What is this?
Overview
What is this?
Feeling stuck? This out-in-the-world audio experience gives you a fresh perspective and helps you re-frame a challenge. It's great for educators who are facilitating a group. It can be used solo too. Facilitation notes are below.
How does it work?
It takes about two hours. All you need is a mobile device connected to the internet to stream audio, plus earbuds, a notebook, & a pen.
Getting Unstuck is self-paced. When you feel done with one part, hit play on the next track to skip to the next. Some tracks have music on the end to keep you company as you walk from one place to another.
What is it for?
This is an individual activity that helps you get “unstuck” on a challenge you choose. When you engage the world around you, including other people you might encounter, you’ll find a fresh perspective. Hopefully, you can then re-frame your challenge and find your next step. You will find inspiration in unexpected places, take time for intentional reflection, and practice re-framing problems.
How & when can I use it?
Use it on your own or with a group whenever you feel stuck on a challenge.
With students, this can be run as part of a session or as an assignment.
Make sure you have what you need
Getting Unstuck is a guided audio experience that takes place outdoors, out in the real world. Carve out about 2 hours for setup, the walk, and a group debrief. Each person needs a mobile device to stream audio from the internet, a pair of earbuds, a notebook, and a pen. And of course, whatever clothing they need to spend 2 hours outside.
If streaming audio is not an option, participants can download audio to their devices before they start.
Introduce Getting Unstuck and send participants out
Set up Getting Unstuck as an immersive, individual audio experience used to exercise creative muscles and break open a challenge. Participants don’t need to decide what they’ll be working on quite yet; there's time for that built into the audio experience. Let them know this is self-paced—whenever they feel done with one prompt they can skip to the next track. And, there's no need to listen to all the music at the end of each track, it’s just there to keep folks company.
Go for a walk
Ask participants to make sure they have everything they need (see above) and ask them to navigate to the audio stream on their mobile devices.
Once they’ve pulled up the page, tell them to plug in their earbuds, grab their notebook and pen, and head outside. Once outside, they hit play. Once participants hit play, the audio track will guide the rest of their journey.
Each participant will end up in a different location based on the choices they make along the way—make sure they know how to get back to a group meeting place when they're done.
Debrief
Decide what you want the debrief to focus on:
The content: framing a challenge, taking action to find a fresh perspective on that challenge, intentional reflection, and finally the act of re-framing the challenge (most teams will pick this).
The format: the act of learning through an immersive learning audio experience (suitable for educators or education students).
A common debrief structure we recommend has three layers: What? So what? Now what?
What?
Discuss what happened. Let participants share their own highlights. Ask them to pair up and share with a partner first, then hear a couple of comments shared in the big group. Questions to get them started might be:
A. What was it like framing a challenge for yourself? What action did you take to find a fresh perspective? How did you re-frame your challenge in the end?
B. What was it like learning through an audio walk? or How did Getting Unstuck affect your learning?
So what?
A. What did you learn from this experience about taking an action to re-frame your challenge? Why is this important?
B. How do different modes of learning affect your experience? When are you most engaged? When do you learn the most?
Now what?
A. How will Getting Unstuck change how you approach challenges in the future?
B. How will this experience influence how you think of your role as a teacher? What can you do to make your learning experiences more immersive and active?
Credits
Tania Anaissie, Erik Olesund, 2016, Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0