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The School of Social Innovation

Are you looking to make a difference in your community and the world? Are you interested in developing the skills and network necessary to do so?

The School of Social Innovation (SoSI) is a partnership between Citizen Circles and P2PU to help small groups who want to create their own courses on social innovation and share them openly with the world.

SoSI courses are based on peer-created syllabi, peer-to-peer teaching and learning, and local discussion groups and project-learning teams called citizen circles, which is a format for friends, classmates, and colleagues to work together to improve their own knowledge, confidence, skills, and competencies for change-making, inspired by the century-old model of the study circle.

SoSI courses generally run on a semesterly schedule along with all P2PU courses, with the next semester starting January 26th, 2011, but we are happy to accomodate courses that wish to start at any other time on a case-by-case basis. We are accepting proposals for courses from April and beyond at cocreate@citizencircles.com.

Course list

P2PU has moved to a new home - please go to p2pu.org to see our current courses. If you want to see what courses were previously run on this site, here's a selection of completed courses:

Course Name Organiser Course Status

Conflict ResolutionThis citizen circle will introduce participants to conflict resolution theory and practices.Show more details

Emily Miller

Completed

Local Open Govt. InnovationHow to bring transparency, public participation, and collaboration to your local government. This is an international course!Show more details

Lucas Cioffi

Completed

Women as Social InnovatorsWhat are the unique strengths and challenges that women face as social innovators?Show more details

Julie Bowes

Completed

Education Politics in AmericaLearn about education politics and how to navigate your own investigations in the subject matter! Show more details

Emily C

Completed

Sustainability StudioCreate a local project with support from your peers and guest speakers - and get recognition for your impact! Show more details

Go to the course page

Sustainability Studio is a project-based course where you'll make a difference locally with a small group that focuses on one of the core environmental, social or economic aspects of sustainability. Along the way, you'll build your knowledge and skills, have support from peers in Sustainability Studio, hear from guest speakers and share the story of what you're doing.

We're using a core competency framework developed at Michigan State University to structure our projects and evaluate what we've learned. This is not an MSU course, we're just using the framework to organize our work. The competencies were developed around eight areas that most believe demonstrate knowledge and skill in sustainability: personal development, critical thinking, systems thinking, social justice, civic engagement, economic vitality, ecological integrity and aesthetics.

This is a Citizen Circles/P2PU School of Social Innovation course, and has a couple of unique features. First, this course is centered around small offline groups. If you want to participate in the course, it is your responsibility to find two other people from your community to participate in the course with you. Second, in addition to joining the online meetings, your small group is expected to meet face-to-face throughout the course to engage offline activities as outlined in the syllabus.

The Citizen Circle process for Sustainability Studio is as follows:

Recruit a couple of friends (2-4) in the same community as you to build and participate in the Sustainability Studio course with you.
Decide which ONE of the eight sustainability domains you want to work on together. Most projects will cross over into other domains, but pick one as a primary focus.
Define a project with guidance from the course organizer and co-facilitators (see the course syllabus and project ideas).
Document and share your progress in Sustainability Studio.
Learn from your peers and guest speakers in the Studio.
Celebrate with feedback and recognition in the Studio Show during the last week.

."Never doubt that a small group of individuals can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead

Sustainability Studio Weekly Schedule
#1	Jan 26- Feb 1	Studio Opening: Introductions, inspiration, discussion of proposed projects
#2	Feb 2 - 8	Group project plans approved and work begins
#3	Feb 9 - 15	Work on projects
#4	Feb 16 - 22	Studio Guests: sharing by guest speakers
#5	Feb 23 - Mar 1	Work on projects
#6	Mar 2 - 9	Finalize projects
#7	Mar 10 - 16	Studio Show: Telling our stories, measuring our impact, celebrating success

Christine Geith

Completed

The School of Social Innovation

Course list

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