Reviewing the Women as Social Innovators Course Plan

[Laura White]

Hi everyone,

Julie and I are putting the finishing touches on our Women as Social
Innovators course plan, and we'd really appreciate it if you would
take a look and let us know what you think! The link to the course
plan is here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rUpheWDVREAWBoiLNvIOrfo01BL7OtBftX3k4t67ELE/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNS2-9EC

Thanks and hope you have a happy New Year!

Laura

[Stian Håklev]

Hi, to me it looks like a very solid and well put together course. I will definitively be forwarding this to a number of my friends when the course goes live!

Stian

--
http://reganmian.net/blog -- Random Stuff that Matters

[Alison Jean Cole]

Rad. :-)

p2pu.org/users/alison

[Chris]

Hi Laura and Julie - your course sounds wonderful. It's very helpful
to see how you are organizing it, as I work on the sustainability
course.

- Chris

On Dec 29, 12:36 pm, Laura White <lew3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Julie and I are putting the finishing touches on our Women as Social
> Innovators course plan, and we'd really appreciate it if you would
> take a look and let us know what you think! The link to the course
> plan is here:
>

> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rUpheWDVREAWBoiLNvIOrfo01BL7OtBft...

[Laura White]

Thanks everyone! We're still struggling with finding activities for our course, as we want to have a bank for participants to choose from once the course gets started (the idea is to put the whole syllabus on the table for re-inventing at the first meeting). Part of the problem is that we're having trouble defining the very issues this course needs to address - that is, we need help figuring out what the most common challenges are that female social innovators/aspiring female social innovators face. Any advice (either from research or personal experience) would be awesome!

Thanks!

Laura

[Alison Jean Cole]

Ideally you should allow participants to identify & build this aspect of the course. Then you have true p2p learning. You'll find it will help build community and allows participants to take some ownership of their course experience :-)

A

p2pu.org/users/alison

[Sarah Press]

Hi Laura,

This class sounds fantastic! I am excited to sign up as soon as it goes live.

I def agree that having participants make suggestions during the first week is a great way to develop ownership and enthusiasm for the class. In case it's helpful, here are a few challenges that come to mind to help with the initial brainstorming:

• Communication - I'd love to learn how to communicate my social enterprise better, to somehow strike a good balance between idealism and pragmatism. I currently sometimes get really excitable about it sometimes, which makes it more challenging for people to take it as a serious sustainable concept
• Comparative lack of role models - It would be great to find some seasoned female entrepreneurs who can provide mentorship to new innovators - the few I have found are very eager to help, but it'd be great to find more
• Lack of confidence about technology - This maybe is more a call to action to sign up for Webcraft classes than anything else, but I find that my lack of understanding of makes it tricky to handle some technology situations and drive my venture forward

Is there any specific process for organizing a Chicago citizen circle for this class through P2PU?

Cheers,
Sarah

--
Sarah Press
Co-founder
CommuniTeach
http://communiteach.com

[Laura White]

Hi Sarah,

I'm glad you're excited about this class! Thank you for the feedback, too. These are challenges that definitely resonate with me too, and it's good to have them pointed out before the course so we can spend more time thinking about what would be helpful to address them. As far as organizing a Chicago Women as Social Innovators citizen circle, the first step is to find two other friends that are interested in participating with you and exploring some challenges related to women in social innovation as well. Once you have that small group of three together, take a look at the syllabus and start thinking about how you would remix and change it up to address the challenges your group specifically wants to address. Perhaps you can invite them into this thread, and others from Women as Social Innovators citizen circles can contribute as well. 

Also - CommuniTeach looks awesome! And what a great name!

Best wishes,

Laura

[Alan Webb]

Hi Sarah,

I agree, CommuniTeach looks great.  Thanks for reaching out to us.

In D.C. we are organizing a "launch party" to showcase citizen circles courses and invite interest from anyone who wants to join or form groups around existing courses.  You would be welcome to do that in Chicago aslo.  

We are doing this with Hub D.C. here, but you could maybe find a similar group in Chicago that could help you organize something like that or give you a few minutes at one of their existing events to make a pitch for classmates to join with you (e.g. Chicago Green Drinks? a student listserv? etc.).  Let me know if we could help you with that!

Best,

Alan

[Sarah Press]

Very cool! I'd love to help get the word out about some of the classes - I can reach out to the CommuniTeach community and also some folks from Starting Bloc, Net Impact, and some other social entrepreneurship groups in Chicago. I have cced my friend Billy who wants to help organize the Chicago CS for the the open government classes.

Alan, if you have any particular connections to Chicago groups let me know and I'll make sure to connect with them. Do you have any promotion language talking about the citizen circle classes that I can leverage as a starting point?

I actually have a few questions about the model - I tried to read through the wiki and old emails so I apologize if the answers are somewhere:

• I know that citizen circles have both an local-in-person and global-online component, but how exactly do the two work together? Does each local group meet at the same time each week for a conference call? Does the global peer teacher review their work, or is it all done in the small group? Have dates already been set for the meetings?
  
• Does each member of a citizen circle have to RSVP through P2PU or just one in order for them to have a slot? Given registrations have already started, is there a chance that the people I speak to won't be able to sign up due to oversubscribed classes? 
  
• How are potential members from the same city intended to find each other through the P2PU infrastructure?
  
• Why are circles only 3-6 people? In DC, are you all organizing multiple smaller groups for classes with more interest? How many CS have been created so far?
  

Let me know when you get a chance. I'm also happy to find time to chat over the phone if that's easier. Looking forward to working with you all on this exciting peer learning project!

[Alan Webb]

Hi Billy and Sarah,

Thank you very much both for your enthusiasm.

By separate emails I am going to address your questions below and the promo language.  I think these are topics that could benefit from group discussion.

Second, Billy, great to hear about your interest in organizing a citizen circle in Chicago on local open government innovation.  Sign-ups for that course is happening here and they would love to hear from you: http://www.p2pu.org/sosi/local-open-govt-innovation