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

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.

GROOC and a smarter, more caring humanity

1. How do masses create an autonomous intelligence?

2. How that collective intelligence makes decisions and acts in the world?

3. How do we relate to it? How does it transform us? How do we transform it?

4. What happens to learning in a collective intelligence?


Thanks to the internet, we are now more equipped to interact with masses, and observe them.

The internet is creating a new way of learning. After a certain age, we don't need schooling anymore. Here some growing trends:

- We can find the community, the mentor, the knowledge, and the job we need through the net.
- On knowledge, we are trusting crowds more than individuals.
- Answers to everything is on the net.
- The net becomes smarter with the interactions we bring to it. The net is always learning.
- A search will take you to a place you could't anticipate.
- Connecting with people will also take you to new networks, projects or communities.
- Sometimes you enter searching for something but the net tells you what you really need.

Learning doesn't follow a path, a 'course'. We learn more by intentionally exploring the net and less by programming the academic year. Learning is more in our hands but overwhelming. Learning is real.

The net is helping us to create more collective intelligences all the time. We can access them when we need them, ask a question, search, get an answer, participate here and there, and leave.

We can 'use' the net. But the net is also 'using us'. The net is the repository of the footprints of our individual intelligence, connecting and bouncing to other ones', and creating a bigger and better one. An intelligence that transcends individuals. That intelligence stays there when we leave, taking its own shapes and moving to its own new places. It's the sum of all of us without needing any of us. It has its own will and behaviours.

Let me repeat the four questions:

1. How do masses create an autonomous intelligence? --> the beginnings

2. How that collective intelligence makes decisions and acts in the world? --> its own live

3. How do we relate to it? How does it transform us? How do we transform it? --> it and us

4. What happens to learning in a collective intelligence? --> an autonomous thing

One day we will have MOOCs in which the collective intelligence will be evident. Transcending from the 'me knowing' to the 'us learning' to the 'it acting'. 

A more intelligent and caring humanity.

GROOC vision:

GROOC community:

When the MOOC Became a GROOC, We All Became Change-Makers

By Ruchika Arora

Remember the first time you heard about a 'MOOC'? Maybe it was through a sponsored ad on Linkedin. Or a friend's Facebook post urging you to enrol - along with her and 160 000 other participants - in Stanford's Artificial Intelligence (AI) MOOC (those are real numbers!). Maybe it was during the "post-launch" phase, let’s call it, when academics and journalists began to write about the Massive Open Online Course asking: "Are we or are we not in the midst of an educational revolution?” Over the last few years, respected periodicals like The Atlantic Monthly and The Guardian have been taking up that question with increased vigour. If memory serves me correctly, it was an ex-crush's enthusiastic social media posting in 2011 that brought the 'MOOC' to my attention. He was one of those tens of thousands of eager participants set to learn about AI from Stanford University's renowned scholars. He was billing the course as the season's "must-do" event. I started to think that like a protest march, weekend music festival, or flash mob, a MOOC could create the kind of human synergy that so many of us deeply crave. (Maybe we were on the cusp of a revolution.) Yet it wouldn’t be until this fall that I would witness first-hand the creative sparks generated by online group learning. When people come together around a common cause they create a definite boom that sometimes even surprises them. 

This fall, I’m serving as an online course facilitator for McGill University's Social Learning for Social Impact group MOOC or GROOC. While I can’t say whether or not the Stanford MOOC revolutionized people's lives (perhaps you can?), McGill's GROOC is certainly challenging established practice with its emphasis on group or team-based learning. Thus far, MOOCs have focused on independent learning. If you’re an active GROOC participant, you’re probably in the midst of building your team while distilling your social mission. You’re also part of history-in-the-making. By providing the digital and intellectual space where people converge knowledge and capabilities to address the needs of the underserved, McGill's GROOC is facilitating high-impact learning. With potentially hundreds of missions in the offing, there are potentially tens of thousands of people who stand to benefit right around the world from social learning for social impact. Okay, allow me to be more measured, which is my usual habit: that boom - signalling team momentum, progress, synergy - may not be heard across all team discussion fora, but it is building. The October GROOC live session highlights this reality from minute 1:40 to 21:40. It’s well worth watching.

