This newsletter covers what happened in March and will give you a heads up on what to look for in April and the months following.

In this issue:

"There are two things over which we have complete dominion, authority and control: your mind and your mouth." --Moefi Asante

The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world in which we live, work, and exist. In some instances, it feels as if everything is out of control. However, that is not true. As a Process Educator, we know that it is our mindset that largely determines our outcomes. The Academy Board is committed to maintaining a positive, proactive mindset while meeting the demands of the current environment. We are changing how we work and engage.

Due to the pandemic, academic institutions, businesses, and other organizations have moved operations to an online environment to ensure safety of staff, students, and members. In the interest of ensuring the safety of our membership, the Board approved moving the June PE Conference from face-to-face at St. Louis College of Pharmacy to an online environment. We will be communicating our decisions to you on an ongoing basis. Be sure to stay abreast of the changes by reading the Academy Newsletter and other communications. Feel free to use forums and email to give us feedback on various issues.

Stay positive and encourages others during this sensitive period. We want you to be safe and proactive as we learn how to deliver an outstanding conference online.

Joann

Did you know that the minutes of the Academy Board Meetings are available to ALL Academy members? In this article, we offer highlights of the most recent board meeting(s):

Feb 2020 minutes (not yet approved)        Mar 2020 minutes (not yet approved)

Making a Mini-Quorum?

Since we have been having issues making quorum, Joann presented a suggestion that the board consider authorizing the President and a small team (3 or 5 people) to make key decisions in the event that critical business needs to be done. Executive board members - please be sure to attend the meeting and vote on this issue!

Upcoming Workshops

There are multiple Professional Development workshops in the works.  Please come and invite others as well! See http://processeducation.org/pd.html for more information.

The Next Board Meeting:  April 8, 2020 (10:30 am Eastern)

ANYONE is welcome to join us!

URL: https://zoom.us/j/620242121?pwd=OUxGZGZqWlNvZHRUc2l2VmVrclI3QT0

Meeting ID:  620 242 121
PASSWORD:  049345

iPhone one-tap: +13017158592,,620242121#

(Working draft of the April agenda)

In the wake of the Coronavirus Pandemic, the Conference Planning Committee has made the difficult decision to move the conference to a 100% online format. While this will be a difficult endeavor it will also allow all of our participants a unique growth opportunity. Working together we can learn from our experiences using distance education tools while exploring new and effective ways of interacting with and learning from one another. We can extend the fellowship and sense of community we share with one another to many more educators and researchers across the globe.  In short, together we can actually collectively live out the tenants of Process Education while we meet the challenges of moving this experience totally online.

Realizing that the knowledge and experience of our colleagues is our greatest asset we are reaching out to all of you. As the committee has sought to redesign our annual conference, we have generated many ideas and would now like to solicit your input to complete the redesign. Our intent is to offer the online conference during the dates and times of the original plan, June 25-28, 2020. The questions we encountered were complicated. The main issue we uncovered is “Should we run the conference synchronously as it would be experienced in a face to face environment or in some asynchronous manner?”

Because we seek to make the redesign not only work for you, our Academy members, but also respond to the very real concerns you have we need to hear from you. You can assist us in this redesign effort by responding to this survey. Please click the graphic below to access the survey. Check all of the following that apply related to a 2020 online PE conference with a $100 registration fee in/around the June 25-28 time frame.

Please complete the survey by April 6th, 2020.

If anyone has additional questions please send them to barlowwpb@gmail.com

At the International Journal for Process Education, we have been busy with technical editing of this year’s edition. The 2020 issue proves to be exciting with 8 articles covering various areas of Process Education. We look forward to bringing the following articles to you soon!

