Monday, November 30, 2015

Our feelings about the GROOC ... Our GROOC learning

Laura Cardenas and Cristiane Bonezzi are both part of the group of 31 online facilitators of McGill’s MOOC for groups (GROOC): Social Learning for Social Impact. This EdX online course is being developed with the collaboration of the department of Teaching and Learning Services, as well as well-known academics from the Desautels faculty.

Cristiane Bonezzi, an environmental and international cooperation specialist with twelve years experience in managing relationships with stakeholders in the public, private and academic sectors and who is deeply concerned about social justice, educational and environmental issues.








Laura Cardenas, a solutions-driven Industrial Relations student at McGill University who is eager to find new opportunities that contribute to the community. She is passionate about working in team environments where the main goal is to learn from each other; always aspiring that the only and greatest possible outcome is to become a better version of ourselves to offer the world.






Cristiane’s reflections:

“I feel that this initiative started having an impact on my life one year ago, when I was invited to take part in the taping sessions of the course. First of all, it was for me enlightening to discover not only that there were so many like-minded people, but also that they were at our reach, in the same room, learning together and having discussions about common concerns and possible solutions for our world. The exchanges we’ve had with those people, both attendees and professors, filled me with hope.

Just to give you a brief overview of the extent to which it has reshaped our lives, after the tapings, Lucas (my husband, who also joined the taping sessions) and I decided to rent our house, quit our jobs and go on a six month road trip in a campervan with our little dog, Neo. The idea behind it was to disconnect – or should I say reconnect, with our soul, with each other, with nature – to visit and learn about social and environmental initiatives, to do voluntary work along the way and simplify our lives. In the process both of us also ended up deciding to go back to school. All that started because we’ve been questioning ourselves about so many issues, habits and beliefs, and we thought each of those actions would give us answers. The fact is that we haven’t been getting any answers, but even more questions. What’s more, I’m actually excited about not having THE right answer, but acknowledging that we learn as we go and that there are several possibilities!

Now that we’re back and volunteering as a facilitator for the GROOC, once more, I felt the power of the connections on refilling my energies and hope. I’ve noticed that the more I meet other facilitators in person, either on facilitators meetings, at working hours at the GROOC room or even just for a coffee at the end of the day, the better I feel, the more connected and ready to take action I feel. That’s why I immediately accepted the suggestion of joining forces with Laura in our facilitation duties. We’re now co-facilitating 12 teams and the opportunity of having someone to interact with, exchanging ideas on the groups, being listened to and listening to another point of view is very enriching. Besides the practical benefits for this social initiative purposes, meeting and sharing with others makes me feel more alive and happy overall as a person.”

Laura’s reflections:

“This initiative has a spillover effect on many different socio-cultural aspects, as such being concise becomes complicated. Starting on how I perceive the cultural impact, what a better way to explain it than by giving an example of my own experience. As a brief note, I was born and raised in Colombia for the majority of my life, a country I adore and a culture to which I identify myself. Recently, for the sake of excelling on my facilitation duties, I have joined forces with Cristiane; a Brazilian facilitator with whom I have had the pleasure of exchanging ideas, being listened to and listening to other points of view. Besides the chance of practicing my Portuguese during our meetings, I have learned a great deal from her perception of the world. Having the opportunity to work together has been a very enriching experience that I am fully enjoying.


Being a member of this project has allowed me to explore myself, to share myself with others, and on the macro and societal level, it has given me hope! Being able to grow as a person is directly influencing my behavior towards my surrounding. At this point, I am proud to say that I am able to perceive how the power of interconnectedness within like-minded individuals is the biggest reward that this volunteering position could have offered me.”

Facilitating the Social Learning for Social Impact GROOC

One of the aspects of the facilitation team of the Social Learning for Social Impact GROOC which I've appreciated is these strong affinities which facilitators have been exploring since our 3 day get-together in late August 2015. and the unexpected creations which this has since led to - even before the course launch.

 Our facilitators are 30+ individuals worldwide who, outside of a few had not had any prior contact. As far as makeup is concerned, they are a veritable representation of the stakeholders we hoped to engage in the GROOC: socially aware individuals including both seasoned field veterans and students for whom this is an initial exploration. They come from a variety of academic and professional backgrounds, spanning multiple cultural context (networked across 52 countries, collectively speaking 16 languages). This was quite a difference from the primarily undergrad McGill Management makeup I had half-expected when we sent the callout.

As a group, they now echange as a team across a variety of platforms, both real and virtual. Our 3-day training was one such temporary space, through which a common role was defined and shared values were named. These affinities are now being followed up on in a shared Googlegroup platform, and in real time at the small shared office in the Bronfman building of the Faculty of Management at McGill- where half a dozen of our facilitators reclaimed a dissused utility closet and turned it into something they are thrilled to be in and which has acted as ground zero for explorations of our GROOC's educational content.

In many ways, this is taking me back to my own MA thesis and Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's work on communities of practice. Out of social disconnects, we have seen emerge clear cultural boundaries to our facilitator team (our shared mandate in the course, the EdX platform, the Googlegroup and the shared office) in relation to which the work is situated. In that regard, if the goal was to foster engagement in our facilitators, we were on the right track, given the extent to which they owned the community and to a variety of unexpected new ideas and initiatives. Some examples of this: 1. A PhD researcher facilitator studying educational technology expressing interest in integrating our publicly available course transcripts in a cross-referenced public access wiki, in order to promote access to non-English speakers, 2. a facilitator based out of Toronto attempting to form regional course hubs in Toronto and Buenos Aires and 3. A Human Systems Intervention student based out of Montreal proposing a journaling project to reflect on the experience. Although these sorts of ideas and initiatives are occuring outside of the scope of our immediate mandate, they were a large art of the emerging culture of our group in so doing, strenghtened the sense of ownership the facilitators had in this project and their vested interest in suporting the learners.

This rich and unexpected set outcomes resulted from social learning and the creation of live- relationship-based networks. My hope is that ultimately, our facilitators have fostered even a fraction of this excitement amongst the EdX learner community!





Our facilitators taking part in a 3-day peer training session

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

from MOOCs to GROOCs... to SPOCs?

After scaling, we could think about what is the end game for the GROOC, according to founder of www.dogoodasyougo.org Alice Gugelev, in this article we could think of 6 possible end-game scenarios:
1    1)   A break through idea easy for organizations to share/adopt/integrate
2)    A breakthrough product/model
3)    Potential service provider to govt, integrate public programs
4)    Profit potential that addresses market failure, risk or uncertainty: commercial delivery
5)    Defined and achievable outcomes for eradication of a problem
6)    Strong organizational filling gap in commercial or public service

I share this interesting article to also frame the question above and think about the future of MOOCS, perhaps rather than large GROOCS it is SPOCS (small private online courses) to leverage on engagement, commitment and participation.