Attached are the discussion notes from "Setting Frameworks for Organizational Learning Toward Sustainability."  What comments do you find most helpful?  Do you see any cross-cutting themes that might be the beginnings of a "how-to" manual on creating living laboratories for sustainability?

Session 3:   Setting Frameworks for Organizational Learning Toward Sustainability  (Didac Balas-Ferrer)
1.    How do we create the diverse and strong networks that underpin Living Laboratory initiatives?
Additional notes from table discussion
§    Inventory your initiatives
§    Undergo a visioning process
§    Partnerships emphasize collaboration – shared power & voice, dynamic, open education model
§    Create opportunities for networking (workshops, etc)
§    Think outside the box to identify and include stakeholders (beyond students, faculty, staff) such as community, business, etc
§    Build relationships with industry
§    Create communications systems or online networking courses
§    Create opportunities for real-world applied learning
§    Marketing successes to inform community, expand program—need visible, tangible results
§    Create incentives/reward programs
§    Engage community partners
§    Best practice exchange and access to institutional leadership to share
§    Foster student/alumni relations; build shared culture & identity / tactile experience
§    Web 2.0 – effective or fad?
§    Keep face to face meetings
§    Peer to Peer communication
§    Different departments have different cultures / languages
§    Ensure that diverse networks talk to and enhance each other
§    Constructivist approach--build from each person’s starting place
§    Have realist’s short-term goals even with visionary’s long-term goals


2.    How can we multiply the individual and institutional learning within these networks through feed-back loops of information?
Additional notes from table discussion
§    Exercise in a class (ie individual waste flow) scaled up (to institutional waste flow)
§    Student competition between dorms on electricity usage w/ elec. Meters
§    Networks have a life of their own
§    Send information back into the system
§    Don’t duplicate; look for collaboration
§    Website to share project ideas or a person to collect and design projects, with feedback by experts.  Need:
o    Technical support
o    Faculty to faculty meetings to facilitate in a safe environment
§    Mutual learning requires that faculty shows more regard for staff’s knowledge and expertise
§    Dashboards for communication not just technical but social
§    How do you educate people who have no control over environment in much of their life (ex. NYC infrastructure)
§    Make the invisible visible
§    Strengthen social networks, not just tech / sci


3.    What is the added-value of involving students?
Additional notes from table discussion
§    Student retention; seeing students as seeding legacy
§    Integrating student knowledge into current practices  / learning (“new blood” in institution
§    Experiential learning, inclusive teaching
4.    How do we get the institutional recognition of the value of these initiatives beyond quantitative results by considering the quality & innovation aspects?
Additional notes from table discussion
§    Being well-versed in sustainability issues will be a job skill for students
§    “What future generations are we leaving to the world?”
§    Tie LL into research impact, cost-saving goals of institution
§    Bring recognition to the institution; win sustainability contests
§    Outside validation (ie sustainability report card)