A System for Learning by Performance (LxP)

How the Learning to Learn Experiences Model the Seven Universal and Perennial Principles of Student Learning and Persistence

Barriers to Implementing a Successful Learning to Learn Experience

Closing the College Readiness Gap: Tools for Preparing Students for College Success

Developing the Entrepreneurial Mindset in Stem Students: Integrating Experiential Entrepreneurship into Engineering Design

Performance Descriptions: A Major Tool for Performance Development

Applying the Framework for Identifying Quality Characteristics from a Process Education Perspective

Bringing Self-Growth Theory to Practice Using the Self-Growth Methodology

I don’t know how the coronavirus situation has been for you, but it has really thrown me for a loop!  As changes came quickly and constantly, and control of my daily life kept shifting, I noticed old behaviors recurring – lack of motivation to work, feeling challenged with self-direction, being easily distracted by the state of the world, and self-evaluating my lower level of performance.  But I have also found that the skills and strategies of self-growth are still here for me.

As I prepared for an upcoming Self-Growth Community activity, I was reviewing new research from Cy Leise and Dan Apple that highlights four Mentoring Skills that can be used to develop each Growth Skill.  And in reviewing this table, some growth and mentoring sets grabbed my attention.

The first thing I noticed was I had, subconsciously, started applying the growth skill Strengthening Role Identities (prioritizing the most important parts you play). The mentoring skill Describing Performance (preparing a picture of expected actions or steps in a process) was coming into play. In the current situation, how do I modify my life to be available to support my parents and grandmother without getting them sick? One of my Broad Criteria from the Self-Growth Methodology is “contributing to a meaningful family”. And now’s the time! I’ve gone for a walk with my mom and her dog almost every day for two weeks. I’ve called my 93-year old, lives-alone-in-her-two-story-house grandmother more frequently, and I try to assure her that if I get groceries for her right now, that’s is not a sign of losing her independence. And I offered to play board games via Zoom with my parents. (Still haven’t convinced my dad that it’s not too weird, but I’m trying!)

But I also noticed areas where a little conscious growth effort will really help right now. These are the growth skills Having an Assessment Mindset (focusing on improvement without judging quality), Feeling Empowered (having all the factors needed to make a significant endeavor possible), and Persisting (continuing on a reasonable path despite low mood or mounting difficulties). The paired mentoring skills that will help me with each had a consistent theme: Developing Action Plans (creating short- and long-term strategies for improvement), Transforming Strategies (developing ownership of action plans for gaining the improved quality), and Getting Unstuck (recognizing the lack of movement toward life’s goals and updating strategies). So I’m redoubling my plan to do daily, holistic assessment and measure my progress against previous action plans. I’ll be focusing action plans on growth rather than performance.  And when I recognize that I’m stuck, I’ll choose an important task and find a small action I can take to get myself moving again. Kerry MacFarland calls this “the small step that has to get done first”! Completing these tasks logs an accomplishment and generates momentum for accomplishing the next thing, too.

If you’d like a copy of the table of 40 growth skills and four mentoring skills to develop each, email Dan Apple (dan@pcrest.com) or Ingrid Ulbrich (ingrid.m.ulbrich@gmail.com) and we’ll be happy to share. I also recommend attending the Online Self-Growth Institute, June 20-24, to launch the next step of your self-growth journey!

I wish you and your family, friends, and colleagues good health, and continued growth through this challenging time

Like many of you I am very busy these days transitioning my courses to the online environment. One of the biggest challenges is adapting my facilitation techniques to this medium. Since Facilitation is a process, the Facilitation Methodology is a great tool for supporting growth in this area. However, many faculty find that the creation of a Facilitation plan is where the rubber hits the road. So this month we are serving up two modules for the price of one: 3.2.3 Facilitation Methodology (by Peter Smith and Daniel Apple) and 3.2.5 Creating a Facilitation Plan (by Vicky Minderhout). These modules were suggested by Steve Beyerlein, one of the editors of the FGB, who says:

"As educators we spend a lot of time organizing knowledge/designing courses, but we and our students could benefit greatly about spending more time planning how we actually deliver our courses.  These modules give a framework for planning pre-class, in-class, and post-class activity with an emphasis on the learning skills we want to most promote and anticipated interventions to enhance these skills."

In lieu of inquiry questions I would suggest that you print out and complete the Facilitation Plan template provided in the last two pages of the  Creating a Facilitation Plan module (FGB 3.2.5).

