Spring 2006 Workshop, "Ecological restoration as social reconstruction"
Program
(after modification & elaboration as participants shared their interests and developed activities)
with indented ideas and comments from advisory committee and other participants
See workshop website for links to activities & additional details.
Specific objectives of NewSSC
1. Promote Social Contextualization of Science
(To promote the social contextualization of science in education and other activities beyond the participants' current disciplinary and academic boundaries.)
Less philosophy than in previous years and sharing of tools of STS disciplines (pjt)
2. Innovative workshop processes
(To facilitate participants connecting theoretical, pedagogical, practical, political, and personal aspects of the issue at hand in constructive ways.)
3. Training and capacity-building
(To train novice and experienced scholars in process / participation skills valuable in activity-centered teaching, workshops, and collaboration.)
More junior scholars than in previous years. Day 3 is not a good day to ask apprentices to lead because there is more program arranging on the fly during that day. (pjt)
How to coach apprentice to facilitate, esp. if that person is also assisting with logistics? Perhaps facilitate in pairs, with time set aside to debrief after each session. (pjt)
4. Repeatable, evolving workshops
(To provide a workshop model that can be repeated, evolve in response to evaluations, and adapted by participants.)
See the suggestions below (pjt)
Wednesday, April 19 -- Arrivals
5-6.30
Rendezvous
6.30-8
Travel to Woods Hole
8:00
Arrive at Woods Hole, Swope Hall Check in
Early arrivals ask for directions to dinner places, Captain Kidd etc.
8.30--
Dinner & Social (Captain Kidd)
Better to have dinner earlier (given that some people are on european time zones) (pjt)
time for conversation for those who want to participate.
Remind people to review any materials for any day 1 activity (pjt)
Thursday, April 20 - Exposing diverse points of potential interaction
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)
Provide suggestions (pjt)
9:00
Lillie Hall 103
Welcome, logistics & initial activity (guided freewriting & hopes for the workshop)
Led by Peter Taylor
Purpose: Welcome people to workshop, explain details that need to be covered, talk about your hopes for workshop
Record the hopes on a flip chart sheet so peeople can later be reminded of what they said.
Autobiographical Introductions (15 minutes each)
Peter T will go first to model
Jan Coe will keep time (incl. refreshment break)
Everyone - encouraged to take their own notes of points of intersection or curiosity
This needs to be reinforced, perhaps with an exercise (pjt)
Give participants an opportunity to introduce themselves in narrative depth, their current and emerging work, and learn more about each other
12:45
Lunch
Ask for food preferences beforehand (pjt)
2:00
Autobiographical Introductions (cont.)
Followed by Sense of Place map and Songlines connections among maps
Review, reinforce and deepen an understanding of the scope of experience that has come together here.
3.15
Break
3.30
Participant-generated Activity I
Peter T, assisted by Jan C
Use of KAQ & wikis to stimulate exchange and inquiry in Problem-Based Learning.
Scenario related to stream restoration (precirculated)
Needed to remind people the night before to (re)read this in preparation.
Jan, who has experience doing wiki-based PBLs, assists everyone to get into swing of it.
Model how we can experiment & get help with our experiments
Perhaps no need to model this on the first day if, as was the case this year, enough people have prepared activities in advance. Instead there could be a tight 1 hour activity to move right into the workshop topic. (pjt)
If this activity had been moved to the next day, it needed to be longer in order to get everyone up to steam with PBL. However, therein lies an unresolved tension in NewSSC: Activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with? (pjt)
Before the workshop each activity proposer should walk through the activity with a NewSSC advisory board member, who would ask, among other things, "Can this piece of the activity really be done in this amount of time?" "What are people doing at this point?" (to help make sure everyone has an engaged role at every point) "How are you framing this activity -- what aspect of your work and/or workshop topic does this connect with? (sf, pjt)
Although part of this activity involved participants monitoring their experience as they went, time for reflection at the end on the experience as a whole (as was the case for several activities). A critical incident questionnaire provides useful and interesting feedback in just 5 minutes. (pjt)
5.15
Reflection on the day, led by João
Generate list of topics people want to take up.
5:30
Break
Recover
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant; eaten in Swope downstairs cafe)
7:00
Entertainment – depictions of ecological restoration/social reconstruction (and/or science and scientists) in popular culture
Everyone welcome to bring images or videos cued to a scene we could discuss.
The evening sessions are designed to facilitate ways of knowing that aren’t necessarily text-based.
Some participants call for more unprogrammed time, so this evening could be left free. Any videos brought could be shown during the read aloud evening.
