# Meta, for Courses & More

The Meta Course is a **laboratory for generating learning**.

It's a cohort for creating **innovative structures** and **alternative pedagogies**; a space to play and build and try and fail and iterate together.


# Who Should Join

Experienced teachers and novices; artists and hackers and explorers; people more interested in leading peer groups than being a *teacher*; people building their own independent learning communities and interested in collaboration.

If you're eager to experiment with internet learning, we'd love to have you join.

> 🌱 Come to start working on a new idea. Come to iterate on a course you've already started. Come to jam on ideas for learning clubs. Come to design new meta-structures and organizational forms for learning. Come to play. 🌱

The only prerequisites are to come with an idea (or a few!) you'd like to explore.


# Goals

- Design the foundations of a thoughtful learning experience (course, learning club…or perhaps something else!)
- Get to know a community of awesome teachers / learners; share useful feedback and have fun iterating on ideas together
- Prepare to run your first cohort so you can learn from the experience and continue playing the infinite game of teaching and learning


# Structure

We've redesigned the Meta Course, and brought it in ***Hyperspace***, our new platform for collaborative learning. This time, we're trying a slightly accelerated timeline…


- 3 weeks, 6 live calls for discussion and feedback (join at least one / week)
- Asynchronous resources and activities in Hyperspace (you can do these at your own pace, so you can participate at any stage or even join repeated cohorts)
- We'll create this experience together in each cohort, and add workshop sessions on specific topics as needed

For more info, visit the [Meta Course page in Hyperspace](https://space.hyperlink.academy/305227423308318275).


## Interested in Joining?

🔹 **If you're thinking about a course or club**, submit ideas at the [forms linked here](https://hyperlink.academy/create) and we'll get back to you soon.

🔹 **If you're thinking about something else (or have questions!)** please [email us](https://contact@hyperlink.academy) and tell us a bit what you have in mind.

The Meta Course is free but we do have limited capacity; if it seems like a good fit we'll chat more and invite you to enroll.

The Meta Course

A course for creating great courses! We learn how to create learning structures specifically for the ideas and skills most interesting to us. 

The Meta Course is Hyperlink's course creation workshop! In this Language Arts themed cohort, make a course on writing, linguistics, rhetoric, translation, poetry, publishing, or related topics.

Language Arts 1

The Meta Course is Hyperlink's course creation workshop! In this Visual Thinking themed cohort, make a course on comics, design, art, video, animation, photography, visualization, or related topics.

Visual Thinking 1

Hyperlink's workshop for generating effective learning structures from interesting ideas. Join to design, facilitate, and iterate on courses and learning clubs — let's experiment together!

This cohort of the Meta Course resulted in all kinds of amazing course proposals — thanks so much for participating! 

These courses are in different stages of development; some folks are still exploring the topic, while others are close to launching soon. All of them are exciting experiments in learning fascinating ideas in new ways.

We had a lot of fun, and we're excited to see some of them tried out live on Hyperlink soon :slight_smile:

Here’s a retro post summarizing what we learned from this cohort: {INSERT LINK TO COHORT RETRO}

Here are the courses developed in this cohort!

{INSERT COURSES - h2 + one-paragraph description}

Artifact

Course Idea Roundup!

{INSERT DISCOURSE EVENT HERE}

{INSERT VIDEO CALL LINK HERE}


## Welcome to the Meta Course

Excited to have you here!

**At the scheduled time, click the link above to join the video call.**

In this call we'll introduce ourselves, and briefly chat about each of our course ideas.

During this call, we'll each create a new topic in this category, with some brief notes on what we plan on doing for our course.

**BEFORE WE MEET**: Please jot down any initial notes you have for your course idea. What parts are you pretty sure about? What questions / areas would you most like to address?


## Outline for Call 1 - Intros and Ideas:

- **Hyperlink Introduction:** We'll share a bit about Hyperlink's mission, how we approach course design and internet learning, and the Meta Course itself.
- **Participant Introductions**: Each of us will briefly introduce ourselves and our course ideas, then take a few minutes during the call to draft a topic with initial thoughts for course goals and proposed structure.


## Week 1 Homework - Ideas and Feedback

After the initial call (the sooner the better!) please take some time over the coming days to read each other's initial course idea drafts, and exchange thoughts and feedback on the forum.

