Exploring Our Significance in Our Communities at a Learning Café

Devon Arthurson
Hakuoh University
darthurson[at]fc[dot]hakuoh [dot] ac [dot] jp

Exploring Our Significance in Our Communities
at a Learning Café
ABSTRACTA learning café is a presentation format in which the presenter briefly shares about the presentation
topic and then uses most of the time to facilitate discussion with the attendees for further explorationof the topic. As it was the author’s first time to present at a learning café, this reflection paper will
focus on my expectations and the actual experience. I was expecting to be able to discuss all theprompts I had prepared for the presentation, but in reality the attendees were only able to shareabout a portion of questions related to their communities. Advantages of the learning café format
are that attendees are actively involved in the presentation and have more egalitarian interactions.
Conversely, those positives may be viewed as negatives by those who prefer traditional presenterfocused presentations. For instance, with learning cafés the presenter needs to be more of a facilitator
rather than an expert, responding to what the attendees view as meaningful. The attendees also need
to be prepared to share about the topics and participate actively.
Keywords: learning cafés, presentation styles, self-reflections

In this short-form reflection, I will share my experience facilitating a learning café at the Learner
Development 30 (LD 30) Conference. Though I have presented many times, this was my firsttime with a learning café. Therefore, I will focus more on the presentation format instead of thesession content. To begin, a learning café will be defined. Then I will explain how preparation
for the café differed from preparation for a more traditional presentation. Next, I will detail myexpectations for the café in contrast to the actual experience. Lastly, I will discuss the advantages
and disadvantages of learning cafés.

DEFINITION

According to LD 30’s Conference session page, Collaborative Learning Spaces, a learning café
begins with a short presentation about the topic to prepare the audience members to use themajority of the time for having discussions about the topic, and later to make mini-posters (2023).
In comparison to traditional presentations, the focus in a learning café format is on active audienceinteraction rather than the presenter sharing. When searching online for “learning café”, someresults were related to educational institutions offering computer rooms with support staff, small
group discussions or opportunities for online learning (EdPrepLab, n.d.; Lethbridge College, n.d.;
University of Louisville, n.d.). However, the learner café format at the LD30 Conference has moresimilarities to the World Café Method (2023) which is credited to an American organization using
collaborative group discussions to promote social change. The Design Principles (2023) of theLEARNING LEARNING『学習の学習』31(1)112

DEVON ARTHURSONWorld Café Method, outline having a clear purpose, creating a safe space, posing a question orquestions relevant to the attendees, ensuring all attendees share their viewpoints through groupinteractions, and ending with a time for reflection. However, the LD30 learner café differed byincluding a short presentation segment. Based on the above, it seemed a learner café should beaudience centered instead of speaker centered, starting with a brief presentation, with most of thetime being dedicated to group discussions about the presentation topic in a comfortable setting forsharing.

PREPARATIONS

The topic of the presentation was about communities and the ways that members’ participation canpotentially solve problems that the community is experiencing. Studying community development
as a social work undergraduate and then community studies as a graduate student, community
has always been important to me. However, at my previous job I began to shift my focus to beinga more efficient classroom manager and forgot my role as a community worker. In April 2023, I
started at a new university and became part of a new community. In preparation for this change, Irealized how I needed to not only focus on being a competent adjunct lecturer, but also a nurturingcommunity member. Since everyone possesses knowledge of their communities, it seemed
like having LD30 attendees share their viewpoints would be preferable to me lecturing aboutcommunity development theories. I was eager to learn more about how others were interacting intheir communities.
To promote discussion in my learning café session, the slides I presented at the beginning included
questions such as “What communities are you a part of?”, “Do you have positive, negative or neutral
feelings about this community?”, “What is your role in your community?”, and “Do you have ideas tomake your community better?” At the former LD 20 conference, I recalled many Japanese students
attending, so I wanted to give them, in addition to the other attendees, enough time to think about
the topic first before the brainstorming sessions started. As a result, I created a worksheet aboutcommunities the participants belong to, issues their communities are experiencing, and possible
solutions to these issues (Appendix A). The attendees completed the worksheet as an individual
brainstorming activity. Next, they shared the contents with others. Then all attendees’ contents wereused for material creation in the form of mini-posters.

EXPECTATIONSMy expectation was that after an icebreaker, I would give a brief presentation containing the samequestions that were mentioned above and that appeared at the top of the worksheet. This would
allow the attendees to write down their answers to each prompt. This would be followed by a group
discussion about the prompts, and then ending in a sharing session about the posters. It seemedthat the mini-posters would be especially meaningful as they would concretely account for all theattendee’s viewpoints from discussions. I felt sure that the session time limit of 55 minutes would
allow for the completion of the above tasks.

REALITIES

Three university professors and one student attended my LD30 session. I shared my slides with theoverview of the following points: 1) Community, 2) Community Role, 3) Challenges, 4) Initiatives, 5)
Exchange, and 6) Thank You. I suggested moving the chairs to make a circle, so that discussions
would be easier. After we had introduced ourselves to each other, I started with an icebreakerby asking everyone to share the beverage they order at a café and where they tend to get thisbeverage. Answers ranged from vending machine coffees for black canned coffees to Starbucks
for seasonal drinks to small craft cafe shops near their workplaces. After the icebreaker, everyone
received the worksheet. I asked attendees to write down their responses and later share theiranswers to “What communities are you a part of?” I expected most would talk about their universities.

