Read & Watch

Suggested timing: 35 minutes

Learning circles in practice

People attend learning circles for different reasons including professional development, supplementing formal education, and building new social relationships. As a learning circle facilitator, your job is to help each learner achieve the goals that they set out to achieve, without being an expert in the subject matter. In this section, we’ll dig into the question of what good facilitation looks like. To start, let’s review some specific examples of recent learning circles.

Business development in Charlotte

Janet, a librarian at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, received a number of requests over the years to offer small business development programs at her library branch. After hearing about learning circles from a colleague, she went to the P2PU website and found a course that she thought could work: Marketing in a Digital World, offered for free by the University of Illinois through Coursera.

Janet knew that weekday evenings would work best for the individuals who had mentioned this to her, and so she chose Wednesday from 6-7:30PM as the time for the learning circle, and booked a group meeting room in the library for each of the six meetings. Once this was taken care of, she put a flyer up in the library, reached out directly to some patrons who she thought would be interested, and contacted a few small business support networks across the city. 10 people showed up to the first meeting. As most everybody had signed up beforehand using the P2PU registration, Janet knew how many people didn’t have their own laptop or headphones and she was prepared with library hardware to borrow.

Even though everybody had their own computer, the group decided to watch videos together, often projecting them onto a wall in the library. After working through the course, learners created social media accounts for the business, designed logos, and shared feedback with one another. The learning circle ended after six weeks, but a number of learners kept coming back week after week to further develop their business plans together.

A few months later, patrons started asking for another learning circle. The course she used the first time wasn’t available, but she found a similar course called Strategic Social Media Marketing, offered for free by Boston University through edX. She has since run this learning circle a few more times, becoming not only a more confident facilitator but also an expert in her own right, as she’s now helped dozens of small businesses better market themselves online.

Recently, Janet has started experimenting with new formats. She invited a past learner to join her as a co-facilitator for upcoming learning circles, and she started running learning circles at a local shopping mall as part of the library’s outreach effort!

The people’s university in Nakuru

Learning circles came to the Kenya National Library Service in late 2016, when P2PU ran a facilitator training workshop for a small group of librarians from Nairobi and Nakuru. Since then, the program has blossomed into a key strategy for the library’s community outreach and education program strategy: more than 1,000 patrons take learning circles at KNLS each year! The librarians in Nakuru, Joseck and Purity, were eager to offer new learning programs through the library. They advertised learning circles across the city, paying special attention to university students. Joseck realized that many students who were pursuing a computer science degree were not spending adequate time tinkering around on a computer; it was a largely lecture based program. So Joseck decided to offer a web design learning circle at the library. 53 people showed up the first week, and the learning circle actually grew week-by-week as learners started telling their friends. (You can read more about the success of the web design learning circles in this blog post from EIFL).

Joseck quickly devised a strategy to empower learners with more expertise to help him facilitate, and the group divided into smaller groups of about 16 people. Joseck has talked at length about his strategies for empowering volunteers in a P2PU community call (funnily enough, when he led this community call one of his learning circles was happening in the background – the group didn’t need him anymore!). Joseck serves as an ICT Officer at the library, and has found learning circles to be an incredible way to engage patrons around topics like web design, cybersecurity, and computer basics. He’s led two dozen learning circles, reaching more than 750 library patrons.

While he was doing this, Purity was experimenting with a variety of other topics, including public speaking and interview skills. In 2017, she was about to being a learning circle in community journalism, when the course got taken offline just days before the meeting (there were more than 30 people signed up!). She reached out to P2PU, and we were able to get in touch with the university and have them release the content for the group. But while that was happening, something incredible happened - the group came together for the first meeting with no course at all, and they managed to figure it out. Somebody reached out to a friend who was a journalist, some other people found free resources available online, and the group was able to make due without a course, knowing that each person who showed up had both an interest in community journalism and personal life experiences that they could bring to the group. Purity has herself led 12 learning circles, reaching 300 patrons. Recently, she’s run two learning circles on the basics of sign language.

Facilitator responsibilities

Let’s break down these examples and speak to some of the specific responsibilities that you’ll have as a facilitator.

Model Peer Learning

As discussed in the first module, some people will inevitably show up to a learning circle expecting a passive experience where you transmit information to them. From the beginning, you should avoid positioning yourself as the only person in the room with an answer, and encourage learners to help one another out along the way. All this being said, when we say that everybody has something to teach and learn, we mean you too! So don’t be afraid to lend a hand and offer assistance to learners along the way.