Let me know if you found this helpful or want to discuss the creation of facilitation plans by emailing me at mwatts@tcc.edu.

Stay tuned for the next FGB module of the month.

Here’s a thought. The Academy of Process Educators is transitioning into a Deliberately Developmental Organization (DDO).

(I’m obviously still in the perfect place following DDO orthodoxy, because I’ve been having a tremendously difficult time fulfilling this month’s newsletter requirement. If I were better it would be time for me to move on I guess.)

I was unable to find sales numbers, but the authors who have written about DDOs were interviewed extensively about the book, including by Forbes magazine, so I assume they’ve sold a few copies.

I’ve written previously about incrementally introducing people to Process Education. I’ve shared that my preferred way of opening up the conversation is by explaining the SII, which can lead to a broader conversation about the differences between assessment and evaluation. Perhaps another pathway to begin the conversation (and when I say conversation, I’m really saying recruitment, because that’s ultimately why you’re talking to others about PE, is to recruit them) is to discuss the deliberately developmental organization.

The DDO conversation, and our adoption of DDO ideas, is a great vehicle to introduce people to Process Education. I believe that more people are open to having a conversation about DDO than are open to having a conversation about PE for the following three reasons.

Reason One: People may have heard of DDO. I have had conversations in which DDO was brought up, and not by me. The concept has entered the shared academic conversation. Because of this, it is easier to engage in conversation about DDO than it is to talk about Process Education. We know it’s not impossible to have a conversation, especially a leading one, with the uninformed. But it is certainly a simpler thing to discuss the familiar. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of talking with someone about a movie you’ve both seen, or a musical artist you both are familiar with. Whether or not you love country music, I’m sure we would all be on surer footing discussing Garth Brooks than we might be discussing Sun Ra or the Residents, for example.

Reason Two: DDO has legitimacy. In the academic world, books written by respected professors come out all the time. They sell for a lot of money to the libraries that buy them, and almost no one has them on their personal shelf. You can sometimes find them on Amazon, and maybe they have a review. ‘An Everyone Culture’ has over a hundred reviews, and is ranked in several categories in the top one hundred. It’s been cited over two hundred times. It was published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Reason Three: Some parts of DDO are counter-intuitive. Counter-intuitive ideas lead to interesting conversations. When I discuss the counter-intuitive idea I referenced in the first paragraph I get all sorts of different responses, but what I never get is boredom. Whether my students or colleagues agree or disagree with the idea of moving people out of positions where they are competent, it always leads to interesting back and forth. And once you’re involved in an interesting discussion you can bring in more interesting ideas, and the trust you’ve built in the conversation will carry over.

None of this is to say that PE is unheard of or illegitimate. And there are certainly parts of PE that have been counter-intuitive to me. I’m simply offering this as another way for you (and me) to begin the process education conversation with the people in our professional lives that we love and respect, and that we know could benefit.

April 7, 2020      7:00-8:30pm, Eastern

Click to visit the workshop page for this workshop!

ZOOM INFORMATION:

URL:  https://zoom.us/j/652556772?pwd=WkoxUzJJU29kWU1FQytyR0J4QU1MUT09

Meeting ID: 652 556 772     Password: 449758

One tap mobile  +12532158782,,652556772# US   

Phone  253 215 8782

Part A (The Tools & Principles of Project Management): The discipline of Project Management follows a long tradition dating back to work in the aerospace and defense industries in the late 60’s. More recently, a concerted effort by the Project Management Institute (PMI) was undertaken to formulate the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) as a standard framework for practice. Since the PMBOK has become a vast framework, It is our intent to provide just a cursory overview of the tools, and principles that underlie Project Management and what it means to be a Project Manager.

Part B (Academy Project Management / Action Planning): Action planning is currently at the forefront of the Academy’s strategic planning effort. Action planning activities have helped us better prioritize and execute on our goals and objectives for what we hope to accomplish in the coming years. The purpose of this section is to help us better understand action plans, project management and the level of organizational structure needed for the Academy to be successful?