Friday, April 21 - Activities to engage each other in our projects & Excursion for informal conversations
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)
9.00
Check-in, led by João
Air reflections
In order to get everyone's input, but not take a large amount of time, it is good to go around, rather than wait for volunteers, and to limit the time everyone gets (pjt).
9:15
Participant-generated Activity II
Original idea was to have a session to warm up our thinking about producing educational units but PT & SF decided to let activities emerge then, on day 4, to address this challenge. Original idea (following successful experience in '05) was to have an extended activity around a rich case study on morning of day 2, that would anchor subsequent discussions. Advisory group should arrange a conference call as the workshop gets near to check on the thinking behind each part of the provisional program (pjt)
Role-play of focus groups led by Yen-Chu Weng
See earlier comment on tension between activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with. Y-CW's activity was more like a town-hall meeting than a focus group. The roles she defined and material each role group read proved very useful. But her research is moving towards working with focus groups, thus her interest in trying that out with the workshop. (pjt)
10.45
Break
11.00
Participant-generated Activity III led by Aviva
Use visual modes because, to deal with big problems, we need to get out of our comfort zones.
See earlier comment on timing of activity and roles for everyone (sf)
See earlier comment on building in time at end for reflection on experience. (pjt)
c. 1:00
Picnic Lunch & Excursion, a walk on the beach
Need to check the tides and choose beach accordingly. (pjt)
Conversation among participants, reflection on emerging ideas, enjoy the day
4:00
Return
4:15
Preparation for office hours (one-on-one consulting), Peter collected info and did permutations to arrive at a schedule.
Simpler alternative: Have sign up sheet where person X can sign up to consult with person Y by putting person X's name in a time slot that is empty for person Y and then crossing out their own box for that time slot (lest someone sign up to consult with them). Perhaps repeat this activity a number of times during the workshop. If anyone does not have a consultation for any time slot, they should pair up and split the time in mutual support. Guidelines are needed for how to do this well. (pjt)
Formation of groups for group work, Steve Fifield facilitates
Clarify the different rols that a group may have: 1) discuss a common interest; 2) do something by the end of the workshop to support one group member who has a clear project in development; 3) do something by the end of the workshop to generate a group project; 4) produce something by the end of 6 months; 5) support each member's individual projects over the next 6 months.
Move to participants taking initiative to make things happen, including planning activities for day 3 & morning of day 4
5:30
End
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant; eaten in Swope downstairs cafe)
8:00
Bedtime reading
Participants read articles, passages, & poems, show pictures or photos
If previous evening were left free, then people who want more free time to read, rest, socialize might feel easier about skipping this evening as well, whcih would be OK. Video clips could be shown this evening? (pjt)
Volunteer needed to compile references from this activity, indeed from all the sessions. (pjt)
Saturday, April 22 - Activities to engage each other in our projects (cont.)
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)
9.00
Check-in: I didn't expect to be thinking about...:p>
9.15
Participant-generated Activity IV, Forum theater as a participatory procedure,
led by Marisa & João
See earlier comment about tension between activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with. Forum theater activity makes me think that we needed a preview of the larger enterprise (e.g., a reading in advance), then the activity would be like opening the door for us into that larger project, but not a compressed version of the "real" thing. (pjt)
Even if our subsequent work doesn't take us beyond that door, we still experienced what non-professionals can do and the unpredictability of what emerges (jan, sf)
c. 10:45
Break
11:00
Office Hours, followed by refelction on experience
Opportunities to solicit advice one on one.
Participants noted that it was enlightening to see who asked them for advice and what they found themselves able to say.
12:30
Lunch & Long break
Long break for conversation, catching up, walking, reflecting, reading, and some group work
c. 4.00
Participant-generated Activity V, led by Metaphor group.
Bar-coding animals
6.00
End
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant)
8
Dialogue Process
Exploring other ways of knowing and/or working together, experience of understandings emerging in a group listening/speaking process.
People used this as an opportunity for making quite personal reflections (sf).
Having dialogue process session on last evening made room for being more directional about group work on day 4 (pjt).
Sunday, April 23 -- Development of educational & outreach units & Taking stock of the experience
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)
Check out of room and bring bags to Lillie 103
9.00
Workshop on development of educational & outreach units I, led by Steve Fifield
Guidelines for curriculum units
To fulfill grant-funded expectation
The educational and outreach units do not have to be overambitious. One well-thought-out classroom activity for one day would be OK (sf).