Listen to Learners

Be observant, and learn to read the energy of the room. Who seems really motivated today? Who is particularly quiet? Once you have an understanding of each learner’s goals, you’ll be able to respond to this energy productively. Is one learner quiet because they are struggling with a basic concept? Ask somebody who is a few steps ahead if they don’t mind helping out.

Encourage Social Cohesion

Social cohesion begins to develop within the first hour that a new group spends time together, and as the facilitator you can do a lot to help people to self-identify as a member of the group. Some ideas on achieving this include:

• Agreeing on a group name
• Using non-verbal symbols (mascot, logo, colors)
• Establishing rituals (traditions, habits, weekly activities)
• Using plural pronouns (“we” instead of “I”)
• Invoking group metaphors (referring to the group as a team)
• Making verbal pledges (commitments to future action)
• Establishing group narrative (saying things like “Remember when we…”)
• Developing groupspeak (inside jokes, jargon)

Probe Assumptions and Clarify Statements

Learners will ask you many content related questions, since you are the closest thing to the traditional teacher in the room. When this happens, your response should demonstrate that their peers are a valuable resource, and that most questions are answerable by the group. Examples of responses you might give are: I’m not sure, did you ask anyone else if they ran up against the same problem? Hmmm, where would you start looking to figure that out? In general, think about giving suggestions rather than directions.

Encourage Meaningful, Frequent Interactions Between Learners

Shared emotional connections serve the dual purpose of helping individuals learn and reinforcing community. You should look out for opportunities to summarize what you’ve heard and elicit new perspectives and viewpoints. If you find that questions or conversations are taking the group off track, you should feel comfortable intervening to get things back on track. Other learners will greatly appreciate this.

Manage Expectations

When learning something new, optimism can quickly turn into discouragement. To navigate this, express confidence that learners can achieve their goals, while also being realistic and aware of what is possible in six weeks. For instance, it’s unlikely that somebody with no programming background will get a fancy tech job after one HTML/CSS Learning Circle. However, they will gain a better understanding of how to build a website, get a sense as to whether this is a subject they’d like to continue in, and have a peer group of like-minded individuals they’ve gotten to know.

Encourage Growth Mindsets

A growth mindset is the belief that one’s skills and abilities can be continually developed through hard work, rather than stay fixed at a certain level. As a facilitator, try praising a learner’s processes (effort, strategies, choices) rather than their innate intelligence (e.g. saying “you’re so smart!”).

Turn Frustrations Around

Try to flip frustrations into positive statements and involve the group. For example, if learners in a job skills learning circle aren’t happy with the interview tips in the online course, ask the group if they can come up with better questions. You’ll find that often, the online course is merely a starting point for learners to bring their personal experiences into the learning circle.

Delegate Responsibilities

A good facilitator empowers learners to take charge of their own learning, making the role of the facilitator smaller and smaller over time. As the learning circle progresses, you can start asking learners to take on some extra responsibility, such as:

• Helping other learners who are having technical issues
• Sending a wrap-up email afterwards reflecting on the meeting
• Summarizing the week’s material at the beginning of each meeting
• Setting up beforehand and cleaning up afterwards
• Sharing a resource or article that relates to the course content
• Helping a learner who is struggling
• Bringing snacks

Celebrate the process, not just the finished product

Don’t forget to celebrate the journey along the way with learning circle participants. The check-in and reflection exercises are designed to help you all call out the journey.

Remember that facilitation is a practice

Don’t stress about being “good at it” right away. Becoming a learning circle facilitator will be a continuous process of trying, reflecting, and iterating. A few reflection questions to keep in mind as you begin:

• How might my cultural assumptions influence my interactions with learners?
• How might the backgrounds and experiences of learners influence their motivation, engagement, and learning?
• How can I modify course materials, activities, facilitation techniques, and expectations to be more accessible to all the learners in my learning circle?

On your facilitator dashboard, you’ll find a space where you can write a reflection after each learning circle meeting. You can share a message with your learners and/or the P2PU team. We encourage you to use this space to reflect on your evolving facilitation practice.

