MOOC Questions
What questions do you have about the empathy training project and MOOC?
This question is for design team members to voice their questions about the project.
I’m curious what design participants think about it and what questions they have.
These questions came up in another team
Empathy Training Design Team 4: Meeting 4: On Arrival Question
I see Edwin has been offering these groups since 2015.
What has been the outcome of these and are you bringing past groups together?
Or is this summer 2018 group the first group to move forward on a project like we are focusing on?
How can we incorporate other empathy interests, as in cultivating empathy conversations ( activism, personal, spiritual, business/work>) ?
Edwin answers:
Several attempts in the past, never went anywhere. Bill’s book gives a solid training foundation and structure for a online training
Empathy Tent is another big project on the side, political activism oriented.
Lot of different ways of seeing activism. Exploring together ways to encompass all the different ways empathy can be present:
political,
personal,
spiritual practice
etc.
I am mostly concerned about the structure and platform (as Jessica is mentioning). I think for development, this really needs to be set. The content is pretty much a known thing. Also, as I mentioned earlier,
I am concerned about how we might go about inspiring people to participate. It does also seem that we could have the same content delivered in different ways. For example, in the empathy tents, as a synchronous online program, one that is asychronous, one that is a combo of in-person and online, shorter and longer ones, etc.
We could have teams working specifically on different formats. Sometimes, I feel like we have too many cooks in the kitchen to get things accomplished.
Skill building program for activism, personal relationship, etc. It makes the task more manageable.
Example of training module: Explanation, Watch a interaction to showcase the explanation, Connection people to practice.
Denise has a lot of experience with Bill’s teaching and building training program. Start with small and concrete.
Creating teams to work on specific project.
Getting the content organise.
How do we want to attract people?
How to deliver the content?
What platform?
What are the basics practices?
Could have different teams delivering different modules.
Use all the available skill sets.
Most important thing for people to do during a training: to learn how to actually practice empathy. Just talking about the book is not helpful. Pairing people up. Having a way for people to practice the skills together.
Listing the skills:
Reflecting listening: primarily skill use to convey empathy
Each chapter is a skill
Design a training module in a training. Treat it for
How to pull people to bring people together to bring the skills?
Too many cooks in the kitchen.
Questions about structure and practical stuff:
Why a MOOC? (vs a University course or else …) - Listening Well gives a solid training foundation
What could be a achievable deadline to start offering the MOOC?
What are the goals and tasks that need to be completed?
Which platform to use?
What would it look like? Would it be free?
Would it be better to be open and everybody is building the MOOC (like Duolingo) or else?
Are we offering a certificate at the end?
What already exists out there as empathy training?
Would a Empathy Training for Facilitator be included in the MOOC or a different one?
What is the budget?
How are we tracking progress for participants?
Who do we need to ask help with and get in touch with? (Tech people, etc.)
What are other Empathy Training Resources ?
EmpathyTrainingLitReview- a compilation of academic papers on empathy trainings.
Scoop.it : Teaching Empathy - List of popular (non academic) articles about teaching empathy
Scoop.it Empathy Curriculum - Public empathy training curriculum.
How will people take the training?
On their own
In a group - self lead.
In a group with a facilitator
Empathy Circle: wonder if using it every time. The try it. Have different. was confusing
It’s learning a skill in a skill in a skill
Try it. - skill building - Then circle
Not exactly a question but I’m curious how to make a “practical” argument for Empathy Training, like would the MOOC be something that we’d try to get companies to sign up their employees for?
And if so, what are some success stories or metrics for making it appeal to management and people working at those companies? And also, how would you introduce it to companies that are relatively “stiff” and not engaging in any kind of real empathy at the moment. Seems like it could be a big stretch for some people to do some of this stuff.
How to make the case for empathy?
A practical sell.
The marketing for the training.
For the small teams he works in they don’t want to talk about emotions.
