Collaborative Learning Outside of a Formal Collaborative Practice Group
Author: Ross Evans
This is the one in a series of articles being published by the IACP Practice Group Development Committee. They are intended to help Collaborative Practitioners be successful and Practice Groups grow and thrive. The opinions contained in these articles are those of the writers and do not reflect any official position of the organization.
Many new collaboratively trained professionals often wonder how to build, develop and strengthen their skill set after their initial training. Oftentimes they are not yet part of a Collaborative Practice Group or looking to develop apart or in addition to their practice group. We learned from our early development that the best way to assist our own personal skills was through learning and working with other collaboratively trained professionals. In fact, the best way to develop your own skills is to share success and failure with others who understand what is trying to be accomplished.
This brought about the concept of “Pods”. Just like with Dolphins, a Pod is a group of individuals who are creating a society for both learning and socialization. The Pod can be any size and created to help the members with any learning or training that will be helpful for each member. In many regions around the world, Pods are used as both part of the regional Practice Groups as well as stand alone learning groups to help develop collaborative practice. They can be based on region, skill level, commitment level, learning style, practice level or any other attribute that may be similar for the members. You may have 3 or 4 colleagues who all enjoy book clubs and your Pod may use the many available books on Collaborative Practice to strengthen your skills. You may like to talk in a smaller setting and the idea of sharing difficult cases with a larger group may be intimidating.
Creating a pod is as simple as reaching out to a few other practitioners and suggesting an initial get-together to determine if there is enough interest to get together on a regular basis. Some pods meet weekly, some monthly and some just make it a “whenever” we can get together creating an agenda or even just to hold “grand rounds” and discuss the current cases. We learn from our successes, and we also may learn more from our failures and having a small group of practitioners to break down what transpired can lead to great learning opportunities.
With the upsurge in the use of technology, the Pod does not even have to be present in the same space, and the use of Zoom, Teams or similar platforms can help bring people together. If meetings can be arranged in person, I would always suggest that as the preferred manner since spending time face to face is so important in our work and our learning.
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