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However, except for the student, the communities discussed were our neighborhood, online, orreligious communities. Next the question, “How do you feel about your community?” prompted
attendees to share how strong or weak they felt their connections were to these communities.
Though one member made mention of belonging to their community for a long time, they felt
uncertain about how others viewed them and, to some extent, felt disconnected. Another member
shared how creating a LINE group gave them a new community to participate in that was uniquefrom the other communities they interacted with daily. It was interesting to hear about ways they
developed and deepened their connections, or openly shared their disconnections and thechallenges faced by their communities. As we took turns sharing and commenting on others’
remarks, 45 minutes quickly passed, and there was little time to directly discuss the roles we haveas individuals in our community, community challenges, and initiatives to combat the challenges.
Subsequently, I was still hoping that the attendees would write down their ideas related to anything
discussed so that they would be able to create the mini-posters. The student did so by writing thecommunity they belonged to and asking if they could keep the paper. The rest of the attendees,
as well as the student, continued sharing about their relationships with their communities for theremainder of the time. Though I had only gotten to the fourth of twelve slides and no mini-posters
were produced, and although I had wanted to learn more about the attendees’ significance in theircommunities, using the time for meaningful conversations in a relaxed setting was much morevaluable.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

There are many advantages to using a learning café at conferences. The first advantage is a morerelaxed setting where audience members can also participate throughout the session, versus a
traditional presentation setting where the audience may only have time to ask questions in the last
few minutes. Besides, there is more time for presenter-attendee and attendee-attendee interactions.
Another advantage is that it gives more opportunities for deeper discussions about the presented
topic and for everyone to share their personal opinions and experience. A final advantage is that thepresenter, who may not be an expert on the presentation topic, acts more as a facilitator - without thepressure of having to offer expert opinions to questions posed by attendees, so for more egalitariansettings, learning cafés are beneficial.
Potential disadvantages will arise if the presenter and the attendees are unfamiliar with learning cafés.
Presenters who lack the skill to facilitate such forums will also affect the outcome. The presenter
needs to create an atmosphere for sharing to take place and activities that allow for that to happen.
One way to address these issues could be to begin with everyday topics to allow for rapport-building
and use more open-ended questions throughout one’s presentation. In turn, the attendees need tobe active at the learning café. This contrasts with traditional presentation settings where attendees, atthe bare minimum, are expected to be quiet and not create any disruptions during the presenter’s talk.
Ultimately, the presenter needs to allow everyone to comment on the topic. Furthermore, the presenter
needs to be more flexible in contrast to the traditional presentation format where adjustments fortime restraints can be done smoothly and covertly. However, if learning café attendees are involved
in deep discussions, the presenter may have to forgo their original program. Nonetheless, despitesome potential difficulties, I think that learning cafés are a favorable alternative to the traditionalpresentation format.

CONCLUSION

Learning cafés are interactive settings for topics to be discussed by not only the presenter but also
the attendees. This style of presentation is ideal for those presenters who seek collaboration andpotentially more meaningful interactions with the attendees. Furthermore, for those presenters who
do not feel comfortable solely in the role of expert and seek to learn from the different perspectives
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DEVON ARTHURSONof others, learning cafés are advantageous. However, presenters will need to focus more on facilitating
and the attendees will need to be more active in discussions and material creation. By facilitating alearning café at the LD30 conference, I found that I could learn a lot from the attendees about theircommunities in a more casual setting. Also, I felt less pressure to complete all the tasks I originallyplanned to do.

REFERENCES

EdPrepLab. (n.d.). Learning cafés. https://edpreplab.org/learning-cafes
LD30 (2023). Conference sessions: Teachers. https://ld30.edzil.la/pages/531
Lethbridge College (n.d.). Learning cafés. https://lethbridgecollege.ca/departments/learning-cafe
The World Café (2023). Design principles. https://theworldcafe.com/key-concepts-resources/
design-principles/
University of Louisville (n.d.). Learning cafe. https://louisville.edu/employeesuccess/learningopportunities/learning-cafes/learning-cafes

APPENDIX AEXPLORING OUR SIGNIFICANCE IN OUR COMMUNITIESHow do I view my community? | What is my role in my community?/What can I contribute to my community? |How do the initiatives affect the individual (you) and community (classroom, university, field)? & Whatchallenges do you anticipate for the individual (you) and community (classroom, university, field)? |What can we do as a community to overcome these challenges?

私は自分のコミュニティをどう見ているか？| 自分のコミュニティにおける自分の役割は何か／自分のコミュニティに貢献できることは何か | その取り組みは、個人（あなた）と地域社会（教室、大学、現場）にどのような影響を与えるか。個人（あなた）と地域社会（教室、大学、現場）にとって、どのような課題が予想されるか。
| これらの課題を克服するために、コミュニティとして何ができるか？

My Community

My Role in theCommunity

Challenges

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Initiatives

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