Throughout the recent Liberating Structures workshop, we heard higher ed colleagues say they want to do more LS work together, both in workshop settings and more practically, locally, in context in their organizations.  We need to think and talk together more about strategies for supporting each other to build local capacity.

At the time, a group of us used 25/10 Crowdsourcing to rapidly generate and prioritize our best/boldest actionable ideas.  Here is the question we created:

1f you were 10x bolder,  what would you do to infuse/infect higher education teaching and learning with Liberating Structures?

Here’s the group’s top 10 ideas  (each idea was scored out of a total possible 25 points):

1. hold an annual LS workshop as part of the Festival of Learning or as a hosted workshop at one institution per year (score: 25/25!)
2. Form a mutually supportive LS delivery group that travels around BC colleges and circulates to deliver multi-day workshops to faculty about how to integrate LS into their teaching practice (score: 23/25)
3. create an online space (complementary to face-to-face) where everyone in BC could experiment and give feedback to one another on any LS activity, idea, etc. (score: 23/25)
4. Introduce LS to each program, support the program to use LS in their department meetings to promote teaching excellence (score: 21/25)
5. Create opportunities (digital space) to share “LS in Higher Ed” success stories with each other with the aim of bringing these examples back to our home institutions (score: 19/25)
6. Commit to building LS into every meeting, class, workshop(…) that we individually or collectively structure (score: 18/25)
7. Arrange a series of workshops to engage as many educators as possible to share techniques  (score: 18/25)
8. Go to a senior, respected professor and say, “I have something for you to try…” (Go big or go home!) (score: 18/25)
9. Hold a workshop or conference focusing on how LS can inform our work in higher education (score: 16/25)
10. Create and fund working groups at every campus – coordinate groups activites and exchange experiences centrally (score: 16/25)

We am thrilled to report that their #1 idea is in the works!  A group at the LS workshop volunteered to design and offer a one-day session in June at the Festival of Learning.  Check!

Now, how many more of their ideas can we make happen this year?