Tribes-Internet leaders

Here's another Ted video. Seth Godin talks about the internet's revival of tribes. The internet provides people with opportunities to find like-minded others. He argues that all that's needed is a leader to connect people to create change. I'm acting as a leader of sorts in the Post Grad Group. (I of course aim for collaborative learning, so am very reluctant to refer to myself as a 'leader'. I'm only using the term to use Seth Godin's language.) I haven't stepped up to the plate fully yet. (I've kind of been hovering around it.) I am beginning to regain passion and drive for this project and am finally stepping up. (I got overwhelmed by this subject and by other commitments for a while there, and did not act.) I am using the internet, as Godin describes, to connect to people who share the same uni student status as me and are interested in meeting new people.

Interesting video from one of my favourite websites: ted.com.

Talks about collaboration and self-interest

Social Animation

Jim Ife would describe they type of CD used in my project as “social animation”. This title makes me smile. Social Animation focuses on the quality of social intervention within a community. I aim to facilitate interaction between members of the UQ postgrad and mature age undergrad community. This group initial focus is social interaction, but who knows where it could lead. Consciousness raising, dialogical relationships, and critical reflective practice are important to Social Animation.

Ife, J. (2002). Community Development: community-based alternatives in an age of globalization. Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education Australia.

Learning from failure

My project has not been as successful as I had hoped. I aimed to form a group to promote social inclusion amongst postgraduate and undergraduate mature age students at UQ. My planning was inadequate. Overall, the project was to a certain degree a failure. Failure however is not the end. I’m going to learn from it! Here are some quotes on failure and my reaction to them with regards to my project:

There are no failures-just experiences and your reaction to them. Tom Krause

Rather than beating myself up over my failures, I should learn from them and move forward.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure. Colin Powell

Whether or not I succeed with this project, I will learn from it, move forward and succeed in other ways

Success builds character, failure reveals it. Dave Checkett

My project has not taken off, but I need to learn, be strong, and move forward. It would be easy to curl up and cower in the face of defeat. Instead, I should stand strong, face defeat and be strengthened by it.

I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. Benjamin Franklin

One of the things I did wrong was not properly plan. I should have given more thought into the timing of the project. I should have advertised it earlier in the semester when most students, including myself, had more time to commit to social activities. I will however advertise this week before the break. Hopefully, people will have time to socialise during the break. If I don’t gain much interest now, I can try again at the beginning of next semester. The important thing is that I try.

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. Zig Ziglar

&

We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure. Leo F. Buscaglia

This gives me hope. Even if this journey didn’t take the path I had envisioned, success may still be found.

Combining work/study with play/passion

Another discussion board post. This one regards feeling weird about combining work/study with play/passion:

Hi Janelle and Nick and anyone else reading.

It's kind of reassuring to see that someone else is struggling with this. It is hard to allow ourselves to be holistic. It's so strange that we feel like we shouldn't be able to combine work/uni and play/social stuff. This course is very refreshing in that it encourages us to combine different aspects of our lives. I, like Nick, have begun to realise the power in connecting passion and recreation with making a living. I spent about a decade of my life organising concerts "for fun" before i asked myself, "Hey, could this be the career path I should take? Maybe I can make money and have fun?". (I'm hoping to combine social work and concert planning to form a career when i graduate.)

My project involves creating a social group for postgrads and mature age students at UQ. This is something I've been wanting to do, but felt I didn't have time to do because of uni commitments. I now have the amazing opportunity to create this group and get credit for it, yet somehow it feels slightly 'wrong'. I need to remind myself that mixing work and play is natural and ideal!

