@sofer drew inspiration from many sources when first organising Founders & Coders, including Ivan Illich, Jacques Rancière, Richard Felder and Sugata Mitra's "self-organising learning environments". In years since, Founders & Coders has developed its own version of "self-organising", shaped not only by the work of scholars like Mitra but also by the collective experiences of programme participants.
This document attempts to describe how the concept of self-organisation has taken shape at Founders & Coders.
In groups, participants tackle projects in which they work towards an ambitious goal, framed by a series of "learning outcomes." Project work is usually preceeded by a series of introductory workshops and exercises, largely presented by recent graduates. The project concludes with presentations of the project in order to demonstrate the achievement of learning outcomes.
The Founders & Coders self-organising learning environment is typically a healthy space for people who are comfortable with uncertainty and failure, take inititative, and believe strongly the value of community and helping others.
This environment is appropriate for people who can reasonably expect after 16 weeks to be within touching distance of a job as a junior developer. For people who are not yet ready for this step, we intend to find ways to support them earier in their journey, as resources permit.
In our experience, this kind of self-organising learning environment produces learners who are capable of together breaking problems down into smaller pieces in the absence of experts. This skill is critical to professional development as a software engineer. Programme graduates, moreover, tend to work effectively in diverse teams, be adaptable, and cope productively with unanticipated problems.
After completing the second half the programme, graduates should be capable of cooperating on a software project across its whole lifecycle, from presales, requirements gatherering and client interaction, through design and delivery.
Students are provided with weekly learning outcomes, grouped into teams, and working on projects that are presented at the end of each week. Mentors share learning materials in a variety of formats, though participants are also encouraged to source their own forms of support.
Course participants work for three weeks toward a single, overarching learning outcome: build an application that solves a problem that you find interesting.
Week 10 focuses on design-thinking through a one-week design sprint, while Weeks 11 and 12 focus on development, through a two-week build sprint.
During the final month of the course, participants tackle the most ambitious learning outcome: find a client and build an application that solves their problem.