Antwerp Belgium
TEAMS & OPEN CLASSES
9-13th May 2022
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TEAMS: tools to have an open feedback culture
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TEAMS: tools for self-governing with access to resources
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TEAMS: tools to support self-governing teams (money/time/expertise)
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QUALITY: integrated feedback /-forward assessment system for learners in the class
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QUALITY: integrated feedback /-forward assessment system for teams in the school
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QUALITY: teacher well-being
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QUALITY: student well-being
On Monday the 9th, the first day, we started with getting acquainted with each other by doing a team painting exercise called “Gardens of Open Learning”, in which the participants needed to create a painting in a group without talking and using only 1 colour each (red - yellow - blue). It was a nice start to the week!
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After that the tight schedule with class visits started, so much to see in so little time. In the class visits we saw a variety of Open Classes at Encora: classrooms where adult students function as complex agents, and adult educators as a team of skilled facilitators. The idea is based on the Open Class model (a flexible and individualized educational model) that we have implemented in different ways in Encora. On Tuesday we further explored the Open Classes at Encora. We have experienced what it is like to be a student in Open Class and seen how different teams (Dutch as a second language on different levels, hairdressers, secondary education etc.) make this concept their own.
After a lot of input, it was time for more leisure time on Wednesday. We started with a quiet morning and then we had a guest workshop by co-creation expert Lesley VanLeke. We experienced the tool “World Café” and had a fruitful session about our theme of Communities of Open Learning. Here is a link to a website about the World Café Method. It allowed us to connect what we had seen in Antwerp to our own perspective. To finish a creative and interesting day we had a cultural guided tour and pub crawl by one of the Open Class teachers, who is a charismatic guide!
On Thursday and Friday we started our co-creative group work centered on the question: “what would your ideal open learning community look like?” The task was to dream big, and forget about practicalities!
On Friday the participants presented their CoOL dreams. They were superCoOL :)! It was wonderful to see all these innovative and creative perspectives.
After a long and fruitful week, we celebrated our hard work with frietjes and a networking event.
Maspalomas, Canary Islands
Arganda del Rey, Spain
Ljubljana, Slovenia
After Antwerp the idea the CoOL project is based on - the Open Class Model - fully came to life for many of the participants in the project. In Maspalomas and Sundbyberg they had already been working in Open Class systems, but they gained a deeper insight seeing other versions of it. After the LTTA in Antwerp, the colleagues from Kredu started implementing the OpenClass idea in their school.
The Gardens of Open Learning exercises have been brought home and repeated with colleagues in Sundbyberg.
After the LTTA in Antwerp, two of our Open Class teachers were invited to speak in Stockholm for the teachers of 6 schools for adult education there in December 2022, leading to a lot of new networks and many teachers from those schools have visited Antwerp since.
Funny thing that happened
We didn’t expect the participants to be so interested in the chocolate museum. As soon as they heard there was a chocolate museum they demanded to change the schedule. I guess we take Belgian Chocolate for granted, but we learned our lesson then ;)!
