WELCOME and THANK YOU for reading! This newsletter covers what happened in October and will give you a heads up on what to look for the months following.

In this issue (please note the links below will only work when viewing this newsletter in a browser):

Upcoming Events

This is our regular monthly board meeting.

All board members and directors are welcome!
November 6 at 6:30 – 8:00 pm Eastern.

Zoom information is available on the Member’s site

As the fall season takes hold of our weather (in the northern hemisphere) and the fall term is nearing the midpoint, it is time to reflect on recent Academy activities and those to come in the next months. To stay informed, you can always find the latest Board minutes on the member’s site. At the recent Board meeting, we were able to organize the Conference planning committee. You may recognize some of the members including Chaya Jain, Tris Utschig, Peter Smith, Steve Beyerlein, Yuqin Hu, George Dombi, Grace Onodipe, Steve Spicklemire, Matt Watts, Joshua Morrison and Patrick Barlow. We would like to add 2 or 3 additional members to help plan the event so if you are inclined to participate, please contact me via email at Barlowwpn@gmail.com. Tentative dates and location for the Conference will be shared in next month’s newsletter.

The Board will convene for the virtual Winter meeting in early January 2025. The primary focus on that day long meeting will be on the annual Conference as well as the Strategic plan for 2025 – 2030. We have been reviewing the 2020-2025 plan to determine which goals that have been completed, which we should continue to focus on and what new goals should be adopted. One specific recommendation is to reduce the total number of goals so that we can be more focused and successful in achieving them. We have been discussing strategies for how to best identify goals that will increase membership and participation as well as supporting the professional development needs of all members. Our recent decision to reach out to the international audience will continue to be a key part of this discussion.

To become more focused on current targeted efforts the board has voted to eliminate two “Director” positions including the DDO Director and the Sergeant-at-Arms. Both positions, while valuable, have been dormant for several years and the Board felt that eliminating them for now was prudent. Other Director positions will be evaluated over the next fiscal year to determine their impact on the Strategic Goals that will be presented to the members at the annual Conference.

As you can see there is a lot going on in our Academy! Your Board members are committed to strengthening the organization. We are focused on engaging one another in our own understanding of Process Education, exploring the changing landscape of higher education and training. We encourage you to participate in the many professional development activities offered, plan to attend the summer conference and volunteer to join in projects the academy offers.

Recent advancements enable PE practitioners to utilize Artificial Intelligence to enrich their self-growth and develop their ideal self. Output from the suite of AI programs created by Dan Apple and Wade Ellis was illustrated using the mental modeling tool featured in an IJPE paper by George Dombi and Matt Watts that applied fuzzy cognitive mapping programs for modeling self-growth (https://www.ijpe.online/2021/fcm.pdf). What is novel and exciting is how these two complimentary technologies can be integrated. Utilizing observations and insights from weekly reflections, personalized weekly intentions were created using the Insight Generator AI. These output intentions were then used to investigate personal impediments that were likely to be encountered along with mitigating growth objectives; as suggested by the Weekly Growth Coach AI.  Because in moving on through the weekly planning process it is valuable to test one’s understanding of how the impediments and growth objectives interact, the Growth Coach AI was used to query the strength of the relationship between the set of impediments and growth objectives. The output (see table 1) was qualitative but levels of low, intermediate, and high positive and negative correlation was discerned from this narrative. This information was then fed to Mental Modeler and the graphic below in this article was produced. 

Video on how to download Mental Modeler is available here: https://uri.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a1f78712-315f-4ce5-95f0-b1d4000f6452

In the course of the work, we came up with 3 impediments: Self-doubt, Avoiding Discomfort and Low Expectations.  

These were balanced with 4 Professional Characteristics: Being Self-Confident, Asking for Help, Taking Risks and Leveraging Failures.

Table 1 

Mind Map Description 

1.   Central Node: Impediments and Professional Characteristics

This node connects to two main branches: Impediments and Professional Characteristics. 

2.   Branch: Impediments

Self-Doubt

Negative Feedback: Leads to avoiding discomfort, which prevents growth and learning.

Positive Feedback: Overcoming self-doubt can increase self-confidence and willingness to take risks.

Avoiding Discomfort

Negative Feedback: Leads to low expectations, reducing opportunities to develop new skills.

Positive Feedback: Confronting discomfort encourages taking risks and leveraging failures.

Low Expectations

Negative Feedback: Results in lack of self-confidence and discourages asking for help.

Positive Feedback: Overcoming low expectations can lead to higher aspirations and self-improvement. 

3.   Branch: Professional Characteristics

Being Self-Confident

Positive Feedback: Encourages taking risks and asking for help when needed.

Negative Feedback: Overconfidence can lead to underestimating challenges and avoiding critical feedback.

Asking for Help

Positive Feedback: Leads to leveraging failures and learning from others' experiences.

Negative Feedback: May be perceived as a weakness, especially in a highly competitive environment.

Taking Risks

Positive Feedback: Increases opportunities for personal and professional growth.

Negative Feedback: Higher chance of failures, which can reduce confidence if not managed well.

Leveraging Failures

Positive Feedback: Converts setbacks into learning experiences, enhancing resilience.

Negative Feedback: Repeated failures without learning can lead to self-doubt and low expectations.

Visual Representation 

The mind map visually represents these connections with arrows indicating the flow of influence. For instance: 

• An arrow from Self-Doubt to Avoiding Discomfort would be marked with a negative sign (-) indicating a negative outcome.
• An arrow from Taking Risks to Leveraging Failures would be marked with a positive sign (+) indicating a positive outcome.

This map was manually created using the Mental Modeler software given the descriptive output from the Growth Coach AI seen in Table 1.