Then before our next meeting, read through that feedback and think about how it might inform your ideas and the direction of your course. We'll build on this further over the next few weeks.

Call 1 - Intros and Ideas

Live Call #1 - Intros and Ideas

{INSERT DISCOURSE EVENT}

{INSERT LIVE CALL LINK}


## Outline for Call 2 - Course Structure

- **Reviewing Ideas:** A quick discussion round, where we can address some of the questions that have come up based on feedback in the past week.
- **Designing Course Structure:** We'll talk about possibilities for designing the shape of your course. What are the core learning objectives? How long is it? How frequently and in what form do participants meet? What's the workload? What are the final outcomes / artifacts?
- **Syllabus Possibilities:** We'll explore features of a good syllabus, and look at some great examples demonstrating creative, detailed syllabi in a variety of fields.
- **Test Runs:** Each participant can schedule a Test Run — a short session to practice facilitating one small part of your course. You'll do at least one of these sometime in the next two weeks! See below for details.


## Week 2 Homework - 2-3 Rough Outlines

Based on your initial idea and feedback you've received, draft an outline for your course, mapping out its high level objectives and overall shape.

If you can, sketch out 2-3 potential directions or high level shapes for your course.


## Scheduling a Test Run

As mentioned above, part of this course involves scheduling a Test Run to get some hands-on facilitation practice.

Here are the steps to get this set up:

1. Go to the #meta-course category and create a new topic (this will make the Test Run public so you can invite friends if you like!)
2. While composing the topic, hit the gear icon above the text box and select "Create an Event"
3. Fill out the time, and add a video call link (using the service of your choice, e.g. Zoom or Google Meet) and hit "Create". You can leave the name blank.
4. Add a couple lines describing your course, what you'll be doing in the Test Run, and anything else you'd like participants to know.
5. If you like, @-mention this cohort group to notify everyone in the cohort you've scheduled this event.
6. Hit "Create Topic" to post! Any issues, send a message, we'll help you get set up.

Call 2 - Course Structure

Live Call #2 - Course Structure

{INSERT DISCOURSE EVENT}

{INSERT LIVE CALL LINK}


## Outline for Call 3 - Facilitation

- **Reviewing Course Outlines:** We'll do a round of feedback, taking a look at the rough draft outlines we each put together.
- **Intro to Facilitation:** We'll explore some possibilities and design considerations for facilitating your course, getting into details of how you might organize each meeting, and balance synchronous meeting and asynchronous discussion and other course work.
- **Hyperlink Features and Logistics:** We'll do a walkthrough of what it looks like to create and run a course on Hyperlink — what you can do with the platform, and what you'd like us to add in the future.

## Week 3 Homework: Revised Outline

You'll work on editing your outline, starting to flesh out in more detail and revise based on further feedback.

**REMINDER: Test Runs:** If you haven't yet scheduled your Test Run, get that on the calendar.

Call 3 - Facilitation

Live Call #3 - Facilitation

{INSERT DISCOURSE EVENT}

{INSERT LIVE CALL LINK}


## Outline for Call 4 - Exercises and Assignments

- **Review / Questions**: Another round of questions / feedback / review to get ready for putting together your complete syllabus!
- **Exercise and Assignment Design:** We'll get into some additional details for your syllabus, looking at possibilities for creating engaging exercises, prompts, or assignments for the course.


## Week 4 Homework: Final Syllabus

You'll complete a detailed syllabus that articulates your course curriculum. It doesn't have to be 100% polished quite yet, but should fully cover all the relevant details a learner needs to know before joining your course.

**REMINDER: Test Runs:** If you haven't yet done a Test Run, please do so this week!

Call 4 - Exercises and Assignments

Live Call #4 - Exercises and Assignments

{INSERT DISCOURSE EVENT}

{INSERT LIVE CALL LINK}


## Outline for Call 5 - Demo Day

- **Final Presentations and Review:** We'll spend the bulk of this call presenting our final course drafts, and addressing any lingering questions.
- **Plan for Course Launch:** Let's talk about next steps for getting these courses launched on Hyperlink! At this point, you're welcome to polish your course and schedule a live cohort, or chat with us further about possibilities. You can also continue posting on the forum for feedback. See below for details on getting your course launched.
- **Meta Course Retro:** We'll take the last ~15 minutes of our final call to do a retrospective on how the Meta Course went, and how we can improve it for next time.

