Introducing the Cooptic project

Cooptic is an initiative for innovation transfer funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Leonardo da Vinci project. Four partners specializing in innovative teaching methods - Suprago Florac and Outils-R̩seaux (Montpellier), the Cooperation School Aposta from Catalonia and the Regional Centre for Environmental Initiatives (CRIE Mouscron) from Wallonia Рjoined forces to work on adapting a training tool for collaborative project facilitators.

During the Cooptic project, fifteen people from three countries (Belgium, France and Spain) received training to become trainers of cooperative project and network facilitators, in their respective circles.

Cooptic today has 60 network facilitators forming a real pool in three European countries. This network developed over the course of three years:

Introducing the team of partners

The Cooptic programme linked four structures:

Supagro Florac: Agriculture and Environmental Education Institute has been providing training to facilitators of many themes and geographic networks on public agricultural education for many years, as well as providing technical support for them. Recognized nationally for its expertise in education sciences and its experimental teaching activities and for promoting innovative training tools, Supagro Florac shares its knowledge with its partners in this project. It also oversaw the creation and coordination of the whole project.

The ‘reference’ association in France for networking. Its main mission is to start and accompany cooperative networks and practices using methodological tools and the Internet. In 2010, Outils-Réseaux created the Animacoop training tool for facilitators and professionals working in the fields of cooperation and network facilitation. This Animacoop tool was a part of the European Cooptic project.

Catalan association: Cooperation school in charge of transfer in Catalonia.

Walloon association for environmental education in charge of transfer in Wallonia.




These partners brought together the skills of several institutions, universities, researchers, and local actors and groups engaging in participatory development who actively participated in drafting the e-book you have in your hands.

Introduction to the learning tool

The Cooptic learning tool is based on educational principles that aim to accompany trainees along the path to autonomy and building their capacity to carry out informed actions. Trainees are the main focus of the teaching tool. These principles lead to the choice of teaching methods and resources that are articulated around three ideas: the crosscutting nature of knowledge and collaborative skills to be learnt; a link to the professional projects of trainees; and the use of the possibilities offered by digital tools to innovate in teaching practices.

What can be learnt with the Cooptic training?

The training contents favour the development of operational skills linked to the facilitation of cooperative projects: managing information, co-producing resources, starting network dynamics, group facilitation…
These contents are structured around 12 key concepts and 12 crosscutting collaborative skills:

These collaborative skills are dealt with in parallel at three different levels:

• at an individual level, training develops the engagement of a person in a collaborative project,
• at a group level, training deals with understanding group dynamics, networks, groups and skills to manage a group,
• a third level relating to the environment refers to openness factors and communication “outside” the network.

How is the learning done?

During a training period of 14 weeks, trainees work remotely and on-site following a progression in three parallel itineraries:

• Individual itinerary:

On-line contents follow the stages in a network’s existence.

• Creation of the network: the group is established, a “group of individuals” becomes aware that it is a learning group.
• The network becomes informed: exchanges on the projects lead to a set of common experiences and problems.
• The network is transformed: individual and collective events are created in small-group collaborative work.
• Network outreach: spreading the outcomes of the cooperation works outside the community brings value to it.
• Network consolidation: this allows for an assessment and a reflexion on how to maintain the dynamics alive and how to open up to others.

• Collective trainee itinerary :

Trainees produce new contents collectively

• Project itinerary :

The creation of a collaborative project by the trainee is a pre-requisite, and the activities refer to this project throughout the training. During the first week, trainees introduce the context and the object of their project, and then test the methods and tools on their project, explaining the whole experience relating to their own personal learning process. At each of the three meetings, an update is given on how the training has contributed so far to the project’s progress. Training actions speed up the project in its professional context and the lessons learnt from the training reciprocally become more “tangible” since they are implicit in the action.

A pedagogy impacted by new technologies

A training ecosystem:
A methodology to move from “network facilitators” to “trainers of network facilitators”
A combination of on-site and distance exchanges using Internet-based tools
Using collaborative tools and methods during the training process.
Moments to exchange practices
Individual work on the trainees’ collaborative projects
Co-generation of knowledge: pedagogical training plans.

The Cooptic ebook

The ebook that you are handling contains the resources used during the CoopTic training session. Some were written specifically for the ebook because the contents were presented orally during training. This book is a state of our knowledge in the field of cooperation and collaboration at the time of writing in late 2013. But this is an area that is just beginning to be studied and we continue to experiment, to imagine, to try, to dream ... To make it short, even if the publication of this ebook is the outcome of the European project Leonardo CoopTic, this is not the end but just the bases of our future projects: a resource center on collaboration? A MOOC? Or perhaps something that does not exist yet!
Enjoy your reading and your "small irreversible cooperation experiences" to come!

They took part in the adventure !

This work was achieved within the framework of a project of transfer of innovation (TOI) funded by the European Union through the Leonardo Da Vinci program.

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