Activity
Liberating Structures, Setting the tone activities
Purpose to Practice

Maha Bali
Use the Purpose to Practice structure with students to co-develop “community guidelines” for the class.
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To co-develop a set of “community guidelines” for the class with students, using a structured approach called Purpose to Practice (a liberating structure) which reminds us all that while guidelines are often lists of practices/behaviors that are acceptable/unacceptable in a certain context, they should always be rooted in the purpose behind them.
Creating a safe space collaboratively with students, promoting reflection. Can be done at the beginning of the semester, revised in the middle of the semester.
Encourage students to bring to class any “codes of conduct” or “community guidelines” they have seen before, and/or bring your own, so that students can have a starting point if they are unfamiliar with this notion.
Prepare slides with instructions.
Prepare a collaborative space for brainstorming. Best if it is a visual space that allows creating and moving sticky notes of different colors – like Jamboard or Mural.
Conduct the Purpose to Practice activity in small groups as described in the Liberating Structures website http://www.liberatingstructures.com/33-purpose-to-practice-p2p/ with 1-4-all embedded (i.e. give students time to think on their own before sharing with four others and working together before sharing with the full group). The process basically goes in rounds of agreeing on a purpose as a whole group, then in small groups, writing out principles, participants, structures and practices that would be needed to achieve the group’s purposes. In the video, we do the “purpose” part a bit too fast.
This can be done early in the semester but is likely to benefit from revision midway through the semester.
This could take an entire class session if you do it synchronously.
Purpose to Practice Liberating Structures description
Slide deck used in the video
Sample guidelines shared in the video (mostly not for classes):
Sample guidelines for online classes for students to remix:
This activity is one of a series of activities from Equity Unbound, focused on equitable online community building.
Find out moreIntroductory activities
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