What is there to say about Five Weeks that hasn’t already been said?
No, seriously. It really has all been said, hasn’t it? And better than I could possibly have said it myself. (I’d link to all the posts, but you’ve probably already read them.) I’ve been meaning to do my own little wrap-up post here, but I got sidetracked by a vacation, a conference, another course, and, of course, work. And now it’s weeks and weeks later and I’m finally wrapping my head around the Five Weeks to a Social Library experience and how intense, sometimes crazymaking, empowering, amazing, enlightening (I could go on & on…) it really was!
Lately, I’ve had a few of people ask if I had any “lessons learned” to share, as one of the co-organizers of the programme. As I responded to those emails (hastily copying & pasting links to my co-organizers’ excellent blog posts on the topic), I began to realize that three distinct “lessons” have emerged for me, from my involvement with Five Weeks:
1. Have a Champion (or two). The whole course was filled with champions, of course, from the presenters, to the participants, to everyone who cheered us along from the sidelines (there were so many cheerers – thank you!), but for me the real champion was Meredith. She just got it so right, from coming up with the idea, to putting it out there on her blog while it was still in its infancy, to being brave enough to take the leap, pull the rest of us together, and make it happen. I’m sure my co-organizers will agree with me when I say it just could not have happened without her, and it couldn’t have gone so well without her either! Our other champion? Without a doubt, Tom Peters. He made the synchronous parts of the course totally painless for us (and our participants!) which required all sorts of behind-the-scenes diligence on his part. Thank you for being our champion, Tom!
2. Much Care & Feeding is Required. Like Karen, the course came at a bad time for me (all sorts of changes at work, coordinating a Learning 2.0 programme @ my library, existing speaking/publishing/teaching commitments, committee work, &c., &c., arrrgh!!) so I totally fell down on the care & feeding part.I had grand plans to do more blogging, commenting, and general engaging with our participants and presenters, but as it turned out, I was barely able to support my little group of 5, and for that I am abundantly regretful. Lesson learned? A course like Five weeks takes a lot of dedication, time and energy, so take it on when you can dedicate the time & energy to the project that it deserves.
3. Best Idea Ever: The Final Project. To recap: for their final projects, course participants had to write a proposal to implement one of the social software technologies covered during the course. The proposals our participants came up with were nothing short of brilliant, and as a co-organizer, I took so much pride in seeing them work through the topics and technologies and really think about what would work for their institutions. As someone who has taught online courses on emerging tech since 2003, trust me when I tell you that there is no better way to make your participants engage deeply with the topics (rather than skimming them all and filing them away under “might need this later”) than to ask them to pick a technology and work through the implementation details in a proposal. This is such a great idea that I’m not going to teach another social software course without doing the same (or similar) final project!
Would I do it again? Without a doubt. Especially if I get to work with the likes of Meredith, Michelle, Dorothea, Karen, and Ellyssa again! The good news is that we get to pick this thing apart some more over the next few months, as Dorothea’s excellent Five Weeks poster-session proposal for ASIS&T’s Annual Meeting was accepted!