This newsletter covers what happened in January and will give you a heads up on what to look for in February and the months following.

In this issue:

Whether we see ourselves as being on the precipice of major change or in the process of turning a new page, we have great expectations. The Academy of Process Educators is designing its future as an organization that elevates the performance of its members and their organizations.

This year is a new opportunity for each of us to shape the next years of the life of the Academy of Process Educators. It is also an opportunity for us to further enrich the institutions that we serve. How can we disrupt traditional patterns and accelerate change? How can we use people, processes, and programs to increase performance outcomes? We must be deliberately developmental in creating our strategic plan and implementing it through thoughtfully, decisive actions. As we work on our edge, home, and groove, we can accept the challenge to grow, to live passionately, to care deeply, and to find our organizational flow together.

We are on this journey together.  Growing a culture that embodies both PE principles and DDO principles requires all of us to be genuine, vulnerable, growth-oriented, and team-focused.

As Aristotle said, "What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing."

In appreciation for your talents, commitment, and leadership,

Joann

Did you know that the minutes of the Academy Board Meetings are available to ALL Academy members? In this article, we offer highlights of the most recent board meeting(s):

Nov 2019 minutes        Dec 2019 minutes (not yet approved)

Money $$$

Money will be a topic at the February Board meeting: Libbey has the structure of the financial reporting for the Academy and made some suggestions. Please review and be prepared to vote. A question was raised at the Winter Meeting as to whether the fees for the meeting should be increased such that all costs (e.g., facility rental, materials etc.) will be covered by these fees such that the Academy does not operate at a loss. Please be prepared to vote.

Stay Tuned for a New Meeting Schedule

Please note that days/times of board meetings for the spring (February - June) will be changing. The results should be posted soon! Mark your calendars and recall that everyone, not just Board members, is welcome!

The Next Board Meeting

TBA!

URL:  https://zoom.us/j/295947580
Meeting ID:  295 947 580
Telephone number:  646 558 8656
iPhone one-tap: +16465588656,,295947580#

The 2020 Conference Committee met, along with the board, at the Academy winter meeting in St. Louis January 2-5. During that time members of the committee, along with board members, reviewed all of the proposals that had been submitted by the due date of 1/2/2020. We are pleased to report that the proposals which have been assessed provide a comprehensive and inspiring set of experiences for conference attendees. It will be an inspiring and awesome growth experience for all of us.

Using the familiar S-I-I model the reviewers submitted comments on the proposals based on the rubric below.  Additional proposals have been received since January 5th and are in the process of being reviewed using the same rubric.

For all Workshops, Online Session, Hall of Innovation, Symposiums:

•    alignment of topic with conference theme (part of description)
•    modeling of process education methods/tools (part of facilitation plan)
•    participant take-aways
•    background/expertise of facilitator

For Research proposals and papers:

•    exploration of process education theory or practice
•    examination of a compelling idea or context
•    clarity of methods applied
•    grounding in existing literature

In early February the committee intends to send a confirmation letter to each proposal asking presenters to make adjustments and submit their final proposals by or before April 1st, 2020. This timeline will enable the committee appropriate time to prepare the conference schedule and allow our hosts at ST. Louis School of Pharmacy time to prepare for our technical needs.

Al, George, Bill, & Matt

Kim, Cynthia, Ingrid, & Dan

Cynthia, Kim, & Al

Joann & Will

Bill's arm, Matt, Al, & George

Joyce & Wade

Last month I invited you to procure access to the Faculty Guidebook as we begin a module of the month book club leading up to the summer conference. I have asked some PE experts which modules they found to be essential reading and we will spotlight one each month.

For the month of February we are reading module 3.4.2 Designing Teams and Assigning Roles (click to view; the username and password is, "academy").

This module was written by the Academy's current Treasurer, Peter Smith, and may also be found on pages 411-414 of the 4th edition. This selection came highly recommended by the Academy's Research Directory, David Leasure, who says the following:

"This is a critical paper from the FGB and can have a huge impact on how learning is done in an institution."

I can't agree more with David and think team roles are essential to the successful implementation of teamwork into your learning activities. For more support with using team roles, consider the Pacific Crest team role markers.

After reading this module, try answering the following inquiry questions as a way to solidify your learning:

1.    Which roles are essential to most group activities and why?
2.    If a team has a question, which role should ask the instructor the question?
3.    Suppose you assign four roles for an activity and you have one or more teams of three. Who should take on the fourth role and how is the decision made?
4.    How can roles be used to hold individual students accountable within a group work setting?
5.    When do you want learners to be in the role they perform best in and when do you want learners to be in the role they have the most difficulty with?

If you have any questions about using team roles in your classroom feel free to email me at mwatts@tcc.edu. Stay tuned for the next FGB module of the month.

Access the Faculty Guidebook (User & PW: academy)

When a family member is ill, family communication gets harder. When her mother-in-law was hospitalized, Self-Growth Community member Lisa realized that her annual growth goal to improve her communication skills created an opportunity to apply growth skills and mentoring skills for herself and others.

Lisa had several possible roles in this situation -- professional nurse, wife, daughter-in-law, and sister-in-law. She strengthened role identities, recognizing that here, she wasn't the caregiver or the daughter, but rather an in-law. Lisa analyzed performances of family interactions observed over many years and knew that strengthening family communication skills would be helpful at this critical time. So Lisa gave consulting feedback, sharing what she had observed, highlighted sub-standard performance, and identified SII opportunities for her family. These discussions helped each family member transform strategies, so that they could choose how to change behaviors about their communication.

