Teaching and Learning initiatives, collaborations, and practices occur within various organizational systems, cultures, interpersonal dynamics, and worldviews. Process consultation (Schein, 1999) and human systems design are methods of addressing implicit, and often unnamed, forces at play – those cultural factors that constitute “the water in which we swim.” Institutional climate, conflicting agendas, unaddressed underlying issues, and unchecked assumptions are part of what process consultation calls “secondary processes” that can undermine success when overlooked.
Using participants’ prior knowledge of self, other, group, and system/environment this workshop connects participant pre-existing “know how” (Varela, 1999) in higher education to plan and implement for their own desired outcomes. The session incorporates principles from How Learning Works (Ambrose et al., 2010) with a process consultation approach to better support teaching and learning goals. A culture change approach to programmatic change or curriculum creation will also be used to help participants practice process design considerations.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Identify what process consultation is and why it’s helpful to achieving goals - Apply relevant process consultation tools to a current project or collaboration (e.g., a meeting, workshop, learning experience, curricular or programmatic reform, educational leadership, etc.) - Use process consultation strategies to influence the implementation of a self-designed process
