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.
Activity 1
In your community, which current issues could be addressed using an action learning approach? For one issue, write down the different activities you could do in the four action learning steps; Plan, Act, Observe and Evaluate. You might want to include a couple of cycles of action learning to show how a plan can be updated and improved.
For example, an issue facing your community could be water pollution of a lake. As a community the activities you could do are:
- Plan - develop a plan to identify the sources of pollution by talking to people around the lake;
- Act – carry out interviews with people from various households, shops and factories to locate pollution sources;
- Observe – observe whether the plan is working by seeing if you have identified all of the pollution sources;
- Evaluate – evaluate how successful the interviews have been at locating all pollution sources;
- Plan – amend your plan to improve identification of pollution sources by undertaking water quality monitoring etc.
Introduction
Engaging all members, voices and opinions within a community is vitally important when developing solutions to social and environmental challenges the community face. This unit discusses the core concepts behind how you engage with your wider community or engage with another community to identify solutions. The most effective community solutions are ones that benefit the community, are fair and do not impact negatively on the environment. The aims of this unit are to introduce the following: how to follow an action learning approach to engagement and management; why community engagement is important and approaches to successful engagement; the concept of community owned solutions; and how to determine impact.