Inject yourself into a Learning Event — Select the Content
In the Menta-Morphosis® Learning System, the learner injects himself/herself into a learning event. As a Menta-Morphosis® Facilitator, you select the content. When you are facilitating a Menta-Morphosis® session the decision as to what content to consider is yours.
Introduction
In the Menta-Morphosis® Learning System, the learner injects himself/herself into a learning event. As a Menta-Morphosis® Facilitator, you select the content. When you are facilitating a Menta-Morphosis® session the decision as to what content to consider is yours.
The range for what you select can be virtually unlimited. So, for example, a book, or a chapter in a book, a video, a podcast or audio file, a live presentation, a blog post or a newsletter article, to name a few.
Used for
To provide the fodder for the meeting discussion and thereby address the objectives. This is targeted content.
Or, to provide the content out of which will arise the meeting objectives. This is serendipity content.
How to
Select content to facilitate serendipity or targeted learning.
If you are unfamiliar with these terms, read this post.
Content for targeted learning has a specific, well-defined objective in mind. For example, the objective of the meeting may be ”to create four specific applications for the new product.” In that case, the content would directly address that content.
If, however, your meeting is much broader say “get some new ideas about how to facilitate better customer relationships” your content could be much broader.
If you have serendipity type objectives, your criteria for selection should be:
* To what degree does this content address the objectives of the meeting?
* To what degree does this content fit with the size and type of meeting?
* To what degree does this content provide some new ideas, refresh ideas that they may have already, but have not used recently, or provide new insights into ideas they may have already had.
If you are working with targeted objectives, your criteria should be:
* To what degree does this content address the objectives of the meeting?
* To what degree does this content fit with the size and type of meeting?
Classes of content
Think of three classes of content: focused content, organic content and mine content. Focused content is typically a piece of content created for a specific purpose, and focuses on some idea, competency or skill. So, if I am training salespeople to ask better questions, I’d select focused content articulating that concept.
Mine content is content that needs to be mined for useful information. For example, when you are leading a strategic planning exercise, the information you select to consider — spreadsheets, computer reports, focus groups summaries, etc., are all “mine content.” You collect the information and then mine it for useful nuggets.
Organic content is content that arises out of the group interactions. It most often appears in serendipity-type meetings. You create a long list of ideas submitted by the group. The list becomes the content for the rest of the discussion. See my example below.
K-team
One technique is to create a K-team. A K-team is a specific set of practices that produce greater interaction and engagement and provide a set of items to be used as content for the balance of the session. In a K-team session, you break a larger group down into small groups of 4 – 6 members and give each group a very specific task to create a quantity of whatever is the subject of your group session. I’ve done this hundreds of times as part of a training session.
For example, if I’m teaching “asking better questions,” I’ll break the larger group into K-teams, and give each group the task of creating three word-for word questions for a specific situation. I give them a limited amount of time. When time is up, I collect the questions and use that long list of questions which they created to discuss “what constitutes a better question.” Because the content came from them, the students are far more engaged than if I used some other method.
The key here is to give very clear and specific directions: “Three questions, word-for-word, in fifteen minutes,” for example. This is the technique I used in the San Francisco example.
You can use problems as another form of organic content. “Let’s brainstorm what we can do about ‘backorders”’ for example. Describe a problem, talk about the implications for a bit, and then launch into a Menta-Morphosis® brainstorming session. The list of possibilities generated by the session is the content for the rest of the session.
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