This year’s Community Scholars class is broken into five project teams, each working on some aspect of the theme of a green economy.

Last quarter we did a work-in-progress presentation to an audience of “clients” and other interested parties.  All the content was great, but listening to five projects in succession is a little hard on an evening audience of people who have been working all day. People were engaged. But they were also tired and had difficulty sustaining attention to projects that didn’t involve their particular interests. Such is life.

So this time we are experimenting with a “gallery” approach, to create a  more festive space that is more about conversations than presentations.

Here are the basic steps to the approach:

1. Start with a Clear Goal
Yesterday’s goal was for each team to get feedback from all of the other team’s in the class. The goal was to solicit constructive criticism to help us produce the best possible products for our clients — to give them the best possible value added.

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Democracy is basically a system that lets people make decisions together.

The key to making that happen, besides lots and lots of meetings, is lots and lots of preparation.

The pay-off is: well-informed decision-makers, more effective meetings, and discussions that allow everyone to participate in the conversation.

Making informed decisions together is the ultimate Do-It-Together.

This post offers the first three in a series of faciltators’ tools designed to help you get this done.

SPEED DATE, SMALL GROUP AGREEMENTS, and GALLERY WALL

There are 24 people in our Community Scholars class at UCLA.  Some are students, some are faculty or staff, and some are community leaders and artists.

The purpose of the class is to produce popular education material related to “Green Jobs.”  We spent our four weeks in lectures and discussion with experts about aspects of the problem.  Now we need to break into working teams that will produce popular education products over the next fifteen weeks.  Big commitment.  High stakes for the participants.

To get those decisions started, last week we we had a three hour retreat where we engaged in the following exercises in sequence:

• Speed Date




• Small Group Analysis




• Gallery Wall
  

Instructions for these exercises are provided below, with their purpose and goal,  necessary preparation and materials, and links and images to our experience.  Read More…