WOL for Students: Can you help?

Mar 22

How long can an idea stay on the back burner before you give up on it?

The first time the idea surfaced was in 2016, at the University of Melbourne. Then other universities began using it. Maybe as many as 20. A small online group called “WOL für Bildung” connected us.

I wrote about it twice in 2021, once about the different use cases in education and once about the experience at Heilbronn university.

But by then COVID was in full swing, and the momentum faded.

Even with positive results, it was clear the original WOL method was too long for this context. It would need to be adapted significantly—or perhaps redesigned entirely. And introducing anything new into a school proved daunting on multiple levels.

More fundamentally, I didn’t even know who it was for or what problem we were trying to solve. Was it for university students? High school students? Teachers and staff? Was it about trying to find a job or networking or something else?

Five years went by.

A professor at the Fachhochschule Westküste in Germany persisted. Ines Lietzke-Prinz, Professor for Entrepreneurship & Human Resource Management, had tried it in her class and found it helpful. Over several years she pushed me (gently :-)) to adapt the method but I always have other priorities, and still do.

Recently, she wrote me again, asking if she could adapt WOL herself.

“My motivation for investing the time in adapting the workbook is simply my conviction that students could benefit enormously from the WOL approach (perhaps even more than many people already working in organizations), as they are often still exploring their direction and building their first professional networks.
It might also give us an interesting first glimpse of how an adapted university WOL workbook could work in a university setting.”

Then, just a few days ago, I received another email. Subject:

“Ready to pilot WOL with 600 students”

“I’m now at a high school in southern Germany that’s beginning to rethink the Gymnasium model. I believe this could be a great opportunity for our school and for the WOL community, as we aim to enable all 600 students – and our teachers – to start “working out loud.” Our new headmaster is very interested in a collaboration as we look for effective approaches to peer learning.”

I’m ambivalent. Part of me is excited to work with these educators and invent something useful—for them and for students. Part of me is afraid we’ll just repeat the same pattern from years ago.

I could use your help.

Do you think WOL for Students is a good idea? If so, for whom and for what problem?

Maybe you have a suggestion or a connection or your own pilot. What would you do if you were me? Or these other educators?

Email me at john.stepper@workingoutloud.com if you can contribute in some way.