Alright. I’ve been toying with this idea for months now. Perfection is the enemy of the good. It’s time to launch a peer learning experiment. Here we go.
Hello! Peer Learning Group is an experiment for learning new things and meeting new people. And I’d love for you to join. The experiment lasts for two weeks, and requires only a small time commitment during this period (just a few hours total). During these two weeks, you will learn about several topics, and you will also teach the group about one or two topics yourself. The first peer learning group session will be January 25 - February 7, 2021. If this interests you, I encourage you to sign up here. Additional details about “how it works” below the fold.
How it works
On January 25, everyone will be added to a Facebook Messenger group chat. I’m targeting a group of about 6-8 people.
Behind the scenes, I will be contacting everyone to learn what they are interested in learning about. I’ll coordinate with you to figure out 1 or 2 topics for you to teach the group about. These will be topics that someone else in the group is interested in. We’ll also select a day for you to do the learning and teaching.
On the chosen day, you’ll be expected to spend about an hour learning about the selected topic, and sharing what you learn with the group chat. (You’re welcome to learn about the topic in advance, but that’s not required!)
How you share what you’ve learned with the group is up to you, but the bar is low. There’s no expectation of putting together a lesson plan. Instead, I’m envisioning you “live tweeting” interesting things as you learn them, putting quotes, images, and explanations into the chat that you think communicate the main ideas clearly. But I’ll reiterate: how you share what you’ve learned is completely up to you, and we’re setting our expectations low.
Everyone else is welcome to discuss, ask questions, share insights, etc. The chat is there for you to use how you please.
Since an hour is a relatively short period of time, I’ll try to allocate topics to you that are at the fringes of your expertise already. My theory is that while an hour is fairly short, it will still be really rewarding to hear what someone else learns from a concentrated hour of study.
At the end of the two week period, you’ll have “presented” once or twice, and collectively we’ll have learned about ~10 different topics in total.
The goal is to meet people and learn new things, and also to have fun. So come curious and with an open mind, and we’ll do our best to make this an interesting and enjoyable two weeks.