Anyway, hooray for us for at least starting to make these connections

Jess

not taking advantage of the discussion board :(

Another discussion board post (slightly altered):

It's very hard to shift your thinking and learning towards collaboration. I often find myself becoming overwhelmed by the discussion board- feeling that I need to keep up with it because my grades depend on it, rather than using it as an amazing tool for learning. I am too accustomed to the banking method of teaching. I need to remind myself of Friere' s teaching that collaborative learning will lead to critically conscious, active participants with joint responsibility for their reality. He argues that collaborative learning increases ownership, optimism, empowerment, knowledge-sharing, joint-responsibility, sustainable changes, dialogue, productive relationships, ability to critically think, productivity, creativity and action. I agree! Now, I must critically reflect on how I can take advantage of collaborative learning in this class and in other areas of my life.

Process over Outcome

Hi everyone: This is a copy of my discussion board post on steps and lessons learned:

Hi Sylvia and everyone else. Yes, I am at the point where I’m having anxiety dreams and really just wanting this semester to be over. You’re not alone. My project also hasn’t taken off. I’m very disappointed in myself for allowing all of the other things in my life to get in the way of truly launching my project. I guess it’s quite common to have big dreams and not following through as much as we’d imagined. A lot of people argue that community development is about process more than it is about outcome. It’s also about what you learn along the way. Ife writes,

There are two sorts of journey we can take. One is the journey where the aim is to arrive at our destination, usually as quickly and as comfortable as possible. We plan our journey, we work out the best route to take, and we estimate how long it will last, so that we know when we have to start in order to arrive on time. Everything is geared to the arrival, and it is a journey on which we want no surprises…. The other sort of journey is the journey of discovery. Here we are not sure where we will end up; we may have some idea of where e would ike to go, but typically it is ill-defined. We do not have detailed maps, and we cannot predict what is likely to happen. Indeed, we expect the unexpected, and when the unexpected happens we welcome it as a new opportunity. It is the journey itself that is important, rather than the arrival.

Ife, J. (2002). Community Development: community-based alternatives in an age of globalization. Frenchs Forest: Pearson Education Australia.

Good luck deciding what to do after the semester ends. It is very hard balancing personal and public and figuring out how much you can offer to projects. I’m not sure how far my project will go as my other commitments have proven to be barriers. It’s hard, but we’ve gotta focus on our learnings and not be too hard on ourselves!

IAP2 Pubic Participation Spectrum

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) developed the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum showing the increasing level of public impact of participation methods (International Association for Public Participation Australasia, 2010).

The UQ Post Grad Group aims to reach empowerment, the maximum level of public impact. In empowerment, final decisions are made by the public. Empowerment in my project will include participants choosing the direction, activities, associations and promotion for the group. International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2) (2010).

IAP2 Public Participitation Spectrum. Retrieved from:

http://www.iap2.org.au/sitebuilder/resources/knowledge/asset/files/36/iap2spectrum.pdf.

ABCD- What do you bring?

Some aspects of Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) will be used in my project. In ABCD, local assets are the primary components of community development. Knowledge, skills and material assets are shared to build community capacity (Ife, 2002).

Hopefully, members of the UQ Post Grad Group will share knowledge and skills.

In terms of material assets, perhaps carpooling to events could be arranged or discounts could be established at places where members work? For instance, I work at a microbrewery. If some members wanted to brew their own beer, I could organise the event and get them a discount.

Everyone has something to offer!(I offer more than beer, really :) ) Any idea of what you could bring to the group?

Community Education

Community Education will be used in the Post Grad Group. Community Education highlights the importance of people recognising that they are part of a society and connected to others within it.

Community Education can lead to sustainability as community members have ownership over change processes and engage in knowledge and capacity-building dialogue and activities. Community education is holistic, recognising the interconnectedness of varying aspects of participants’ lives (Freire, 1996). In holistic practice, we must recognise barriers in people’s lives and engage in dialogue to determine how to gain the best results. Needs can be interconnected. In the case of the UQ Post Grad Group, barriers include competing demands in life and the feelings of social isolation from the rest of the university.

Project Action

My aim is to facilitate community development amongst a group of postgraduate and mature age students.

