What is a Module Call? (Besides 1 benefit of Studio membership)
agerbeck method markers neuland studio
Fresh off of the Module 3 call in our visual thinkers community, I shared what these module calls are and how they fit into the world's most comprehensive visual thinking curriculum.
In this video
- The structure of The Agerbeck Method Course
- How our series of module calls fit into Studio membership
- My agility to answer any question you have and ease of hands-on demonstration
- The strength of social learning together as a member
- Seamless integration of resources between the course, the calls, and the Deep Dive Vault
Video Transcript | Click to expand
Just coming off of a wonderful module call here in my physical studio in Chicago.
The module call was in the Agerbeck Method Studio, our online membership community connected to the Agerbeck Method course.
And I thought, let me tell you what the heck module calls are, and help you understand if you would like to join us, as you become a lifelong visual thinker.
So I was waiting for the Zoom call to download. It's already downloaded, but let me tell you the story about module calls.
So this is the structure of The Agerbeck Method course. This is my comprehensive online course to make you a lifelong visual thinker.
What you're looking at is the structure of this comprehensive course.
Each one of these circles represents a module.
Each module represents a category of choices you have as a visual thinker.
Now, visual thinking is a very complex skill set.
The great thing about that is that it is a an incredibly adaptable skill set that you can use for all sorts of different corners of your life.
The complexity of this skill set, the other side of that is it is challenging to learn, but what I did was break I broke down that complexity of visual thinking into learnable pieces.
First, a set of 24 techniques called the idea shapers, which are in the book, The Idea Shapers.
And when I published that book, I got the feedback that the folks could tell there was really good information in the book, which is a very dense reference book.
All 24 idea shapers are there, but I was getting the feedback that folks wanted more guidance and something more sequential. Like, "I need more guidance from you walking me through these idea shapers."
I thought, "Okay, great feedback."
What could that be?
It could be a video based, self paced, comprehensive online course, The Agerbeck Method.
So you start here, perfectly clear path, absolutely sequential, each module, again, focusing on a category of choices.
We begin with CANVAS, and by the time you get up here to FLOW, you:
- Know all 24 idea shapers
- You have all sorts of experience with all these different choices
- A context to put all these skills in
- Lots of specific hands on experience
Everything baked into The Agerbeck Method course.
And anyone and everyone is absolutely welcome to join the course itself, which is called Agerbeck Method Solo.
That's when you choose to join the course on its own, self-paced, lifetime access.
Or you can join us in Agerbeck Method Studio.
That is the course, plus our online community.
So with our online community, one of the three parts, one of the three benefits of the studio membership, which take you the farthest the fastest, are the module calls.
So that's why I'm giving a shout out and telling you a little bit more about the module calls now.
We start at the beginning of the year as a cohort.
We begin in January with a kickoff call, after the kickoff call, four weeks later, we have a module call on CANVAS, Module 1.
That means you have 28 days to watch 10 lessons to be ready for the call.
And ask anything and make any kind of comment you like around that particular module.
Now it's not sexy, but the reason module calls are so important, is they are very simply, butt-in-seat deadlines to complete that module.
But you can, you can choose to pace it out over those four weeks.
Plenty of people cram the day before.
It all works. It's all great.
But it is that live deadline that gets your learning on your calendar.
And the beautiful reward is the conversations we have on the live calls.
So kickoff call, then four weeks, then we talk about CANVAS.
Four weeks after that, we talk about Module 2, PROXIMITY.
And today was our module call on TEXT, Module 3.
So it is a good old Zoom call, and I join you, join me. We join each other here, from my Chicago studio to our wonderful virtual studio space shared together.
You know my Zoom is here, and I get to see your beautiful faces up here.
And the best thing, or there's a lot of best things, we can't, can't rank them.
One of the best things of the module calls is, because I'm here in my studio, I have access to pretty much anything I could possibly want to reference.
You can ask me anything.
I can grab the exact thing to demonstrate an idea or a resource I suggest.
