Community Engagement

In the humid surrounds of Cairns, community leaders and interested parties gathered to learn about this year’s incarnations of the Community Engagement project. You can find presentation slides on the wikispace, and add your comments via the “discussion” tab.

Kaye Bowman highlighted the successes from the three years of projects, and Gail Short told a remarkable tale of sustainability in partnerships, while Michael Coghlan gave some stirring insights into further possibilities around the warmth and depth of connections in online communities.

Tremendous efforts from the community leaders of 2007 projects, who had spent the day before in a session of celebration and debriefing.

Thanks to all who participated, including project leaders and workers, keynotes and speakers Gail Short, Michael Coghlan, Kaye Bowman, and Vaughan Croucher who facilitated discussions.

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.

Certainly for our 2007 project leaders, the recent Community Engagement project induction workshop, created an agreed ‘wow’ factor. Our twelve community leaders returned to their communities and project planning committees with a range of new ideas, resources and tools to support their project’s aims and objectives throughout 2007 and beyond.

The two-day workshop, held in Sydney, brought together projects from Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales who shared their project aims and objectives and also were given an opportunity to have a ’shared understanding’ of the expectations and operating environment for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework (Framework).

Well known Framework identities including Jeff Saul and his NSW team, Clint Smith, Cathy Baxter, Hayley Beck, Rhonda Appo, Carole McCulloch and Phil Wheeler helped to create a feeling of commitment, enthusiasm and excitement. Jeff ’set the scene’ with his official welcome in place of Simon Paine who at late notice was unable to attend the workshop. Robyn Jay handled the microphone with great professionalism. After hearing from Jeff, Robyn and Shane we all have a better understanding of e-learning in New South Wales.

Phil’s session left us all excited about the range of free tools available, where to find them and how to customise and upload them. Clint wowed us with a session on the Designing E-learning online resource, using the Tasmanian Communities Online as an exemplar.

Carole introduced us to the notion of personal learning environments and we are now ‘iGoogle‘ enthusiasts madly creating our own online presence. So much learning and so much fun!

Our two project community leaders representing 2005 and 2006 (John Tucker and Carole McCulloch) facilitated a study circle experience for the 2007 project community leaders using the following questions to stimulate the discussion:

• What are your best hopes for adding technology to teaching and learning?
• What are your worst fears for adding technology to teaching and learning?

The conversation was captured on a visual mind map which helped to summarise the main points providing a range of thoughts and perhaps challenges for the project team and project community leaders to consider as we move forward with the 2007 Community Engagement projects.

Other participants included Ron Anderson from Adult Learning Australia and Dr Kaye Bowman who is conducting an evaluation of the Community Engagement project.

It seemed everyone left the Community Engagement project induction workshop with a lot of energy and a sense of working together to achieve the project’s aims to create sustainable demand for and use of e-learning in communities, building human capacity and facilitating adult learning. You’ll find a collection of photos at flickr.

Six projects will be funded in 2007 representing a range of models supporting economic and regional development in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. This year there will be a strong emphasis on isolated learners. The successful projects are:

• VoluntElearning (Community Technology Centres Association, New South Wales)
• Building online communities in East Gippsland (BACE Inc, Victoria)
• CultureLink Queensland (Queensland Community Arts Network, Queensland)
• E-learning for natural resource management (Queensland Murray-Darling Committee, Queensland)
• Supporting e-learning in rural and regional communities (Tasmanian Communities Online, Tasmania)
• Regional skills for a changing environment (Byron Regional Community College, New South Wales).

The project team will meet with project community leaders at the project’s induction workshop to be held in Sydney 9 - 10 May 2007. The induction session will help to build a shared understanding of the expectations and operating environment for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework in 2007 and beyond and be a great opportunity to learn about online resources and provide an opportunity for networking and information-sharing to strengthen links between projects.

Mary and Josie hit the road again last week to Western Australia and South Australia to promote the  E-learning Creative Community Partnerships  project, as well as participate in consultation session with ACE in WA and SA.

The consultation session in WA was held at the offices of WestOne with Ian Kenny and Ros Howell hosting the session. The session was chaired by Janice Mason from Learning Centre Link. We learned that there are some 75 ACE providers in WA, with the bulk of the delivery being non- accredited. There is a small pocket of accredited delivery happening in community settings, all in partnership with an RTO.Participants had an opportunity to hear more about the Framework, and its funding opportunities, as well as discuss e-learning in and its potential benefits for communities in WA. 

We also had opportunity to catch up with old friends, such as Ros McPherson form Challenger TAFE who was funded in 2005, as well ad Sue Thompson, who was a 2000 Flexible Learning Leader with Josie. Sue is now heading up the ACE department at Central TAFE. We were also able to talk to a representative from the 103 telecentres that operate throughout WA. These centres are multidisciplinary support centres and all in non – metropolitan areas. An informative and interesting session. Thanks to WestOne for hosting us!

We then moved on to SA where we met with Sue Ross, who heads up the ACE department at DFEST. We were also able to meet up with some old friends of adult learning and our project, including Rita Bennink, a past ACE rep on FLAG. We also met with Dr Kaye Bowman who will be conducting research into the outcomes of the project in 2007. All in all a very productive journey!

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.