The very last conversation I had before departing #Domains17 was with Brian Lamb. We exchanged sentiments about how it’s more difficult to publish blog posts about our best experiences since we want to adequately represent our thoughts. This hesitation leads posts to the “eternal draft graveyard.” So thank you Brian, because after reflecting on our conversation, I’ve decided to approach my #Domains17 reflections a little differently. I’m looking at writing several shorter entries so they do in fact surface. Who know’s maybe this will mean 3-4 (shorter) posts. 🙂 Let’s jump to it!
During a conversation with Jon Udell and Adam Croom we started discussing how to empower more people with the problem solving skills prevalent across the web and specifically around Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) programs. For me, this challenge centers around what professional development I want to offer to the faculty/staff/students at OU. Between discussions with Jon and Adam as well as Martha Burtis’s Keynote, I may have discovered a solution by answering this question: How do you facilitate the “breaking and fixing of things” learning that permeates Domain of One’s Own?
At the time, I imagined a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) that would take place over 5-6 weeks, involve weekly challenges, and facilitate “breaking and fixing of things” situations. The weekly challenges would require folks to complete tasks like (1) setting up a way to collect survey data online or (2) distribute an audio or video podcast, etc. This is how I’d like to instill the problem solving skills in our “ready-to-become-advanced-DoOO users.”
I was able to further refine my thoughts on this through conversations with Amy Collier, Evelyn Helminen, and Adam. As we continued discussing these ideas I started envisioning the first challenges having significantly more support to empower folks to pursue the weekly challenges without much assistance. Over 5-6 weeks, we would ween participants off of this support in favor of increasingly open-ended and complicated DoOO problem solving situations. Giving folks the foundation they need to become DoOO power users makes me extremely excited as a DoOO teacher.
The crucial reason this training makes sense to me as a FLC is due to the multitude of solutions for fixing DoOO problems. Showcasing this problem solving variety within a cohort allows everyone to exchange solutions, perspectives, and most importantly, learn the nature of DoOO is more fluid .
Finally, having recently hosted the first WebFest (a DoOO bootcamp) on our campus, I’m thinking through where this new training idea fits in our repertoire of DoOO professional development. Not to mention how I’m reconsidering where challenged-based training frameworks and the “breaking and fixing of things” enters into the pedagogy and design of OU Create trainings.
Alright, this may only be one idea, but I want to get it published to ensure it escapes the eternal draft graveyard. Stay tuned for more #Domains17 goodness, especially around WebFest and conversations with Amy, Evelyn, and Adam. 🙂
The featured image is provided CC0 by Igor Ovsyannykov via Unsplash.
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