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Institute of Global Education Part 5 Orientation Course Instructions |
PROJECT NATURECONNECTHow do I find out if I have a guide role assigned to me?
By Saturday morning preceding the course start date, you will be assigned, with your consent, one of the following roles to the group members. Please let the course organizer know if you are not attracted to the role assigned you. You may ask the group if someone in the group wants to swap roles with you. Note that you may share with the organizer or the group that you have preference for one role or another so that you may best contribute. (You are welcome to repeat the course free, at a later date and in a different role, or in the courses that follow. All of the courses use the same process.) The roles and assignments are described below:
What are the four main guide roles?
A: Group Consciousness and Communication Supporter:
This person notes if all participants are online and in communication by
helping participants make a group address list. Using the group address
list, one letter goes to all in the group, including me, and all responses
to it go to all in the group, including me. The "GCC person" also observes
during the course if the time schedule is working OK or if it should be
modified by group consent. If you've had experience with making group
addresses, your help with this is most welcomed by less experienced
participants.
B. Participation Supporter:
On the agreed upon due dates for sharing activity experiences, not whether
all participants have sent their activity responses to the group or made
other arrangements. If a participant is missing, the Participation Role
person lets the group know this and tries to help the missing participant
get their responses posted to the group
C. Agenda Supporter:
We all carry a tendency to get into side issues, stories and experiences
that may take so much time and energy that they enervate or dissolve the
group. We also have a tendency to want to teach what we think we know. The
Agenda Role person keeps track if this is happening. He or she helps people
get back to the interact group goal of helping each other learn by sharing
what has been learned **doing the course activities and readings and then
sharing what we learned and was attractive from the sharing.**
D. Coordination Supporter:
This participant observes if and when help is needed by the other support people or special areas where she or he can be helpful to group members or the organizer with the course. For those who want to learn how to facilitate groups, this is an excellent growing opportunity for one or more people. If you let the organizer know you want to play this role they can refer you to some articles and Chapter readings in RWN that will helpfully provide guidelines. Sometimes a co-facilitator will be part of the group to help with this as well. At other times the group coordinates and learns how to facilitate by doing it.
SECTION 2: COURSE TIME SCHEDULE
How long does the course take?
The course could be completed, with pressure, in two days, however
it would have minimum effectiveness in improving personal and
environmental relationships. Many relationships are based on
conditioned thinking and relating habits that take time to change
as they give up older rewards for greater, more reasonable, satisfactions.
Why is so short a course so long?
If the group wants to the course to go into some depth and
let our experiences affect our relationships, then sleep time
is a necessary part of the course process.. An essence of NSTP
is that participant's have at least one night's sleep between
activities; two is even better. Thus the course will take a minimum
8 days or more. The course usually operates well by doing and
sharing two activities a week, taking a total of 4-5 weeks.
Can the duration of the course be adjusted?
By group consensus you can elect to make the course go faster
or slower depending upon how many days you want to leave between
assignments. We have found posting twice a week to work well,
on average, and sustain course momentum. Five days between activities
work well, too. Seven days tends to loose important course momentum
unless the group is very interactive during those days.
Is it easy to modify the course duration?
You may find it is time consuming and difficult to change
the course posting dates to the convenience of all.
Please proceed to Part Six
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..........ALTERNATIVES