Course

Action learning is a fundamental process that underpins your engagement with this online course and your community or a community you want to engage with. When we practice action learning, we start off with a goal, an idea, or an issue that needs to be addressed, and develop a plan of action. Then we actually do what we planned and take action. Out of this experience, we observe and evaluate the impact of the actions and the appropriateness of our plans. We then formulate new plans for improving the situation further. We then carry out another phase of acting, where we put our new plans into action. This generates experience, which provides an on-going cycle of action learning: observe, evaluate, plan, act, observe, evaluate, plan, etc.

Action Learning Cycle

1 – Plan

2 – Act

3 – Observe

4 - Evaluate

Learning Journal

A learning journal is a way you can record the ideas and concepts you will learn on this course. You can use a notebook or create an electronic document to record your learning on the computer or other digital devices. We encourage you to keep a learning journal as it is an important first step to take when completing the course as it enables you to write and create diagrams about what you are learning as you engage in the various course activities. Some entries may be short and specific whereas others will allow you to reflect on what you have read or learned. Noting your reflections can deepen your learning experience. The key is to make it a fun and interesting experience rather than a chore.

In the course there are other interesting exercises that will stimulate your learning such as activities and quizzes. Do engage with them and make your learning fun and interesting.

Click on the book icon below to visit the course section on community engagement.

To help your community or other communities to identify, share and implement community owned solutions good engagement or facilitation skills are essential. Key is the ability to encourage active participation by individuals or groups, and to promote communication that is open and honest. 

Activity 2

Read the list of ‘good facilitation skills’ and reflect on them. Group them for yourself according to things you are already familiar with and feel happy with, things you need to focus more attention on and things that are entirely new to you.

Think about your community and engaging with them - which ethical considerations are most likely to become an issue?

Click on the book icon below to visit the course section on community owned solutions.

Click on the book icon below to visit the course section on impact evaluation.

Now after completing this section you will have some more appreciation for the need of engaging diverse community members, voices and opinions during community engagement. You will also now be familiar with different tools and methods you can use for engaging with community members and for identifying solutions for social and environmental challenges. Using an action learning approach to underpin your engagement and management is really crucial and will support you in identifying community owned solutions as well as determining the impact of your engagement. These fundamental skills can be used for addressing a whole range of social and environmental challenges and to help ensure your community engagement is ethical and sustainable from both a social and environmental perspective.

References

Acknowledgements

Illustrations for Unit 1 were produced by Ed Dingli (www.eddingli.com). 

Animations for Unit 1 were produced by Rosie Miles (www.rosiesmiles.com).