10:30
Break
10:45
Workshop on development of educational & outreach units II,
Groups prepare & deliver work-in-progress presentations (incl. recap on Peter's and Aviva's activities from day 1 &2)
1.00
Appreciative evaluation, designed by Steve
Review what people found innovative, important, helpful; what they would like to change
1.30
What we are taking away to chew on & Appreciation & Something to be developed
1.45
Pack up & clean up & prepare lunch for the road
2.00
End
ending time adjusted to ensure return to Boston to catch planes & bus
New England Workshop on Science and Social Change
Spring 2006 Workshop, "Ecological restoration as social reconstruction"
Program
(after modification & elaboration as participants shared their interests and developed activities)with indented ideas and comments from advisory committee and other participants
See workshop website for links to activities & additional details.
Specific objectives of NewSSC
1. Promote Social Contextualization of Science(To promote the social contextualization of science in education and other activities beyond the participants' current disciplinary and academic boundaries.)
- Less philosophy than in previous years and sharing of tools of STS disciplines (pjt)
2. Innovative workshop processes(To facilitate participants connecting theoretical, pedagogical, practical, political, and personal aspects of the issue at hand in constructive ways.)
3. Training and capacity-building
(To train novice and experienced scholars in process / participation skills valuable in activity-centered teaching, workshops, and collaboration.)
- More junior scholars than in previous years. Day 3 is not a good day to ask apprentices to lead because there is more program arranging on the fly during that day. (pjt)
- How to coach apprentice to facilitate, esp. if that person is also assisting with logistics? Perhaps facilitate in pairs, with time set aside to debrief after each session. (pjt)
4. Repeatable, evolving workshops(To provide a workshop model that can be repeated, evolve in response to evaluations, and adapted by participants.)
Wednesday, April 19 -- Arrivals
5-6.30Rendezvous
6.30-8
Travel to Woods Hole
8:00
Arrive at Woods Hole, Swope Hall Check in
Early arrivals ask for directions to dinner places, Captain Kidd etc.
8.30--
Dinner & Social (Captain Kidd)
- Better to have dinner earlier (given that some people are on european time zones) (pjt)
time for conversation for those who want to participate.Thursday, April 20 - Exposing diverse points of potential interaction
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)- Provide suggestions (pjt)
9:00Lillie Hall 103
Welcome, logistics & initial activity (guided freewriting & hopes for the workshop)
Led by Peter Taylor
Purpose: Welcome people to workshop, explain details that need to be covered, talk about your hopes for workshop
- Record the hopes on a flip chart sheet so peeople can later be reminded of what they said.
Autobiographical Introductions (15 minutes each)Peter T will go first to model
Jan Coe will keep time (incl. refreshment break)
Everyone - encouraged to take their own notes of points of intersection or curiosity
- This needs to be reinforced, perhaps with an exercise (pjt)
Give participants an opportunity to introduce themselves in narrative depth, their current and emerging work, and learn more about each other12:45
Lunch
- Ask for food preferences beforehand (pjt)
2:00Autobiographical Introductions (cont.)
Followed by Sense of Place map and Songlines connections among maps
Review, reinforce and deepen an understanding of the scope of experience that has come together here.
3.15
Break
3.30
Participant-generated Activity I
Peter T, assisted by Jan C
Use of KAQ & wikis to stimulate exchange and inquiry in Problem-Based Learning.
Scenario related to stream restoration (precirculated)
- Needed to remind people the night before to (re)read this in preparation.
Jan, who has experience doing wiki-based PBLs, assists everyone to get into swing of it.Model how we can experiment & get help with our experiments
- Perhaps no need to model this on the first day if, as was the case this year, enough people have prepared activities in advance. Instead there could be a tight 1 hour activity to move right into the workshop topic. (pjt)
- If this activity had been moved to the next day, it needed to be longer in order to get everyone up to steam with PBL. However, therein lies an unresolved tension in NewSSC: Activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with? (pjt)
- Before the workshop each activity proposer should walk through the activity with a NewSSC advisory board member, who would ask, among other things, "Can this piece of the activity really be done in this amount of time?" "What are people doing at this point?" (to help make sure everyone has an engaged role at every point) "How are you framing this activity -- what aspect of your work and/or workshop topic does this connect with? (sf, pjt)
- Although part of this activity involved participants monitoring their experience as they went, time for reflection at the end on the experience as a whole (as was the case for several activities). A critical incident questionnaire provides useful and interesting feedback in just 5 minutes. (pjt)
5.15Reflection on the day, led by João
Generate list of topics people want to take up.
5:30
Break
Recover
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant; eaten in Swope downstairs cafe)
7:00
Entertainment – depictions of ecological restoration/social reconstruction (and/or science and scientists) in popular culture
Everyone welcome to bring images or videos cued to a scene we could discuss.
The evening sessions are designed to facilitate ways of knowing that aren’t necessarily text-based.