The participatory paradigm was used to plan the group. This paradigm involves the belief that knowledge is collaboratively created. It is pluralist, acknowledging that we all have valid perspectives. Methods include action research and dialogue (Ife, 2002; Chambers, 2002). The group will be governed by the people.

Connection and inclusion are main goals of the group.

I will work alongside members to create the goals and agenda for the group. This group could evolve into multiple groups whose members unite over similarities, be they interests, availability, or location. The UQ Post Group will be flexible and creative with no fixed end point. The group aims to have many one-off events, as it can be quite difficult for some postgraduate and mature age students to commit to structured, weekly meetings.

Personal Story Behind Project

The idea for this group can be traced back to my personal experience at the UQ Market Day for semester 1, 2009.

Market Day serves as a welcome party to UQ for new students. It involves entertainment, market stalls and clubs and societies looking for new members. Tables representing clubs and societies are set up around the entire circumference of the great court. I arrived at Market Day excited about the possibilities of mingling with other postgraduate students and joining some clubs. I found, however, that very few of the clubs applied to me. Instead, most seemed to be geared toward undergrads. I walked around the oval for hours and only ended up briefly talking to one person at the Social Work Students Association’s table.

I left Market Day feeling deflated, defeated and alone.

Wheatley, Relationships and Collaborative Learning

Hi everyone. I've become quite a fan of Margaret Wheatley since doing research for my project. I've noticed that a few classmates have been inspired by her work as well. Wheatley describes the importance of relationships and collaboration beautifully. The UQ Post Grad Group aims to form relationships and lessen isolation. Here are some quotes and learnings from her book Finding Our Way (2005) that made an impact on me:

Relationships are essential to human life. Wheatley argues that from relationships, life creates systems that offer their members support, stability and opportunity. Wheatley writes, “Everywhere life displays itself as complex, tangled, messy webs of relationships. From these relationships, life creates systems that offer greater stability and support than life lived alone” (Wheatley, 2005, p.25) In an ideal system, information and energy is continuously exchanged between individuals. This sort of system improves capacities of both individuals and the system as a whole.

Our world should be a place in which "creative self-expression and embracing relationships are the organizing energies, where there is no such thing as an independent individual and no need for a leader to take on as much responsibility for us as we've demanded in our past." (p. 22)

A great force in life is the need for life "to link with other life, to form systems of relationships where all individuals are better supported by the system they have created." (p. 25)

She recognizes the struggle between individual and community, arguing that individualism and connectivity fit together naturally. She argues that individuals and communities should co-evolve, leading to “stability and protection that was not available when individuals were isolated” (p47).

“People’s great creativity and diversity, our desire for contribution and relationships, blossom when the heart of our community is clear and beckoning, and when we refrain from cluttering our paths with proscriptions and demands. The future of community is best taught to us by life” (p54).

The UQ Post Grad Group aims to form relationships and lessen isolation. Relationships are essential to human life. Wheatley argues that from relationships, life creates systems that offer their members support, stability and opportunity. Wheatley writes, “Everywhere life displays itself as complex, tangled, messy webs of relationships. From these relationships, life creates systems that offer greater stability and support than life lived alone” (Wheatley, 2005, p.25) In an ideal system, information and energy is continuously exchanged between individuals. This sort of system improves capacities of both individuals and the system as a whole.

No Clubs Confirmed

I contacted the UQ Union and they confirmed that there are no clubs geared specifically toward postgrad and mature age undergrad students. There are no clubs for mature age students at all. There is a group for postgrad engineers, postgrad business students and postgrad taiwanese students however.

No Clubs for Us :(

I scoured the UQ website to find that only 1 out of 135 groups and societies are specifically for postgraduate students (University of Queensland Union, 2010, http://www.uqu.uq.edu.au/).

This one group is the Postgraduate Research Engineering Student Society. Most of us wouldn’t fit into their membership criteria. No clubs specifically target mature age students. In fact, a search of the University of Queensland Union (the organization that manages UQ clubs) website returned no results for “mature age student” (UQU, 2010).