Community Engagement

Michael spent some time with the people at ACE Byron Shire: Richard, Rob, Kirsty, Diane and Rex. Things were hectic, because most of them were also involved with the Online Facilitation course run by Frankie and Josie.

A good time of year for this crew, as many aspects of their project are coming together. Part one is all about getting their sustainable housing project online, while part two focusses on allowing the people in local government to more actively connect with local communities.

ACE Byron has been running their sustainable housing course for many years now, and this project was an opportunity to put the course online, to enable people to study and interact from many different locations. Rex put the course into a web site, while Rod used wikispaces to set up an interactive companion site, inviting trial course participants into collective discussion and publishing.

The local government in Byron Bay Shire has been wanting to interact more closely with their community around issues of concern. But there aren’t really any models of community engagement using online technologies.

Kirsty and the team from from ACE Byron spent time interviewing council members on topics of local environmental importance, then Rex put this audio online.
So then, to enable community interaction trials, Rod has installed some open source forum software known as “phpbb2″.

This software has just moved to version three, and Rod found this version much better than the earlier model. One requirement of the council, was the ability to moderate discussion very pro-actively; it looks like the new version will allow this.

The team has shown considerable good sense in this project, trialling each aspect before going public. They’ve had plenty of obstacles but due to good spirits and good teamwork, have managed to overcome all their difficulties so far.

Janie McOmish from Adult Learning Australia participated in the recent presentation in Canberra by Alan Levine. The following words are from Janie as she reflected on this opportunity to listen and learn from Alan.

Presentations in eight Australian cities in eleven days, that’s the programme ALAN LEVINE undertook on his Australian Flexible Learning Framework in October.

The Vice-President of NMC Community has spent years promoting creative uses of technology in learning for the Maricopa Community Colleges and is currently involved in using a campus on Second Life (a 3D online virtual world) to explore educational gaming and the potential of virtual world environments.

Alan presented six engaging discourses during his tour.

In Canberra, he engaged his audience on the topic “Being There”. Building on the themes emerging on the Peter Sellers film of the same name, he explored the notion that we need to face the future of social networking in an open ‘wide eyed’ manner. He stressed that we need to ‘be there’ not just look in and observe.

People, he said, should not worry about being an expert, rather we should ‘stand up’, trust and connect.

Using the example of the rapid growth of such social networking groups as Facebook (which he pointed out had grown by 80% in the month of June 2007 in Australia), he recounted that we should not think about how we could best use such emerging networks but that once we were engaged, we would “find a use”.

The figures he presented were astounding. Would you believe that 120 blogs are created each day, in May 2007, 70 million blogs were tracked or that 17 posts are created each second?

The audience were given an extensive look at Twitter (another social network ) and were amazed at how many responses Alan received during the time he spent talking to us.

A number of other premises surfaced:

• you can’t blame the technology for inappropriate content, only the people controlling it
• always remember that a sense of play is important – it keeps you interested and makes engagement easier
• people don’t have to ‘master’ everything – it’s fine to make mistakes – it’s all part of the learning experience and
• just like Hansel and Gretel, leave yourself a trail – it makes it easier for you and others to return.

So, as Alan emphasised, dive into it; you’re a part of it, so make the most of it!

Another session from the eDayz experience - very useful for people working with young people.Our favourite agent of chaos and creativity, Marie Jasinski, this year worked with the staff at TafeSA, Regency Campus, to find out what was going wrong in their attempts to teach the “next generation”. Research had come out of the USA, but they wanted to verify some of the results themselves.

Who is Gen Y?

• Born/grew up in late 70’s - mid-90’s
• had ‘programmed activities’ from an early age, grew up in relative affluence - choices
• media-saturated, visually stimulating, connected, always known digital technology
• always lived with accelerating change
• personal relations with adults, involved in family decisions
• constantly rewarded, “seen and heard”
• “self-esteem on steroids” (P Sheahan).

Results of their research

These people:

• expect to be treated with respect and as a peer in all situations, and by all people, no matter what the relationship (79%).
• Say NO to lectures and boring presentations, say YES to collaboration and working with peers.
• Love variety, and expect to have choices; they expect that their opinions will matter, that the teacher will support them always, no matter what. They prefer to see and discuss, rather than read.
• Like technology, problems to solve, support of others, challenging levels of thinking, opportunities to be innovative and creative when learning, as well as levels of risk.

So, what happens? The teachers give them everything.

They do however like clearly defined tasks, and ongoing, immediate feedback.

An interesting feature of this project was the way it was conducted. The institute gave all staff Monday morning off .. to sit around and talk. No classes Monday morning, and an optional “Conversation Cafe”, so that teachers could brainstorm problems and solutions every week for a whole year. Reportedly a huge success. Teachers are not going to abandon lectures, but discover ways to make them more interactive.

More info about Gen Y, in Research from the Dusseldorp Forum, here.

Over here in Adelaide, at “eDayz”, where three of the Community Engagement projects are presenting, keynote speaker Bruce Sullivan opened the proceedings with a very enthusiastic and heartfelt session, reminding us to focus on the outcomes, not the “time and effort”.

“If you really want something, you’ll do whatever it takes to achieve your outcome,” Bruce assured us. Knowledge workers need a lot of mental space; however, if you focus on the time, the effort, the difficulty and the distractions, you’ll find your energy drained away. One of his mottoes was “Do things poorly, until you (learn to) do them well.”

His follow up workshop gave some strategies for managing transitions, tackling relationship and environment, when you deal with people’s resistance to change. People often acknowledge the physical aspects of transition, but fail to notice or attend to the emotional side of things. When you plan your transitions, plan to manage the emotional transition too.

Because of the emotional response, resistant behaviours are normal, Bruce assured us, when change processes hit. When people resist or sabotage change processes, “don’t tackle their behaviour”. Bruce urged us to focus on improving relationships and the work environment, as well as the ‘bright future’ of your hoped-for outcomes.