We know designing a creative, participatory community can be tricky. We’re here to help you craft assignments that rule, build an audience and support you along the way. You’ll even learn a few technical skills in the process. Don’t worry, 1s and 0s wash off pretty easily.

Delivered at #Opened14 Conference in Washington DC on November 21, 2014.

Links mentioned: 
 

Just kidding. 

For ’s Learning Technologies course at New York University’s ITP program, I asked the students: 
- How do you learn best? 
- Describe a time you learned something new.

From there we look at ways to build technologies that reflect how we learn best–via learning projects and helping each other.

Learning Products referenced: 
-  
-  
-  
- 

Resources on Creative Learning and Community 
- Mitch Resnick, “All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking) 
I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten” 
- Clay Shirky, “Love, Internet Style"  
- Ana Hevesi,  
- Alex Hillman, "To build a strong community, stop “community managing”, be a Tummler instead.” 
- Vanessa Gennarelli, “Rethinking Assessment, Supporting Diversity"  
- Philipp Schmidt, "The Great Peer Learning Pyramid Scheme" 

It’s a damp evening in Brooklyn, and I’m having dinner with a dear friend who is also interested in online communities. Since we’re both borderline obsessed with the topic, the conversation turns to the difference between the “non-profit” and “for-profit” approaches to community. She dropped the word “scale” and my face drew to a pucker.

“But Vanessa, 

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want your successes to spread?”

Read the rest at

BACKGROUND

From October 19-21, the School of Data (a collaboration between Open Knowledge Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University) held a Data Explorer Mission focused on Garment Factory Data–collecting it, collating it, mapping it, and telling a story with data. This course had several points of innovation and experimentation, including:

• Time: instead of a longer online course, this was more of a “sprint” held over a weekend.

• Tracks: Learners chose one of three different tracks: (1) geocoding garment factories, (2) visualizations to show supply chains, or (3) connecting the dots between factories and brands.

• Trainings: Over the course of the weekend, Liana Foxvog () Nick Rudikoff () and Jasmine Du () ran trainings via Google Hangout.

• Tools: We at P2PU have been prototyping and testing our Unhangout tool () to spawn small conversations around a main video event. Think an unconference, but for video.

WHAT WAS ACCOMPLISHED DURING THE EVENT

• the bulk of a list of over 2000 factories from the using and ;

• Made data from the available as data;

• Consolidated the data we have into a central repository;

• And began prototyping some of the data into

Read the full blog post from Chad Smith and Matt Fullerton here:   FEEDBACK AND LESSONS LEARNED Both P2PU and OKFN folks huddled after the Data Explorer Mission to reflect on what we’d learned. We’d like to take lessons away from this experience in order to scale our learning experiences beyond offline workshops and appeal to a more diverse audience. Also, offline experiences are labor-intensive and not everyone can come to them, and we’d like to maintain the quality of our offline expeditions. Finally, we wanted to understand to what extent the learning events scale, and find out if team learning can happen asynchronously.

GREENS (Things that went well)

• The trainings & tracks. They were interesting and useful.

• Group projects where people could break off a piece and do it together. Track 3 did this well:

• A handful of volunteers connected and decided to follow up on the investigation beyond the data expedition.

• Some actual work was accomplished

• People elected to choose themselves tasks and it was easy to see what they were working on.

• Recruiting trainers and having meetings together beforehand. These were great, and I plan to implement in the future.

• Unhangout as a mission control. The tracks and participants in them were clear and easy to use.

• Facilitation. These folks were great, supportive, took interest in people’s projects.

YELLOW: (Questions)

• Was this a learning experience or a data project? Most of the participants were well-versed in data wrangling, so it’s difficult to tell what was “learned.”

• The difference between Hangout on Air and using Unhangout as a way to simply organize synch hangouts was unclear.

• Diversity. The audience was pretty much NGO/data folks who already knew what to do with data. They were helpful to n00bies, but it was difficult to work on the bigger projects without presupposed knowledge.

REDS (Things that could be improved)

• Our shiny new tool had some hiccups to work out: definitely need to use calendar-farmed hangouts; our one big technical issue was with people getting rejected from hangouts:

• Feature request: chat history for folks who are jumping in to help orient themselves.

• Attendance was low. There were more “insiders” than outsiders/new to data. Perhaps because the ask was “get involved with a problem” as opposed to “Learn data wrangling in the service of solving a problem.”

• Need a clear agenda of the day in the lobby (or linked to from the lobby)

• No good introductions to people entering first time.

• No clearly announced scheduled of catch up sessions.

• Promotion could have been completed earlier.

• Content was important to a particular slice of folks–less interesting to folks outside the NGO world.

• The more complex a topic, the more time is required. Thus a weekend was likely not long enough for the tasks presented.

• Team coordination was a real challenge and a more formal appointment of volunteer would have added some structure for arriving newcomers.

SHOUTOUTS: Who Was a Data Rock Star?

• Anders did an awesome job recruiting volunteer facilitators

• It was great to connect the online expedition with the offline expedition in Brazil - thanks Milena

• Chad Smith and Matt Fullerton were really helpful (these should both be mentor candidates)

• The learning environment setup was valued for NGOs

IDEAS FOR NEXT TIME

• A bit more like an IRC channel than a real offline event: how do developers work to get something done…

• Mass events with basic training OR smaller events (e.g. 10-30 people) which are actually investigations.

• Make more engaging and inviting for new people, ie: the “” Philipp helped design.

