3.3 Enduring Learnings, Growth, and the Future

Enduring Spaces

What is the story of the HPL community, and how is it store and communicated? How can we leverage storytelling to create new possibilities and inspire the educational community? Creating the story of community calls upon our sense of belonging and co-ownership to envision new possibilities and describe them. It also requires spaces where the story can be stored and told, spaces that members can access and people outside the community can learn from too. How do we tell the stories of all the different members of the community - from students to teaching fellows to instructors and designers - moving forward?

Some enduring spaces for community might look like a course blog, website, or social media community to which students and faculty alike could contribute. The blog could accept submissions from interested students to write about course topics, share about their careers, or describe their experience of being a part of the community. Such a space could symbolize another opportunity for co-ownership: a space where learners at different ends of their career would share valuable data and stories.

One particular area that more data could be collected would be stories of those students that do further ideation or investigation on their Module 6 projects. Additionally, students could submit brief write-ups of their project concept to a comprehensive archive of project ideas and choose whether to leave their contact info. This way, students working on their projects could see who had worked on thematically similar topics and get support from alumni throughout the process.

Telling the story of HPL from the perspective of the Teaching and Learning Lab is also crucial for the community. A “behind-the-scenes” look is highly relevant for educators who will soon be designing learning experiences, as it demonstrates the built and intentional nature of the environment and familiarizes people increasingly with the course’s mission, rather than its mere appearance and content. By understanding that the course they are participating in is an ongoing experiment, students will feel heartened to participate and make the community the best it can be.

What is the time scale for this enduring face of the community? HPL could leverage the power of social media handles to continue the conversation about the course going throughout the year, although it might be more active during the course. Enduring spaces extend the life of some of the value-creating content formats we discussed in the section on content. Community members’ reflections inspire present students and provide future students a reference to how the HPL community has looked in the past and how it may look or be improved.

Data Management

"Data management seems at first like a minor point, but as communities mature, this point becomes crucial. The kind of data a community decides to collect will shape the future form of the community."

-- Community Canvas Framework

How do communities capture insights and knowledge generated by their members? HPL collects data on an annual basis to improve the course, including qualitative and quantitative data. These are excellent for administrative purposes, but what about data used for the benefit of members? What data about community experience or "best practices" for engaging with the community would students choose to communicate to future students? What data or content can incoming students use to better center themselves optimally in the community? What information can students access before the experience?

Data is helpful for all levels of community membership. For instance, could future course communities benefit from the findings of subsequent communities in HPL? We must also ask how the work and student experiences from each year are showcased? The wider community can benefit from increased opportunities for students to share information and expertise. For some students, collected data such as community reading lists, collections of favorite poems, or class playlists can be an exciting opportunity to get a sense of the community's character.

Growth

“A surprising number of communities don’t have a conscious plan for growth and continued renewal of the membership base. If the community thinks growth is important, what measures does it take to achieve it?”

-- Community Canvas Framework

In the unique case of HPL, growth is not an agglutinative process of expanding membership but a process of improving the course through experimentation, trial, and error. However, the course is expected to grow to encompass all incoming students at HGSE in the next two years. As it scales up, HPL will continue to try to perfect its process of community membership. It is vital that HPL also document this growth process as it is informative to the field of collaborative online learning. These experiments and learnings have enduring value.

The Future

HPL has a lot going for it. It is an excellent academic offering that strengthens students’ ability to participate in a meaningful way at HGSE. It accepts an increasingly large and diverse series of cohorts doing amazing things to stand out each year. In my opinion, the thing HPL would gain the most from focusing on creating more opportunities for co-ownership.

Although HPL seems to be moving in the right direction, it would be best to mitigate students’ sense of confusion and misalignment to the degree possible. Although organizing the course will get more challenging as HPL scales up: the most important things to remember here are:

• HPL’s teaching team should concentrate on envisioning a member experience that is inviting, engaging, and dynamic. Rituals that foster a sense of belonging can help members begin to care for others in the community and commit to acting in an aspirational way.

• The community will continue to be a primarily bottom-up process. To ensure that community members engage, HPL needs to implement messaging that helps members feel co-ownership by accepting responsibility for the community. It also needs to provide ample structure for students to truly take on co-ownership.

• Concentrating on mindful onboarding can help to set the tone for the community in a lasting way.

• By creating enduring spaces for students and faculty to reflect on the ongoing HPL community project, HPL can inspire its current members and extend its reach to benefit future community members and other communities of inquiry. Ultimately, the stories of HPL offer many inspiring examples for those designing and participating in online communities.

Citations:

Community Canvas, The. (2020). The Community Canvas Framework. Retrieved from https://community-canvas.org/