The Guide 2.0 partnership has successfully launched two online courses during 2019. After these pilot courses were completed and tested on our brand new Moodle platform, some of the training participants were invited to join a Community of Practice (CoP) in order to test in a real setting all the topics they have just learned: how to use Case Studies as a learning resource as well as what are the principles of co-production and action learning and how they work in a CoP.
The aim was to form an online CoP of 12 members from the 6 participating countries in order to develop 7 brand new Case Studies. All countries were teamed up in groups of 2. In about 6 months the 3 teams have delivered a number of online Action Learning Set (ALS) sessions to help each other with the development of their stories.
One of the members said: “ALS is where I can present a problem and the rest of the group will ask open questions to help me to find the solution, no participant should tell and/or offer me a solution”.
By April 2020, all teams have met online about 20 times between single ALS sessions and broader Virtual Meetings, reaching their goal of producing 7 Case Studies and completing the peer review process to guarantee a high-quality standard of the contents.
The lead project manager at Rinova found that: ‘during the first ALS participants tended to be quite reserved despite having a facilitator to provide the overview, structure and process of the ALS. Initially, the ALS took the format of a ‘getting to know you’ session, which was good for building relationships between ALS members. By the second and third ALS meetings, these were more productive in terms of a mutual support structure/format/process – exploring issues or challenges that were being faced either within a wider work context or directly in relation to the production of the case study story’.
The Case Studies will be published soon. In the meantime, we are happy to share their titles and the IAG fundamental competences that were analysed through them.
