Learning Clubs through Brainstory
As part of our rundown to 2024, we’ll be blogging about all the ways you can use Brainstory to accomplish those New Year’s Resolutions. One of the most popular NYE resolutions? Learning something new!
What is a learning club?
You might call this a book club, a professional meet-up, journal club, or even a study session. It’s a group of people who agree to learn a subject matter together, usually with the help of formal texts (papers and books).
Over a hundred people want to be a part of Laura’s game theory journal club!
What is the challenge of a learning club?
Organizing a group together takes a lot of work, usually on the host. The host needs to:
- Meeting prep
- Ensure everyone has a good time
- Keep notes of the meeting
Oftentimes, groups can fall apart if no one does this work. Think about a group project from school or social plans that fall through because no one followed up.
The problem is that learning clubs depend on a regular commitment to this work. If you let the occasional month go by without meeting, then you’ll be sabatoging your learning in the long run.
How to structure your learning club for maximum learning!
- Be picky about who is in your learning club.
Everyone should commit to the same amount of time, effort, and energy. If someone misses a chapter or meeting, what are the expectations?
- Do your meeting prep!
Everyone needs to do meeting prep. If you don’t do meeting prep, it is very easy for a group to waste an hour. Use Brainstory to talk through what you want to cover at the meeting. Those topics could include:
- Something you found really interesting about the reading
- Something that confused
- Something you would like the group to discuss further
- Something you’d like to share because the reading reminded you of it
As the host, you can decide what the format of the meeting is. If you are unsure what the format should be, spitball into Brainstory and see how it chunks out the sections. Then share your Brainstory with everyone in your learning club.
- Aggregate meeting prep notes
Once everyone has submitted their meeting prep, everyone will be able to view everyone’s feedback on your original Brainstory.
In mid-January, we’ll release a feature that makes it even easier to view all of their feedback without additional navigation. Here’s a sneak peak of that UI!
You’ll be able to see where people generally had questions, agreed, disagreed, and had follow up thoughts. If you want to see more, you can click their comment and it’ll take you to their feedback Brainstory (what you currently see in the UI).
- Have a productive, engaging meeting
Now that everyone’s aware of the context and holes, your learning club meeting is going to be very efficient. You’ll be able to dig right into the meat without having to “get everyone up to speed”.
People will walk away from this meeting with a ton of energy and knowledge, making them more excited for the next meeting.
Are you reading this blog before January 1st, 2024?
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