Dandelion Effect: Increasing the impact of skills development

When I attend a conference, my team expects me to report back. Give them a summary of what it was like, what I learned, and what I want to apply to my practice. This is time well spent, it means that my colleagues get a bite-sized summary, get a glance at what took place, and they themselves can benefit from the conference, without having attended for two days. An action similar to blowing the seeds from a dandelion into the soil around it.

We deliver skills development opportunities for students, and I think encouraging a similar culture amongst students could be a good thing to do.

• I would testify to experiencing the saying "If you want to know you've learned something, teach it to someone else". It's hard (and obvious) when teaching if you haven't grasped a concept. To ensure that you represent accurately what was taught.
• If one in a research group attends a session, what is the likelihood that the rest of the research group could benefit from having some snippets? I'd guess quite a lot actually. It may even provide a forum for peer to peer fertilisation of ideas, strategies and accountability to put into practice what is learnt.
• For the skills development team such activity encourages learning to be further embedded, and multiplied to others. Those others may be sceptical of attending skills development activities, this is a vehicle of increasing our reach to them with very little resource. 

Steve Ranford : 09 Sep 2010 17:06 |  Tags: Development Impact Reach Skills |  Comments (1) |  Report a problem