What is interesting and elevating for the PE practitioner is that the Mental Modeler map is dynamic and not static (the graphic above is static, but this is because you’re viewing it outside of the software environment). The relative magnitude of the nodes can be changed as a result of improving a particular professional characteristic. The magnitudes of the growth in Ideal Self and the decline in the impediments (self-doubt, avoiding discomfort, and low expectations) can be determined by running the live model available here: https://www.processeducation.org/newsletter/links/IdealSelf.mmp

What is possible is that any user can query the AI programs to develop a set of possible impediments and related profession characteristic to mitigate those impediments and then ask the AI to create a map linking those nodes. Then with the help of the Mental Modeler create a dynamic map that can show positive changes in one’s ideal self as one progresses in developing specific professional characteristics.

We’re hoping to have a Professional Development workshop focused on this within the next 6 months or so!

(This is a guest article from the Pacific Crest blog)

We all know we’re supposed to make lemonade when life hands us lemons. As nice as it might be to never get the lemons in the first place, it’s not up to us what kind of feedback others (or the universe) give us. And unfortunately, there’s no “Making Lemonade 101” course, nor does the well-intentioned advice come with a handbook.

Perhaps surprisingly, it turns out that our years of experience in assessment has turned us into Lemonade Masters. We usually refer to the process as “Turning Evaluation into Assessment”, but it’s really a recipe for taking those lemons that are tough to swallow (evaluation) and turning them into lemonade (self-assessment that anyone can use to improve).  

Here’s our recipe for Turning Evaluation Lemons into Self-Assessment Lemonade (Serves: 1)

Stage 1: Dealing with the Lemons

1. Receive the evaluation: Review the evaluation feedback in a relaxed, non-defensive manner. (Others are in charge of what they say; you’re in charge of how you react.)
2. Be objective: Consider the evaluator’s perspective and their motive for the evaluation (take an objective perspective). Strive to appreciate that people can lash out and say hurtful things for a variety of reasons, many of which will have nothing to do with you! People can also mean well, but simply be wrong.
3. Gain clarification: Ask questions to attain clarification from the evaluator as needed and if possible.
4. Summarize: Sum up the outcome of the evaluation. What total information do you actually have?

Stage 2: Making the Lemonade

5. Reframe the outcomes: Reinterpret the outcomes of the evaluation in a way that you can use to improve future performance. Resist the trap of self-evaluation! (Don’t fixate on the lemons or try to keep them; focus on making the lemonade.)
6. Create goals: Use the information from the evaluation to create goals, objectives, and benchmarks to help structure your action plan for improving future performance.
7. Set a timeline: Formulate realistic and attainable timelines for accomplishing your goals.
8. Create an action plan: Craft a plan of action that brings together the goals and timeline.
9. Work it! Put your self-assessment action plan to work.

Stage 3: Enjoy the Lemonade!

Identify a limiting skill

It is important to quickly estimate what is the most significant skill needed for the context. In a team context, failure of members to argue for their positions may indicate lack of preparation (which could be due to insufficient resources in the curriculum) or a need to improve the skill of persuasively arguing a position—an essential learning skill. (This is Step 3 of 10 in the Principles of Constructive Intervention.)

3.2.7 Constructive Intervention

 This goes way beyond “fixing the problem”, intentionally working from an angle of “improve the learning”. Remember that Learning Skills are aptitudes, abilities, and behaviors related to increasing the quality of learning performance. When a student is stuck or beginning to be unable to engage positively with the learning process, regardless of its focus, the solution is going to be found in the student themselves, not in any disciplinary content. This is why we say “intervene on process, not content”! The more prepared you are, as a teacher/facilitator, when it comes to the learning skills students need to rock a learning task, the more effective you’ll be at offering small, targeted interventions to help students work at the skill they need to improve. This means stepping through your facilitation plan and learning activities from the perspective of students, quite possibly at different levels of preparation. When you know where the likely traps and challenges are, you can determine the learning skills that students need to either avoid the traps or meet and succeed with the challenges.

Summary of Oct 2 Board Meeting

Treasurers Report – Matthew Watts

• Matthew presented the final figures for the last fiscal year.
• Vote to approve

 PE Conference 2025 Planning – Patrick Barlow

• Committee established
• Chaya Jain, Tris Utschig, Peter Smith, Steve Beyerlein, Yuqin Hu, George Dombi, Grace Onodipe, Steve Spicklemire, Matt Watts, Joshua Morrison and Patrick Barlow
• 2 or 3 more people needed

 Winter Meeting

• Options discussed
• Consensus seems to be a short meeting in early January
  

2020-2025 Strategic Goals – Patrick Barlow

• Discussed all 10 goals, highlighted some for potential removal (http://www.processeducation.org/docs/sp2020_2025a.pdf)
• Tris: It’s possible to merge goals 6 (Student Academic Success project) and 8 (research). 5 (elevating PE conf) and 10 (membership) could be combined.
• More discussion before we reach a final decision
• Brainstorm potential goals for 2025-2030 (these to be established before PE Conference)

 Bylaw Changes

• To be voted on in November’s board meeting
• Additions are in green
  • Amendment to ARTICLE I: NAME The name of this organization shall be the International Academy of Process Educators (abbreviated IAoPE) (hereinafter referred to as the Academy). (Note: Items marked in Red are to be added. Items marked in green are to be deleted)
  • Amendment to Section 2: Membership Rights & Responsibilities. Academy Membership shall encompass the following: 1. The right of any member attending the annual business meeting to vote on any matter brought to vote during that meeting.

  (The DRAFT minutes from the October Meeting are available HERE.)  

Including (BUT NOT LIMITED TO)
workshops you'd like to attend!