New Developments for the Second Trimester

At the end point of the first trimester of the Open Master’s pilot, Alison Jean Cole conducted one-on-one recorded interviews with us to take a snapshot of our class at the beginning of this journey, and to gather some information about our needs and wishes.  Along with other insights which we’ll be sharing here, one theme was abundantly clear:

Members of this class want more structure to help us take more initiative and deepen our learning.

So, over the month of December, Lauren Higgins, Alison Jean Cole, Axle Brown, Greg Bloom, and I have been putting our heads together to introduce some new developments to help give this community added support, process and structure.

Starting January, 2013, we’re introducing:

1. Studio Groups, which are groups of 3-12 people that will act as our home base of support and accountability in the program.  -> Read More about how this fits into the overall structure of community.
2. A Member Checklist to guide us through the path of becoming full, peer-endorsed members of the Open Master’s, and this class.  Our goal is for each of us to complete the member checklists to the satisfaction of our studio groups by April 31st and, when we do, earn our student cards.
3. A detailed schedule for the next four months, to help us focus on main priorities each month on our own, one-on-one with partners, in our studio groups, and together as a community.  This is to serve as a starting point to help us through this process together, but not as a hard-and-fast rule.

We hope this next step in our experiment will help gives members the structure we are craving, while still allowing for- expecting, actually- a high degree of autonomy and self-directedness for each member and their respective groups.