Lisa valued growth -- both her own, by seeing through reflection and assessment how much she had improved her communication, and that of her family, to help them communicate more clearly in this challenging time. Lisa validated personal impact when her mother-in-law and sister-in-law shared how the other had their changed communication style. Lisa's support of her family eased some of the challenge of her mother-in-law's last days.

You are welcome to contact the co-Facilitators of the Self-Growth Community, Dan Apple and Ingrid Ulbrich with questions about the Self-Growth Community, our process, our discoveries, or for tips on your own self-growth!

Process Education is a brand. If I had to specify what it is a brand of, I guess I would say ‘teaching and learning advancement’. Our customer base, or group of people we want to attract, are educators who are interested in improving their teaching, and their students’ learning. I am not sure what level of educator we are interested or not interested in. Certainly post secondary educators, but what about high school, earlier, even kindergarten? I’m just not sure. So, besides the desire to improve self and others, what qualities do our ‘customers’ have?

1.    They (or their institution) can afford to be a part of the Academy of Process Educators.

2.    They desire to take an active role in their own self-improvement. (I may be off base here. If you feel I am, correct me and we can discuss it.)

3.    They are passionate about the life success of the students under their care.

Normally when describing ideal customers, demographics are included, but in this case, what demographics really matter? Age, race, gender, socio-economic status and so on don’t seem that important. For most academic groups being retired would make a potential member less desirable, but we have a lot to get done, and as has been demonstrated by our incredible retirees, being retired allows one to get a lot done. So, our recruiting field seems pretty open.

What follows are tips I got from social media managers on how to engage an audience (our potential customers) on social media.

1.    The purpose of a social media campaign/channel/post/strategy should be clear. My thought for the purpose of our social media channels is to build awareness of process education through building community.

2.    Talk about your topic, not just your brand. People are turned off by constant selling, even if it’s subtle. If this is true, then I think anything related to personal or classroom improvement would be appropriate. Several years ago there was a ‘golden ratio’ that 80% of your posts would be informational, educational, or entertaining, and 20% would directly sell your product or service. People using social media have gotten smarter, and they realize that every post is a sales post to a certain extent, so that rule isn’t so golden anymore. The advice seems to point to your social media having a unique ‘voice’, which I’m not really sure what that means. As long as I’m doing the social media, that will mean I’m going to use some pre-created posts, ask some questions to spark interest in anything that might get educators to like or share, and share, to the extent I can, process education’s potential.

3.    Reach out to people who might be interested in what you have to offer. One of my students has grown a club Instagram account from 0 to almost 1500 followers in less than a year using simple strategy of liking people’s posts and engaging with them. The results have been (besides the list of followers) great. The average CEO meeting draws 25-40 students, whereas a year ago it drew less than a dozen.

4.    Share other people’s content. If some other group has a great tool, technique, or insight, share it on your page. (Give credit, of course.) Eventually, we’ll be sharing other people’s success stories with process education on our page, and they will feel great about that!

5.    Engage followers authentically, and by name. (I’ll try. If you’re helping - see below- you try too!)

6.    Make your posts visual. People can’t be bothered with text. (Even academics I asked. Even academics, came the grave reply...)

7.    Use hashtags. I came up with a hashtag once. #poundsign. Thought I was very clever. Hashtags are how savvy internet users find the info they’re looking for on social media. For now, we will need to follow on existing hashtags. No one is searching for ours yet, but as time goes on maybe #proced can be a thing.

8.    Frequent posts. Scheduled. Not every post must be scheduled, but there should be a posting schedule. There are guidelines all over the place on this. I’m going to shoot for two programmed posts a day, Monday through Friday, and other stuff as I find it interesting. Most things will end up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. If you’re helping with a single channel, you might push your content to the other channels as well, or we might start to differentiate over time. It’s really up to us right now because we’re starting from the ground floor.

9.    Surveys, polls, contests, giveaways, conversations. If you are asking for engagement you are more likely to get it.

10.    Finally, engage with the latest trends. This is where you might pick up lots of followers very quickly. As I write this, the top trending thing on Twitter is the #DoomsdayClock. That’s a bit morbid, but if I scroll down just a bit I find #nationalpieday and #thursdaymotivation. A brief post on either of those might cause someone to check out our homepage and seek more information.

What I would love from you:

1.    If you are active on a social media, like our page and our posts when you see them.

2.    Share the posts with your friends, especially those in our target area.

3.    COMMENT on posts if you have something to say, or think it might promote discussion.

4.    Volunteer to assist with ONE social media platform. This will involve occasionally making posts and reading and responding to comments.

5.    If you’re passionate about process education and related subjects, share that passion outside of our social media outlets. Your activity on forums, message boards, and in question and answer sessions will make others perceive you as an expert in your field and make others aware of process education principles.

If you have thoughts on the above, or would like to assist with the relaunch of our online outreach, please contact me at thomasnelson@southalabama.edu.

Save these dates and improve your professional practice utilizing Process Education by joining us!

All times are Tuesdays at 7pm Eastern,

45 minutes part 1, optional additional 45 minutes part 2

March 17 - Two easy, practical PE practices you can start at any time. (Facilitator: Steve Beyerlein)

Save the date and look for details in our March Newsletter

1.    Selecting learning skills for a course
2.    Dreating a facilitation plan (with learning skills in mind)

Apr Date TBD - Qualitative Analysis of Interview Data for Educational Research, (Facilitator: TBD)

May 26 -  How to Systematically Improve Performance: the Performance Development Methodology, (Facilitator: Tris Utschig)

Please save the date and look for more details in future newsletters.