Support activities

It may sound daunting to lead a learning circle with just the content of an online course. This is where the format of the learning circle comes in to help. We’ve developed a number of check-ins, group activities, and reflections to help you structure your meeting time. The format of the learning circle is here to help you—but if it ever feels like it’s getting in the way, then feel free to change it. Below, we call out a few specific examples of activities that we’ve used in many learning circles.

Check-in

As you’ve hopefully felt by now, check-ins provide a space for the group to convene and be with one another before everybody gets to work. Check-ins can be playful icebreakers, or they can be thoughtful discussions about events that have happened recently. What’s most important is that everybody feels like they have a chance to reorient themselves to the group and make known anything that they are bringing into the learning circle this week. A few questions that we think work well include:

• What are you hoping to achieve today?
• How did you get here today?
• Share an example of a meaningful learning experience that you had. What made it meaningful? Is there anything from that experience that we can bring into this learning circle?
• Share one thing that you can teach somebody else how to do.

Group activities

A good group activity provides both contextualization (what does the course material mean in your current environment?) and personalization (how does the course relate to your own personal goals and how you learn?). Group activities have the added benefit of supporting dialogue between learners, which is a fundamental component of peer learning. When an activity is not emerging naturally from the course, you can consider these ideas to help design something:

• 1-1 or small group critiques
• Presentations on individual progress to date
• Brainstorming how to help each learner reach their goal
• Problem solve around a common issue that is coming up frequently
• Identifying and presenting supplemental learning materials
• Sharing examples of relevant work that learners find inspiring
• Planning some collective action or next step that the group can take after the learning circle
• Providing feedback to the online course provider / P2PU about how the course can be improved
• Going on a field trip
• Hosting a local speaker or expert

Reflection exercises

A reflection exercise should provide some closure for the week. As you’ve experienced in this course, reflections offer an opportunity for everybody to share something from the day. In addition to plus/delta, reflection questions include:

• What is something that surprised you?
• What is something you want to work on for next week?
• Who would you like to thank today?
• Any eye opening revelations? Any burning questions?
• Sketch or write down a personal reflection
• Write a letter to a future learning circle (if you send it to us, we’ll pass it along!)

Reflections don’t always have to be done in the full group - you can advocate for small 1-1 or personal reflections as well.

🛠️ Community of practice for facilitators

Receiving feedback is necessary to improve, both as a learning circle participant as a facilitator. As such, facilitating a learning circle means that you will be invited to share your experiences and reflect and troubleshoot with other facilitators from around the world. While your learning circle is happening in person and our community of practice is largely virtual, we strive to model the same P2PU values in our community of practice, so that you can continue to refine your facilitation skills when you meet with facilitators. Here are some of the key components of our community of practice:

• Community forum: P2PU’s online platform where facilitators ask questions, share resources, and discuss relevant issues.
• Knowledge base: Featured resources and mini tutorials , designed to help newcomers get started.
• Digests: Monthly email which summarizes everything that is happening in P2PU including news, events as well as recently added learning circles and courses.
• Events: P2PU hosts a mix of virtual community calls, regional meetings, open trainings, and meet-ups throughout the year.
• Course ratings: Feedback from learners and facilitators are summarized on the course cards on the course page. Here’s an example of feedback for the public speaking course.
• Learning circle insights: Every learning circle has the opportunity to share their experience through feedback forms that we send to facilitators and learners.
• Social media: We encourage facilitators and learners to share what they’re learning throughout their learning circle on Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and Facebook. #learningcircles.

🛠️ Your facilitator dashboard

In the prior module, we introduced your learning circle dashboard as the place to go to edit learning circle details. In addition to this, your dashboard aggregates the latest and greatest information from across P2PU’s community of practice and shows it to you in one place. You’ll see a number of resources featured including:

• Recent courses added to the database
• Popular discussion topics on the community forum
• New facilitator resources
• Insights from recently completed learning circles
• P2PU’s Instagram feed
• Announcements from the P2PU team
• Upcoming learning circles in your area

Before moving onto the activity, take a few minutes to explore the dashboard. How does what you see change depending on whether you are logged in or not?

Additional readings & resources

Two resources that we rely heavily on to help plan our learning circles are Liberating Structures and the HyperIsland Toolbox. Each of these websites includes a number of free activities that can be easily adapted to serve as a check-in, group activity, or reflection. We encourage you to have a look and bookmark any activities that you might like to try in your learning circle.

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