Study Group
Joshua Kerievsky, well-known agile software development coach, writes about learning: “While attendees of a lecture may seek information, attendees of a study group seek transformation; they want to make what they study not only something they understand, but something they may use in their everyday lives or work. The study group thus acts as a bridge, helping people move from passive to active learning.”[*]
Form a small group of colleagues who are interested in exploring or continuing to learn about a specific topic.
You and others in the organization would like to learn more about a new idea. There are some resources on the topic, such as books or other written materials.
There may be little or no money for formal training on the specific topic.
Software guru Gerald Weinberg describes the lecture method as “getting material from the teacher’s notes into the student’s notes without passing through the brain of either one.” The intense training experience can be compared to drinking from a fire hose. It isn’t the best learning environment, especially for adults, who want to think about useful information and contemplate how it could be applied to their daily work.
When you read a book by yourself, what you get out of it is limited by your own perspective and experience. When you read a book in a group setting, you can take advantage of a variety of backgrounds and expertise. More formal independent study has its own difficulties. The learner relies on a technical interface, videotapes, or broadcast classes but little social interaction. As a result, the learner goes through material in isolation with no chance for discussion or timely questions.
Research shows that simply explaining or lecturing to a group does little to change their way of thinking, while discussion groups, role-playing, or visualization techniques are powerful persuaders. In one study, two groups were introduced to a new approach. One group was given a presentation on the advantages of the approach. The other was led through a discussion and a group decision-making process. There was little or no change in behavior resulting from the training presentation, while the number of people adopting the new approach varied from over 60% to 100% in the group that had used facilitated decision making.
Institutional learning depends on developing the ability to “flock”—moving people around and fostering an effective mechanism of social transmission. Teams of disparate people must undergo some kind of training experience where they are expected to both teach and learn.
Therefore:
Form a group of no more than eight colleagues who are interested in exploring and studying an interesting topic.
Cover a chapter in a book or a well-defined topic at each regularly scheduled meeting. Make sure that participants understand that they must be prepared. Assign one participant as the facilitator who guides everyone through the material. Rotate the facilitation role to spread this responsibility throughout the group.
If resources are available, ask your company to buy the material you will study, such as books or copies of articles. Consider meeting over lunch if this is the time when most people are free. Have a Brown Bag(113) if no resources are available for food.
Linda has co-authored an article about one company’s success with study groups. It was published in the Bell Labs Technical Journal and can be downloaded from her Web site, http://www.lindarising.org. Joshua Kerievsky has another useful source of information for this effective learning activity. See Knowledge Hydrant: A Pattern Language for Study Groups at http://www.industriallogic.com/papers/khdraft.pdf.
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This pattern provides an opportunity for individuals to explore an interesting topic at a reasonable pace. The group members get a genuine educational experience and focus on topics they have chosen. It allows timely, convenient scheduling and a sense of ownership of the learning path. The result is maximum learning with minimal money invested. Even when companies buy lunch for eight participants and individual copies of a book, the cost per learner for a 12-week study group is less than $200.00. Other more formal training costs can run from $800.00 to $2,000.00 per learner.
However, the discovery process in study groups isn’t appropriate for all types of learning. Technical topics, such as a programming language, may need an expert to be present when learners get stuck on problems. In addition, this type of exploration may not work for everyone, especially those who are not energized by interaction with others or are “sponges” rather than contributors. Study groups are only one way of learning; they should be considered as a part of the total teaching and learning strategy in an organization.
A couple of years ago, Todd recognized a real gap in the company’s knowledge of XML. Since they are a systems integrator, this could have been a fatal hole. They didn’t have any homegrown experts, so they formed a study group to make themselves knowledgeable about the subject. They turned what they learned in the study groups into a course that they originally described as “The Myopic Leading the Blind.” They now have key work done with XML, and a broad curriculum of XML classes that they teach internally and one that they are teaching externally.
A four-year university and a nearby community college wanted to incorporate more “service learning” in their institutions, but they needed to understand how to make these types of experiences more meaningful for their students. So faculty from each institution banned together to form one study group of 12 members. The university purchased books on the topic and members partnered into teams of two to lead a biweekly group discussion on one of the sections. The participants learned techniques for making service learning successful as a pedagogical technique in their classes and they are preparing to spread the word to other faculty.