Call 5 - Demo Day

Live Call #5 - Demo Day

Hey all, thanks so much for joining us, looking forward to hearing everyone's course ideas! Couple quick things to get started here—

## Introductions

Please post a brief intro below — who you are, why you joined, what course idea you want to develop here. And say hello to other participants; let's get to know each other!

## Logistics

We'll be doing the three video calls right here on the forum. There's an event for each:

- {INSERT TIME + LINK TO CALL 1}
- {INSERT TIME + LINK TO CALL 2}
- {INSERT TIME + LINK TO CALL 3}

Head to that first linked event on {INSERT DAY + TIME OF CALL 1} and we'll start the call there.

## Start Learning!

That's about it for now. If you have any questions / concerns you want to chat about, get those ready and we can discuss more in this first call. We'll introduce ourselves, talk about our courses, go over some logistics and draft an initial topic for discussing your course.

Please have your course idea ready, and we'll see you soon!

*You can also message any of us on the Hyperlink team (@Brendan, @jared , @Celine) by clicking our name anywhere on the forum and hitting the "message" button.*

Getting Started

This cohort of the Meta Course starts {INSERT START DATE HERE e.g. 'Saturday, July 11'}

## Schedule

- Live meetings on three consecutive Saturdays:
  - {INSERT CALL 1 DATE e.g. Saturday, July 11, 2pm ET}
  - {INSERT CALL 2 DATE e.g. Saturday, July 18, 2pm ET}
  - {INSERT CALL 3 DATE e.g. Saturday, July 25, 2pm ET}
- Each meeting will go for 90 minutes
- We'll be available for one-on-one office hours (optional, on request)

## Goals & Open Questions

Our main objectives for the Meta Course:

- Learn how we can most effectively support course creators
- Cultivate a diverse lineup of early courses as we work to get Hyperlink launched

We're using a mix of live calls and forum discussion. One question to explore: what balance here feels most useful, and are there other things we can do to help? 

How much structure works best e.g. with assignments, feedback mechanisms, and scheduling? What's best when it feels more open ended, and what should we make as specific and tightly scoped as possible?

This is an experiment — and we , the Hyperlink staff, will be participating too! Whether you're coming in with a rough concept or a long-simmering project, we think this will be a lot of fun and we're excited to learn with you.

Notes

What are some learning experiences you've had that really made an impact? 

Examples of what _not_ to do can be extremely useful here, so this could be a positive or negative impact.

### Some possible questions:

- What's the least intuitive thing you've had to learn and what are things people did that made it harder or easier to learn?
- Are there any specific questions you've been asked that opened up new ways of thinking about a subject? What about questions that framed something in a super unapproachable way?
- Are there things a teacher or mentor did that didn't make sense in the moment while learning something but later clicked into place? How'd they communicate that to you? How would you have communicated it to your past self?

Prompt - Impactful Learning

Discussion Prompt - What’ve been impactful learning experiences for you?

This topic is to share any great resources you've come across on teaching and pedagogy.

Favorite practical tips for facilitation? Studies on learning and psychology? Research on different methods of instruction or learning technologies?

Share them here!

Prompt - Teaching Resources

Discussion Prompt - Have any favorite resources for teaching and learning?

*NOTE: We'll build in some time in tonight's call to answer the below questions :slight_smile:* 

Thanks for participating in the Meta Course!

We hope you're feeling good about your course idea, and are either:

- Preparing to take the next steps to publish and run a live cohort, or
- Considering doing something with your course, but not ready to commit quite yet

Either of these outcomes is totally fine, and either way we hope you enjoyed this experience. 

As an important part of the course evolution process, we'd like to collect some quick feedback on the Meta Course so we can make the next time we run it even better.

**Questions:**

- What were you initially expecting to get out of the course? Were those expectations met?
- Did the pacing and structure create an environment that helped you build and improve upon your course idea? How might the structure have better supported you?
- What specific things (moments, techniques, conversations) did you feel were most useful?
- What is one thing you would change or remove?

Please take a few minute to write some quick thoughts to these questions, and post as a reply to this topic.

**BONUS:** Hyperlink is new and we've got a lot to improve! Your early input will really impact us and help us grow. If you have any other thoughts you'd like to share with us, please write them here — thanks!