For each components, would there be interactive elements into it? For the structure to be more substantial.
Will there be interactive elements. Forum
Can we have a UI. help with feelings.
Just reading others contributions to this and this is a really rich convo! Like most mentioned, I too feel the content isn’t as important (we have the book after all) so the task(s) is really in how we present, market, and move this forward it seems. Along those lines, I informed Edwin that I have found a volunteer to work with us on animating content, doing branding and generally helping with social media content (my millenial webmaster, Frank Teron, does this for a living and LOVES to help others!).
I would suggest that perhaps this Team - or part of it??- move forward with storyboarding a piece of content as to how we’d like it to look in a 5 min or less animated bit. I’m lousy at the art piece (I gave birth to an amazingly talented artist; that’s my contribution haha!) but would be delighted to take a stab at the content. And I think most? all? of this team have expressed a desire to assist with that part. I will be “in and out” for the next few weeks but after my vacation in early August, I am here for August until Labor Day. Would anyone else be interested in working on this and then spending part or most of our meeting on August 11 presenting what we have? Or something like that…
I also want to check out a few MOOCs to understand the ones that work well. I’ll ask Frank for suggestions, if he has any, and if any of you have taken a course this way, perhaps you could share that link for us all to view? That could also be done during a Sat Team Meeting? Watch part of a MOOC and discuss?
It feels to me as if this Design Team has the empathetic listening down and we could move forward with the design portion of our goals. Not that we can’t continue to discuss the book, etc practicing Empathy Circles but I don’t think we need most of our time spent on that. Last session was really helpful to me re: our goals here and ways to move forward.
What are next steps?.
At the risk of contributing ideas already discussed, I am going to answer this question without first reading other responses. I do not want to be influenced.
Anything associated with the abstract is sticky as in the results are more difficult to predict when compared to a more quantitative subject (i.e. mathematics). Neuroscience is providing research to back up the importance of empathy through the existence of mirror neurons; however,despite the 90’s being described as the decade of the brain, studies are still in their infancy.
Where does this leave curriculum designers who seek to assist those who wish to develop empathy in others? I believe that the content is what drives the design. Let us first think about the idea of a MOOC - Massive Open Online Course. This type of course allows, as it is labeled, massive amounts of individuals to interact. It would hinder the integrity of the course to suggest that the content is concrete. When I approach a qualitative course that attempts to structure the content rather than provide fluidity, I start to question its validity and significance to my personal development.
Long story short, I believe empathy can be taught through a MOOC; however, a fine line exists between structure and fluidity when designing a course around the abstract. The content matter becomes personal and emotionally high risk if the proper steps are not taken to prevent psychological damage. We do not want to open up a place where internet vampires congregate (negative individuals who want to prey on vulnerable people seeking a community).
My question is how do we protect those genuinely wanting to take this course from poor design and cyberbullying?
Oh, and I think I made up the term internet vampires (not really researched whether it exists or not) :) but that is how I always visualize them when teaching online courses.
TEAM 3: MON
Would like to know the concerns of others?
Will go with the 16 week training and come up feedback once we have done it. Trial and error. Try it and get feedback. Try it and get feedback.
Look at problem areas. That are not to difficult.
INGRID SATHER
The MOOC is a little overwhelming for me because the scope is so big.
First questions are
What is the Scope of the MOOC?
How will you know it is a success?
Who is the target audience?
How will you know it is a success?
Qualitative
Numbers of people that take the course
Positive reviews.
So many empathy tent.
How to check that people have deeply realized. Investment of time has an outcome.
At the end we want to do something. Write somethings. Synthesize something.
This is serious.. We are doing something serious.
How good am I at reflecting.
Show how you benefited from the training,
self evaluation: - how has it contributed to
Be able to use it and apply it. Be able to do it.
Be able to hold an empathy circle.
Why people don’t continue.
Who is the target audience?
What level of knowledge to they have?
A most basic Introductory training.