As soon as McGill's call for facilitators went out, I responded. It helped that the "call" came through a campus Professor who’s also a friend because I wanted reassurance that the GROOC Team was "kosher" (click link for meaning). I like working with people who are as genuine as they are smart. And, for someone who had just returned to Montreal after a long absence, and briefly attended McGill twenty years earlier, I was eager to reconnect. More than that, I was looking to meet people who were not necessarily like-minded but were driven to nurture human creativity. I suppose not being a teacher anymore did nothing to dampen my desire to help people realize their potential. (Once a teacher, always a teacher, it’s been said.) 

Co-facilitators, Paola and Ruchika, participating in a
virtual GROOC Meeting from Toronto

With my application approved, I too would become part of history-in-the-making as a member of the first-ever GROOC facilitation team. After two months of working alongside one another, I know this prospect continues to excite my co-facilitators as well. With each passing week - and facilitation meeting! - the boom is gaining in intensity. Our common cause, I dare say, has become the very making of the GROOC. While we didn’t initiate or design the McGill GROOC, which has been two years in the making, everyday we are considering ways to improve the course - to make the doing and trying easier for participants. This makes the GROOC itself a kind of social initiative, if you think about it (the four co-designers already have!). The GROOC Team's mission is to empower others to transcend boundaries and make change, together. At once a MOOC and a social initiative, this GROOC isn’t just "kosher" but revolutionary, wouldn’t you agree? Hold on to your response because you just might need it for that journalist who comes knocking on your classroom door (don’t worry, I know it’s connection you crave and not fame!). 

About the Author: Ruchika is a former International Baccalaureate teacher and social justice advocate presently pursuing sustainable development research and advocacy. She blogs at: killerconversations.blogspot.ca.

To the power of two

By Deborah Hinton and Luce Engérant

Social learning for social impact was little more than a concept for us as volunteer facilitators when we decided to pair up. Given the intensity of the timeline and our understanding of the workload for this GROOCx it made sense to us to work in pairs.  What we've found is that there is power in working as two:

·       The team benefit. Our teams get to hear two different facilitator voices and benefit from our different perspectives and experience and access to different resources to support them in achieving their goals for this course. They never have to worry that we’re not available to help them since one of us is in touch every 24 hours or so.

·       The benefit to us. The experience of working together has been great cross-generational, cross-cultural learning experience – Luce is a McGill student from France with international experience and Deb is a senior consultant from Montreal. We both have a passion for social business and working for impact. In addition to finding practical ways to support our teams, we’re also doing the coursework and reviewing our impressions and insights together. Our experience so far is that we are able to work together without the logistical challenges a bigger team would bring.  And, we get to have in depth conversations around the things that we think are most relevant to our own learning and our teams’.

How we work together. We divide our teams between us and rotate so that we, and the teams, have a richer experience of the GROOCx. We meet a couple of times a week at room 010 to check in with each other on course content, facilitation issues and most importantly news from the 8 teams we’re responsible for. We use these meetings to discuss the teams - questions they may have, resources we can share, and how we can make it easier for them to connect with each other – always with a view to finding the best ways to support them. It also gives us a chance to connect with Alex and Carlos on what’s happening in the GROOCx more generally. If we can’t meet in person, we meet by phone.  Between meetings, we created a team tracker so that we can follow the team’s level of engagement, outstanding issues and our responses to them. By keeping it on Google Docs we both have access anytime and we’ve shared it with Alex and Carlos so they can see things at a glance.

What we’ve discovered is working in a pair is giving us social learning and social impact that is more than the power of two, it’s to the power of two. Impact². 

McGill “GROOC” Changes the Face of Online Learning

A very interesting piece written by Jessica Xiao, one of our Community Facilitators. She speaks about some participants, teams, and facilitators. 