Prepare for the Workshop
•    Visit the workshop page and complete the REQUIRED reading and answer the Exploration Questions PRIOR to the workshop!

(Register for the workshop on the Workshop page or on the main Professional Development page. Don't forget to invite friends and co-workers!)

The Self-Growth Institute for the dates of June 20 – 24 will move forward online. We have started updating the curriculum and facilitation plans and  expect that the outcomes of the Institute will help the Academy build the expertise needed to operate as a successful DDO.

The outcomes of this Institute continue to include at least a 50% increase in learning performance with a target of an increase of 100%. We're also aiming for a 50%  increase in growth capability so that individuals can improve their quality of life by 50% each year. We believe that the progress gained from research and the Self-Growth Community will have a major impact on participants' self-growth capability.

Central to the Self-Growth Institute experience is the Psychology of Learning and Success. Participants will process this selection of activities with 10 minutes less time alotted each day -- this raises the bar of performance. This process starts with 75 minutes on Monday and is reduced to 35 minutes by Friday, doubling everyone's learning performance.

The collaboration will be online with synchronous activities overseen by a PE mentor/life coach assigned to each team. This mentor will have experienced last summer’s Self-Growth Institute and be ready to help and challenge.

The Institute will include friendly competition, extensive assessment, gaming, performance development, life coaching, development of  a life plan, and individual advancement in 40 growth skills and 37 mentoring skills. This event will prepare participants for a world-class online PE conference, scheduled to follow from June 25 to 28.

THIS WILL BE 24/7 PERFORMANCE-BASED EXPERIENCE WITH TEAMS, COMPETITION, COACHING, PRIZES, AND PLENTY OF PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT, GROWTH AND SELF-GROWTH DEVELOPMENT. YOU WILL BE ENGAGED EVERY MINUTE OF THE PROCESS WITH OTHERS, SO PLEASE FREE UP ALL OTHER OBLIGATIONS FOR THESE 5 DAYS.

The topics that will be explored include:

Quality of Life including its dimensions, measurement, possible scales, how to construct a QoL index and basic preparation for its use during the 2020/2021 Self-Growth Community journey.

Assessment including comparison with evaluation, strengthening self-assessment, reflection and producing a personal annual assessment report.

Learning including understanding knowledge, learning process, elevation of critical thinking in learning, generalizing and problem solving.

Performance including use of 25 performance descriptions, performance criteria, Learning by Performance, performance development, performance mentoring and performance measures.

Learning to Learn including a framework for learning to learn, updated Classification of Learning Skills, 20 methodologies, learning process methodology, constructing a vision of your ideal self, metacognition, and facilitation of learning to learn.

Growth including the 15 components that contribute to increasing growth capability, 40 growth skills, how to construct an Annual Growth Plan and the impediments to growth, i.e., risk factors.

Self-Growth including the 12 components that contribute to increasing self-growth capability, impediments to self-growth, the Self-Growth Methodology, 37 mentoring skills, self-growth plan and life coaching.

Creating a Culture of Self-Growth including the Transformation of Education, impact of institutional culture on mindsets/success, tips on implementing a learning to learn and self-growth program and essence of developing a deliberately developmental organization (DDO) culture and use of an Academic Recovery Course.

Please register HERE (or through the Pacific Crest Home page). The registration costs are $600, with a 50% discount for Academy members. Please register as soon as possible because we are beginning to design the teams NOW. Participation at this event is expected for every key Academy member who wants to be a significant contributor to the DDO initiative over next three years.

Even though Zoom meetings can be a little boring at times, we've decided we LIKE them that way. Especially when the alternative is having a Zoom meeting "Zoombombed". When that happens, a stranger joins the Zoom meeting, shares their screen and shows either themselves or video to the group. What the group ends up watching is decidedly *not* gardening tips or the latest Pixar film.

The best way to keep this from happening is to NOT share Zoom meeting information (URLs, phone numbers, meeting IDs) publicly.

What this means to you is that the following information, which used to be available on the public Academy website is now ONLY available on the Member site:

1) Academy Board Meeting Zoom information

2) the Academy calendar

3) Workshop Zoom information