TEMPLATE ONE:

The components of this template come from your course text, The Fifth Discipline Field Book. It was chosen to be a practical link to the theoretical information and experiential exercises that inform this class.

PERSONAL MASTERY
Learning to expand our personal capacity to create the results we most desire, and creating an organizational environment which encourages all its members to develop themselves toward the goals and purposes they choose. This depends on building personal awareness of our habitual behaviors and mental models. "Only if you know what you do can you do what you want." Choice becomes available through awareness.(PERSONAL MASTERY can be further analyzed using INDIVIDUAL components of human information processing model presented in Template Three. Experiential exercises of journal and activity log intended to generate "Know thyself" experiences are also related to PERSONAL MASTERY. This component is also crutial to the development of positive group experiences).

MENTAL MODELS
Reflecting upon, continually clarifying, and improving our internal pictures of the world, and seeing how they shape our actions and decisions. What sort of mental sun glasses do you wear while remaining unaware of their effects upon your ability to envision new choice ? (The cultural/historical sections in Template Three will assist you in understanding your relation to MENTAL MODELS. The paper on culture change, lectures on information retrieval and worldviews will help you see how you and others wear invisible knowledge filters that form your MENTAL MODELS. Analyzing your own and others responses and rationales within your group work and presenting information in your activity log will clarify similarities and differences in MENTAL MODELS.)

SHARED VISION
Building a sense of commitment in a group, by developing shared images of the future we seek to create, and the principles and practices by which we hope to achieve this. This means building awareness of commonalties and diversities and learning to profitably employ both to their best advantage in developing and achieving envisioned individual and group futures.(Your groupwork and required reflections and analysis of your group work in your activity log will assist you in seeing how individual variability can be an asset &/or present problems in achieving group focus and excellence.)

Note: These first three components of Template One (PERSONAL MASTERY, MENTAL MODELS & SHARED VISION) can be understood more clearly using Part I of Template Three: Human Perception and Understanding (at individual, group and larger cultural levels).

TEAM LEARNING
Transforming conversational and collective thinking skills, so that groups of people can reliably develop intelligence and ability greater than the sum of individual member's talents. This means becoming aware of other's assets that are quite different from our own and learning to employ these together in new ways. ( The readings in distributed constructivism, resources on computer mediated communication as well as group and class experiences relate to this template component. Template three segments dealing with symbolic representation and communication will give you more things to think about relative to team learning.)

SYSTEMS THINKING
A way of thinking about, and a language for describing and understanding, the forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. This discipline helps us see how to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the larger processes of the natural and economic world. Rather than focusing solely on structures, this way of thinking focuses on processes such as the flow of information within organizations or the larger culture. Recent works on organizational re-engineering focus heavily on this style of thinking. (SYSTEMS THINKING can be applied to you as a system, to your small group as a system or to larger cultural, historical patterns as systems.Note this is like the structures of Individual, Immediate Group and Larger Culture in Template Three. Template Two's final segment on nonlinear self organizing systems is highly relevant to this part of Template One.Also you may understand the last section of Template Three: Transformation as indicating a systemic feedback loop in the dynamic system of human information processing.Learning to understand and utilize SYSTEMS THINKING is perhaps the culminating ability you may achieve in this class. )