McGill “GROOC” Changes the Face of Online Learning

A short two weeks after launch day, McGill University’s Social Learning for Social Impact GROOC (a MOOC for groups), is already proving to have far-reaching implications for the future of online learning. It pioneers a highly self-aware pedagogy designed to combat the challenges of distance teamwork and dispels the idea that academia must be detached from reality—in this GROOC, course participants form teams and collaborate through a process of experiential learning of six sessions (Engaging, Co-Creating, Designing, Scaling, Resourcing, and Assessing) that brings them closer to débuting their own social initiatives in the seventh session’s “Impact Gallery.”

There are currently over 6800 students registered with 10 percent who have already formed or join a team in topics ranging from arts and culture to education and economic equality, environment and health to unconventional and out-of-the-box. Participants are strongly motivated by a number of passions:

·       “…I’ve spent much of my career studying the behavior of consumers and I’m curious to identify ways of turning such a robust force into positive change.” – Dan Walls, Design Director at KNOCK, Minneapolis, USA

·       “…Soon, I’ll be working on a thesis about how to empower social networks to maximize the effects of social initiatives…” – Alejandra Talavera, Public Relations Volunteer at World Vision, Peru

·       “I am from syria living as refugee with my family since 4 years in iraq. i am trying to set up a school for the children in the camp between the syrian and iraqian border. [sic]” – Khaniwar Ali (Save the Syrian Refugees in Iraq team)

·       “I’m originally from Slovakia, but am currently working as a lawyer for the National Agroforestry Union in Costa Rica.…I would like to spread a new wave of environmental peace around the globe.” – Lubi Guindon

·       “In June of this year, I resigned from a wealth management firm, where I worked as a sales executive for ten years.…I am still in the for-profit sector, at least for today. And what I’m trying to do is change ‘for profit’ to ‘for profit and for good.’” – Bjorn

·       “I joined this organization with the passionate belief that by galvanizing a community of supportive Canadians, we can transform our collective efforts into a powerful social movement.” – Jeff Moat, Partners for Mental Health, Canada

·       “I have an interest in transforming societal views about crime and violence, and want to have a serious, informed debate on these subjects so that we can look for real, non-violent solutions for people who are suffering.” – Edgardo Amay, advisor on criminal justice and public safety for the government of El Salvador

Another key component to students’ success is the appointing of volunteer facilitators trained to foster community and provide guidance to ensure students are participating at their level of engagement and ability. Facilitators range from advanced university students passionate about social issues to experienced practitioners working in the plural sector who volunteer for a multitude of reasons, as evident in their bios for the course:

·       “I’m very curious about community building, on and offline. I’m excited to be a member of the McGillx Social Learning for Social Impact GROOC MOOC facilitator team and look forward to learning from, and supporting, this amazing global network of change makers.” – Deborah Hinton, Partner at Hinton and Co., mentor to Myko, Turning Point Montreal, and Le Salon 1861

·       “Being raised in Colombia and having cross-cultural communication skills drag me to have special interest for social initiatives towards the developing world. I am passionate about working in team environments where we can all learn from each other; always aspiring that the only and greatest possible outcome is to become a better version of ourselves to offer our surroundings.” – Laura Cardenas, industrial relations student at McGill University

·       “As she is constantly balancing herself between being a bookworm and a scientist, she seeks ways and platforms where the combination of information literacy and science technology can benefit the society at various levels.” – Yingshan Gu, recent masters graduate from McGill University’s Library and Information Studies

·       “Having spent most of his life in Nigeria, Charles was directly impacted by Massive Open Online Courses and thus feels honoured to be a part of delivering quality education to the world through the Social Learning for Social Impact GROOC.” – Charles Onu, Jeanne Sauvé Fellow and founder of Ubenwa

Perhaps key to understanding the personality of this course is within Desautels Faculty of Management professor and head creator of the GROOC Henry Mintzberg’s reaction to participants who want to create a team larger than the max 10 allowed: “You can beat us, the whole idea is to beat us….Beat the system….We can plot with you to beat the system.”