This month’s field note explores how learning in public can become an intentional design move, not just a personal practice.

📓 Field Note: Don’t wait until it’s finished to let people learn from it.
📍 Sparked by: Building and sharing my new interactive website
💡 Big idea: Show your work!

One of my longtime session norms was “get comfortable being uncomfortable.” I usually shared it as an invitation to participants to take a risk, try an unfamiliar tech tool, or sit with a little uncertainty.

This summer, I found myself taking my own advice. I started wondering if, with AI-assisted coding, I could connect all of my ideas and resources into one interactive learning environment.

I have been tinkering with vibe-coding since May, 2025, and I have built a handful of small projects: a conference game powered by a Google Sheet, tools for school leaders, and a CoffeeEDU calendar. This new project idea felt bigger than anything I had tried to vibe-code before, which made it thrilling and daunting…and important.

I didn’t know how to build everything I imagined. I wasn’t even sure some of it was possible. The resources I wanted to connect lived in different places and different formats. I had ideas about search, pathways, interactive tools, and ways people might move through the learning, but I had no blueprint for how all of those pieces would fit together.

As the project slowly took shape, I found myself getting excited about what it might become. I started sharing it with a few family members and trusted friends. Then with my CoffeeEDU vibe-coding group. And now, I’m sharing it with you.

The PD Design Collective is still very much a work in progress. There are ideas I’m still exploring, features I’m still building, and glitches I’m still working through. But I’ve found that sharing what I’m learning is often more valuable than waiting until I have everything figured out.

In 2025, I was part of the Curiosity Collective, a learning community formed around Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s book launch for Tiny Experiments. This newsletter is one of the ripple effects from that experience. (See my note at the bottom of this page.)

Rather than traditional goal-setting, Anne-Laure invites us to approach our work with an experimental mindset. We take an action, reflect on what happened (whether the experiment succeeded or not), get curious about why, and decide what to try next. Learning becomes cyclical rather than linear. She describes an experimental mindset as “an attitude of openness and curiosity, a willingness to learn with a sense of receptiveness, and a lack of preconceived notions.”

Another part of her work that has stayed with me is her invitation to learn in public. This mindset requires us to say, “I don’t know,” ask for input, and invite others into work that is still evolving.

As I reflected on that idea, I realized it wasn’t new to me. For years, I’ve told participants, “I’m trying a new protocol today,” or “I’ve just learned about this digital tool, so let’s explore it together.” More recently, that has looked like sharing the PD Design Collective while it’s still evolving.

Kathy Perret and Kenny McKee capture the importance of this idea beautifully: “If our role is to foster powerful learning, then we should model that learning ourselves.” Amy Burvall and Dan Ryder extend that idea, reminding us that “Sharing your works-in-progress demonstrates [to students] you are a co-learner.”

Modeling our work in progress takes a little courage. It means admitting we don’t have everything figured out, inviting feedback, and sometimes letting others see the unfinished version. But perhaps that’s exactly the kind of learning we hope to cultivate in others.

Austin Kleon encourages creators to “think about what you can share from your process that would inform the people you’re trying to reach.”

As facilitators, we often feel pressure to present polished resources, polished slides, and polished answers. But what if one of the most valuable things we shared was our own learning process?

The next time you decide to experiment with part of a learning experience, consider letting participants know. Try saying something as simple as:

Those small moments do more than explain your choices. They model curiosity, normalize iteration, and they remind participants that meaningful learning doesn’t require having everything figured out before we begin. Perhaps one of the most powerful design moves we can make is to let participants see us learning, too.

What are you currently learning that your participants might benefit from seeing?

How might you intentionally model your own learning during an upcoming session?

What’s one experiment you’re willing to share before it’s finished?

Noting, reflecting, connecting,
Kathryn

PS: Consider this your invitation into my learning and design experiment. The PD Design Collective is still evolving, and that’s part of the point. If you notice something on this site that delights you, confuses you, or makes you think differently about designing adult learning, I’d love to hear about it. ✨

This newsletter is inspired by the idea of self-anthropology from Tiny Experiments by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Just like field notes help researchers make sense of what they observe, these monthly reflections help me capture ideas, tools, and questions from my own work designing professional learning. I share them here in the spirit of experimentation, connection, and ongoing refinement.

🤖 AI helped polish this post, but the ideas, intention, curation, and care are all mine.