Friday, April 21 - Activities to engage each other in our projects & Excursion for informal conversations
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)9.00
Check-in, led by João
Air reflections
- In order to get everyone's input, but not take a large amount of time, it is good to go around, rather than wait for volunteers, and to limit the time everyone gets (pjt).
9:15Participant-generated Activity II
- Original idea was to have a session to warm up our thinking about producing educational units but PT & SF decided to let activities emerge then, on day 4, to address this challenge. Original idea (following successful experience in '05) was to have an extended activity around a rich case study on morning of day 2, that would anchor subsequent discussions. Advisory group should arrange a conference call as the workshop gets near to check on the thinking behind each part of the provisional program (pjt)
Role-play of focus groups led by Yen-Chu Weng- See earlier comment on tension between activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with. Y-CW's activity was more like a town-hall meeting than a focus group. The roles she defined and material each role group read proved very useful. But her research is moving towards working with focus groups, thus her interest in trying that out with the workshop. (pjt)
10.45Break
11.00
Participant-generated Activity III led by Aviva
Use visual modes because, to deal with big problems, we need to get out of our comfort zones.
- See earlier comment on timing of activity and roles for everyone (sf)
- See earlier comment on building in time at end for reflection on experience. (pjt)
c. 1:00Picnic Lunch & Excursion, a walk on the beach
- Need to check the tides and choose beach accordingly. (pjt)
Conversation among participants, reflection on emerging ideas, enjoy the day4:00
Return
4:15
Preparation for office hours (one-on-one consulting), Peter collected info and did permutations to arrive at a schedule.
- Simpler alternative: Have sign up sheet where person X can sign up to consult with person Y by putting person X's name in a time slot that is empty for person Y and then crossing out their own box for that time slot (lest someone sign up to consult with them). Perhaps repeat this activity a number of times during the workshop. If anyone does not have a consultation for any time slot, they should pair up and split the time in mutual support. Guidelines are needed for how to do this well. (pjt)
Formation of groups for group work, Steve Fifield facilitates- Clarify the different rols that a group may have: 1) discuss a common interest; 2) do something by the end of the workshop to support one group member who has a clear project in development; 3) do something by the end of the workshop to generate a group project; 4) produce something by the end of 6 months; 5) support each member's individual projects over the next 6 months.
Move to participants taking initiative to make things happen, including planning activities for day 3 & morning of day 45:30
End
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant; eaten in Swope downstairs cafe)
8:00
Bedtime reading
Participants read articles, passages, & poems, show pictures or photos
Saturday, April 22 - Activities to engage each other in our projects (cont.)
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)9.00
Check-in: I didn't expect to be thinking about...:p>
9.15
Participant-generated Activity IV, Forum theater as a participatory procedure,
led by Marisa & João
- See earlier comment about tension between activities as short introductions to an educational or outreach approach or activities as ways for the activity leader to get help on a focused problem/issue they are dealing with. Forum theater activity makes me think that we needed a preview of the larger enterprise (e.g., a reading in advance), then the activity would be like opening the door for us into that larger project, but not a compressed version of the "real" thing. (pjt)
- Even if our subsequent work doesn't take us beyond that door, we still experienced what non-professionals can do and the unpredictability of what emerges (jan, sf)
c. 10:45Break
11:00
Office Hours, followed by refelction on experience
Opportunities to solicit advice one on one.
- Participants noted that it was enlightening to see who asked them for advice and what they found themselves able to say.
12:30Lunch & Long break
Long break for conversation, catching up, walking, reflecting, reading, and some group work
c. 4.00
Participant-generated Activity V, led by Metaphor group.
Bar-coding animals
6.00
End
6:30
Dinner (bought in from a restaurant)
8
Dialogue Process
Exploring other ways of knowing and/or working together, experience of understandings emerging in a group listening/speaking process.
Sunday, April 23 -- Development of educational & outreach units & Taking stock of the experience
Breakfast (freelance in Woods Hole)Check out of room and bring bags to Lillie 103
9.00
Workshop on development of educational & outreach units I, led by Steve Fifield
Guidelines for curriculum units
To fulfill grant-funded expectation
- The educational and outreach units do not have to be overambitious. One well-thought-out classroom activity for one day would be OK (sf).
10:30Break
10:45
Workshop on development of educational & outreach units II,
Groups prepare & deliver work-in-progress presentations (incl. recap on Peter's and Aviva's activities from day 1 &2)
1.00
Appreciative evaluation, designed by Steve
Review what people found innovative, important, helpful; what they would like to change
1.30
What we are taking away to chew on & Appreciation & Something to be developed
1.45
Pack up & clean up & prepare lunch for the road
2.00
End
ending time adjusted to ensure return to Boston to catch planes & bus