Experience Circle Learning - in a Learning Circle Experience

According to the?World Economic Forum, one of the most important 10 skills to have in 2025 is?Active learning and learning strategies. I often hear: What does that mean, and how do I start?

Inspired by learning circles based on lernOS, encouraged by the experience of, amongst others, Continental and DATEV, and driven by SAP’s internal Future Learning Lab, 7 motivated individuals got together to offer the first ever Learning Circle Experience for SAP employees and customers (and to implicitly answer the questions above).

SAP colleagues Gerd Stumm (Future Learning Lab lead), Thomas Jenewein (SAP Training & Enablement), Martina Quiterio and myself (Working Out Loud enthusiasts) teamed up with DSAG (German-speaking SAP User Group) Academy program managers Sophie Hartmann and Angelina Mahl, and lernOS initiator Simon Dückert, and organized and ran the 13-week free program that brought together about 250 interested people from around the world.

Participants got to choose one of three lernOS learning paths: Productivity & Stress reduction (aka Getting Things Done), Diversity & Inclusion, or Sketchnoting. With up to 4 peers, they met once a week for 12 weeks in a completely self-organized fashion to compare and discuss progress with their weekly exercises and towards their individual goals.

After a formal kickoff session in September 2021, the org team offered 2 pit stops (in week 4 and 8) to support the overall learning sprint, answer questions, and provide a platform for informal exchange across the learning circles. Luckily, lernOS guide co-creators Pivi Scamperle (Diversity & Inclusion) and Karl Damke (Sketchnoting) also joined Simon (the creator of the Getting Things Done guide) during the pit stops and held sessions with the groups working on their respective topics. The event cycle formally ended on December 17 with a retrospective, where the org team and interested participants exchanged on their experiences.

While we see some room for improvement in our work as an org team (e.g. by reducing some of the cumbersome manual tasks we didn’t foresee), working in a team of 7 who had never closely cooperated before was a wonderful experience in successful self-motivated self-organization, and we’re already tossing around ideas for further circle experiences.

The overall feedback from participants was very positive. Many highlighted the pre-defined structure of the lernOS guides, the flexibility provided by the circles’ self-organization, the networking across companies and departments, the joint weekly reflection on the learning topic, the hands-on, ask-me-anything support by the guide authors, and the motivation they found in ‘doing (it), struggling, and succeeding together’.

Learning requires discipline and at times can be a pain. Learning together with peers helps to work through occasional adversity and to still have fun. And there’s only one way to understand that: Experience it.

And talking about fun: Thanks to my co-organizers for making this such a fun experience for me - Thanks to Gerd for being the persistent driver and structurizer, to Thomas for the never-ending flow of ideas, to Sophie for your bubbling creativity, to Martina for being my partner in WOL crime, to Angelina for enthusiastically joining the club late in the game, and Simon for sharing your vast experience with us every step of the way.

I’m game for more!