Highlights from my graduate research at Harvard University with Howard Gardner. Full paper (with protocol and coding rubric)

The Problem Set

Hi, I’m Vanessa–I’m the Learning Lead at P2PU, which means I work on how to get peers to learn from each other. About a week ago I found myself at , which is like a lock-in for nerdy adults of all stripes. The organizers made some novel design choices for their event, which got me churning about conferences and gender in general. As a Learning Designer by training (and a riot grrrl by trade) I think about how to structure experiences to alleviate  and make an environment . What follows is the research that informs my thinking, and a few concrete ideas for how to design a conference for equity, interaction and learning.

What’s Ordcamp?

About 270 passionate people came together last weekend at the Google offices in Chicago and spent nearly 40 straight hours with each other. The format was an unconference, so the content of the event was generated by the campers. It was the best event I can remember, and I wanted to give props to the Ordcamp design crew on the following points:

• Praises be to Ordcamp for removing the “hustle.” Campers were discouraged from pitching products, and wore their interests on their name tag, not their job title. Campers were encouraged to talk about stuff outside their area of expertise, and to attend sessions they knew nothing about. The result was that campers treated each other as people before the transaction of work.
• Hats off to Ordcamp for a mix of folks. We know heterogenous groups are good for learning, and I noticed efforts by the Ordcamp crew to make it so. I met people from the humanities, the arts, education, not just tech. While it was mostly a youthful crowd, I spoke to several people with more experience in their field. And on the gender diversity front, I’d say about 30-40% of attendees were female-bodied (a purely a from-the-hip number).

These event design choices enable a safe learning environment. I heartily recommend focusing on the personal and designing for a mix of folks to prompt serendipity.

The Problem Set at an Unconference

Unconferences can be nerve-wracking. Pushing for a session spot, the expectation to “jump right in” to conversations, a sea of unfamiliar faces–this stuff is stressful if you aren’t competitive or extroverted. The Ordcamp design crew had thought about this. At the plenary, all of the ladies were instructed to stand up, walk outside the room, and then we had first crack at the session board. I was a little unnerved by being identified as a woman, walking by all the dudes, and not knowing why I was exiting the room. But (but but but!) I totally appreciate how the organizers at Ordcamp recognized the power dynamic at play. Let’s walk through a bit of neuroscience to give potential solutions some shape.

Wonk it Down

I asked several ladies at Ordcamp if, at tech events, they count how many women are in a room. Each of them said “every time.” When we (women) walk into a room, the automatic instinct is to find out if we belong there. For better and for worse, that’s usually a visual indicator–are there people who look like me in the room? Am I welcome? The research backs this instinct up–findings suggest that the sex ratio in a room has a direct effect on female performance (). Also visible female role models (at all levels of engagement) can help ameliorate anxiety about performance (; ). So conference organizers, pay these bits mind when you’re putting together your planning committee, invitations and panels. How we feel has a massive impact on learning and performance. We can help overcome anxiety and stereotype threat by designing for small interactions, empathy and prompting a culture to gel.

Design Principles for Equity

With any design project, I like to start with identifying certain design principles or priorities. When it comes to an event, I’d outline these as

• interaction and mixing
• collaboration over competition
• personal over professional

That way we can look at each interaction we design and see if it meets those priorities. For an unconference (for Ordcamp in particular, since they are great), I’d recommend the following:

• Prompt Campers to co-create. As a Camper, you’re assigned 2-3 other folks at random the week before. Brainstorm 3 of your passions, share 1 of them, and come up with a session idea that taps on all your collective ideas. For instance, if you’re all good at multitasking, come up with a session on time, being present or slowing down.
• Self-introductions. Our interests were written on our name tags when we arrived (which I greatly prefer to my job title). But instead of having those pre-printed for us, in the first plenary session, prompt folks to introduce themselves to their neighbors without mentioning what they do for a living.
• Select sessions at random. Have folks put their session ideas in a big, -branded molded drum and pull them out. Or have campers spin a wheel when they walk in and a session spot is one of the prized options. Or have them roll ridiculous dice. The idea here is to not separate “ideas of ladies” vs. “ideas of dudes.” It’s important that women are not reminded of their gender before they do something potentially cognitively stressful ().
• Use the building to create a shared sense of identity. The building itself is playful. What story could be written using the titles of the rooms (Adventures in Babysitting, Risky Business, High Fidelity) crossed with the titles of sessions (Flaming Nunchucks, Farming Chickens, Uncertainty etc) before the sessions officially start? Or, is there a mystery that could be revealed by visiting each room? Which leads us to…
• Keep people moving. Remember the new-kid-in-town-walk-into cafeteria feeling? You can find a way to stem that awkwardness and prompt mixing of folks by a.) having people self-select into themed tables (superheroes, rock clubs, etc) or having folks change tables intermittently (whiskey course, anyone?). is another attempt at keeping people moving, so they have a sense that they “know” the room and belong there.
• Report back. Involve the whole room in this phase by rocking a  (e.g. I learned something new. I met 5 amazing people. I did something I’d never done before) and then asking for stories out of that group. Involve the entire culture in the reflection process as a way to welcome individual stories.

Event design is both an art and a science. Most of the time, the easiest option doesn’t nurture interaction or growth. And that’s what we want–humans interacting with each other. As peers.  

was presented to the Kickstarter Community team in June 2014. 

In 5 years of developing online learning communities, P2PU has found a few tips and tricks about what works in learning groups on the web. This talk addresses: 

* cohorts / group design 
* feedback mechanisms 
* measuring learning / community health

Links referenced: 

 
 
 
 
 
 

was presented to the FEMTECHNET crew at the New School in June 2014.

-Where do I start? 
-How do I develop content? 
-What should learners do together? 
-What tools should I use? 
-How do I know if my community is successful?

Links referenced: 
Reports and How-to’s:  
Course design support / P2PU Community:  
Learning Creative Learning:  
Play With Your Music:  
Rhizomatic Learning:  
TAGS Explorer:  
Discourse:  
Badges: 

from