#08 - Learning as a Group
On an easy and successful experience building a community around a... Coursera class!
So far, I've mostly written about community conceptually. Today, I'll describe an example of what building community might look like in practice. There are a bajillion ways to build community, all of them valid. But it definitely takes a bit of creativity to do well. That's where reading about how other people do it might help. We want to build community in a way that's tailored for you and the people with whom you want to connect.
Case study: Coursera, together
I stole the idea of going through the Coursera class Moral Foundations of Politics, taught by Yale Professor Ian Shapiro, from my friend Ren. I had tried various MOOCs (massive open online courses) before, but always failed to see them through. I would grow bored of the material. Or I would get confused by a concept and not know how to move past that confusion. I would forget to make time for the class, despite the many emails Coursera would send, somehow always received at inconvenient moments.
I was really impressed to hear that Ren had finished the entire class. Her secret? She did it with a group of people.
Last July, I sent a furtive email to a group of people to see if anyone wanted to take the class with me. My friends Tony and Will signed up right away. Later, we were joined by Susan, Kevin Tao, Ashwin, and Yang. I didn't know everyone super well. Tony had done most of the recruiting, so we were connected mainly through Tony. This wasn't a problem, as we soon all became friends.
The course aligned well with our personal interests. Everyone in the group had studied STEM (science, technology, engineering, or math). We shared an eagerness and excitement to learn about politics. A class that wouldn't have been exciting to us in our school years was exciting to us as adults, against the backdrop of current events that were unfolding.
A few of you have asked for activities that work during the pandemic. This format worked pretty well for us. We were spread across New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, so we couldn't meet up in person anyway. (Or perhaps the pandemic enabled this particular cross-country group to form in the first place.) We gathered about once every 2 weeks over Zoom. We'd start with updates on how we were doing, dive into the material, and maybe go off on a few interesting tangents.
And we did it! Last November, we finished the class. For many of us, it was our first time finishing a MOOC. I attribute the success to having group accountability. Our group discussions also brought the material to life, helping me breeze through spots where I was confused or stuck, leading to a level of insight that I wouldn't have achieved on my own.
I highly recommend trying this. The course, at least when we took it, was free. With the discussion material prepackaged, there was very little overhead to hosting.
Here are some tips for success:
Once every 2 weeks turned out to be the right cadence and level of commitment for us.
Set expectations. We decided to watch the lectures and show up. We didn’t do the readings, which would've added a lot of extra work.
I didn't set an end time for the calls. If I were to do it again (which I am, with a different course! Future essay topic), I recommend timing them to ~60-90 minutes. This helps avoid awkward moments near the end when a few people are squirming, not sure how to politely excuse themselves.
I didn't set a regular time, asking for availability each time. This was a lot of overhead for everyone. I recommend picking a regular time. (Scheduling is hard, also a future essay topic.)
Pick a moderator to "hold space." Prepare a few questions ahead of time (usually takes < 5 minutes). During the conversation, pay attention to how everyone is doing (is anyone bored, is everyone getting a chance to speak) and interrupt as needed. Get comfortable with what Priya Parker calls "generous authority."
Moral Foundations of Politics came vetted by someone from our community who shared many of our interests. But you may disagree. Get feedback and maybe pivot to something else if it’s not working.
Cohort-based learning
Cohort-based learning is in some ways an emerging trend and in some ways just the way we've always done things.
When you entered college with hundreds of other freshmen all taking the same classes, you were learning with a cohort. When you started your first job with a bunch of other new grads, you were learning with a cohort. (Some of my closest friends today I met when we all started working at Dropbox on the Business Operations "Bizops" team around the same time.)
Shortly after reaching adulthood, though, cohort-based learning drops out of our lives. We're likely not even aware that this happened. We may gradually come to a faint realization that something is missing. This is where, as an emerging trend, businesses have cropped up to offer cohort-based learning opportunities. The Grand is one such business, offering "a community that actively supports each other in navigating professional and personal life decisions" through a format that involves 3 months of group coaching. Anecdotally, it sounds like group coaching and group therapy are also on the rise. (If you happen to have citations for these things, I would love better references 😅.)
Book club is a form of cohort-based learning. You sign up to read a book at the same time as a bunch of other people, so that you can discuss it together. I'm part of a book club where I've discovered books I wouldn’t have sought out on my own. Book clubs are also very accessible, with the price of admission being $10-40 for a book, or free if you get the book from the library.
Here's a provocation: Is Church a book club where the book is the Bible? Is Church successful because it's a form of cohort-based learning where everyone gets together on a weekly basis to hear the same life lessons through sermons?
I posit that we learn better in cohorts, full stop. The benefit to learning is that you get accountability, help with tough concepts, and a deeper understanding of the material. Plus you get all the benefits of community. If you have the opportunity to learn with someone else, seize it. If you don't, create it.
Values alignment
One reason cohort-based learning was such an effective form of community for me was because I have personal core values of learning and curiosity. The values alignment meant that I would show up, even if I didn't have preexisting close bonds to the other people in the group. The wonderful thing is, after a time, those bonds became tighter.
Special thanks to Lulu and Mindy for telling me about cohort-based learning.
I want to hear from you
What are your personal core values and what are some community activities that you engage in that align well with those values?
Next up
I haven't been great at sticking to these topics 😂. Next week I hope to revisit the topic I said I'd write about last week on how attachment theory might apply to community.
I'd also like to explore community as a dynamic system, with different people coming in and out. To set a good equilibrium, it's important to know how to build community consistently and habitually.
I'd also say ceramic classes are a strong example of cohort-based learning -- combined with art therapy to top it off. Maybe that explains their jump in popularity in SF and other metro cities, replacing something that we don't have in our normal lives anymore.
Can this concept apply to to fitness classes as well? That might be more group bonding through shared suffering but there's a similarity in terms of accountability and tandem progression.
Either way, all these articles are making me excited for when covid is over...