > with the fact they were mainly teenagers (18-20) and well…they were > teenagers. So when I walked out of the circle there was a longer than usual > period of stunned silence (probably only 1-2 minutes but felt much longer to > me). I breathed my way through it, and over a period of 15 minutes the topics > slowly went up on the wall. They then got to work and had 2 hours of rich, > deeply engaged conversation. Really smart, highly reflective, students > engaged in creating a co-learning engagement with each other and, most > significantly, with the guests. > > After the closing circle we had a 30 minute small group/large group debrief > of ‘self organising process and potential application in engineering projects > contexts’. The overall comments were extremely positive. One student > commented how the ‘organic flow’ of the conversations seemed to enable > greater learning that sitting in a classroom listening to a lecture. > > The key learning for me was the extremely high value, to learning, of > diversifying the group through inclusion of ‘outsiders’ (e.g. in this case, > the community guests). I don’t think we would have had anywhere near the same > learning value if we’d just had the students talking about ‘Community > Engagement in Engineering Projects’ if we hadn’t actually included community > members! In other words, we tried to model what we were talking about. > > And another happy outcome is that we introduced 33 engineering students to a > new experience of self organisation and Open Space. > > Michael Wood > Perth, Western Australia > _______________________________________________ > OSList mailing list > To post send emails to OSList@lists.openspacetech.org > To unsubscribe send an email to oslist-le...@lists.openspacetech.org > To subscribe or manage your subscription click below: > http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
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