It's all, it's all here.
And the call 60 minutes to 90 minutes, tends to be more towards 90 minutes.
And the shape of that call is, the first thing is we say here we are talking about Module 3 in module three. Here are the three topics.
The idea shapers within this particular module...
In this case, we have one idea shaper, which is The Retort, the one visual, the one idea shaper that specifically focuses on writing, text, words.
That is listening and capturing ideas and distilling them, so distilling an idea into a concise phrase that is accurate and useful and succinct.
I always start also by referencing the Deep Dive Day that corresponds with this particular module. (In the case of Module 3, LUCID Listening.)
Over the course of the three years, we had three deep dive days per year.
And because I'm Little Miss Systems, I designed one Deep Dive Day to align with each of the modules in the course.
So here with the Deep Dive Vault, you have the full archive of that one day workshop.
And as a studio member, you have the module calls.
You also have something called Drawing Bees, which is a different video for a different day.
And you have access to all nine deep dive workshops.
If you're going through the course for the first time, focus on the course.
The beautiful thing about the way these three benefits work together is, if we're on the call and I reference something from the Deep Dive Day, you instantly have access to it.
Perfect example today, was when I mentioned Lucid Listening.
Veronique said in the chat, even if you don't have time to watch the full archive, which is about four or five hours, just watch the first 20 minutes.
A beautiful thing about my studio mates, we're a good hang, they're lovely humans.
But one thing I absolutely love and appreciate is that the studio membership includes people going through the course for the very first time.
It also includes folks who who did this the course solo, and want to go deeper in their knowledge.
Or people who struggle with the self-pacing and didn't complete the course and said, "You know what? Now, I'm serious. I'm extra serious.
Let's sign up for membership, so I can learn alongside these gorgeous, beautiful, kind people and complete the course."
And so heartening to me is the number of people who are studio mates, who have been through the course multiple times, and they still are here, ready for the call.
And what I love is that what tells me I'm doing something right, that they want to continue learning together.
But I absolutely love that even if they've heard something before, even if I say something they've heard they've heard before, they're going to hear it. It might hit them differently.
Even if they've heard something before, they are going to be in a different place.
But I absolutely love how much the community, the folks who've been in the course multiple times are looking out for the folks who are brand new and encouraging them and cheerleading, and all that good stuff.
So the fact that Veronique said, Hey guys, even if, right now you don't, you can't go fully into the Deep Dive, watch the first 20 minutes.
Now again, because I'm here in the Chicago studio, and I know how all these things fit together.
I said, I could, I could grab the props.
This happens to be, in the Deep Dive itself, it was PowerPoint slides.
Since that Deep Dive, I actually made these props to demonstrate the principle in the first 20 minutes of the of that Deep Dive workshop.
But I could say, You know what Veronique is talking about.
Let me share with you what Veronique was referencing.
And I could grab these physical beakers and say, "This is your attention in the moment."
And your attention can be a lot of different places as a visual thinker.
In fact, here are 11 different places your attention can be, and your attention is never equally distributed across all these different choices.
These choices align with the choices in the module.
We've got your internal state, your external state, Module 1, 2, 3, and so on.
So we can have a conversation about anything under the sun, and I have anything we could possibly need to reference to answer your question and support the discussion we're having.
And this particular module text is a module that's about three things: listening, capturing and distilling.
What you want to get on paper, and then writing the words themselves.
And you have lots of visual choices, even how you write the words, how you capture the words on the piece of paper.
So just to demonstrate how where we can go in the module calls, I definitely referenced, as far as listening goes, referenced the Deep Dive Day, both from this module and the previous module. (The Module 2 Deep Dive Day is Visual Listening.)
In the previous module, a bonus video is a conversation I had with Anthony Weeks, a dear friend and colleague, and I also shared his article from this anthology, Drawn Together Through Visual Practice, of which I'm one of four co-editors.
But again, it's the seamlessness of it.
If you have a question, I can reference it. You can go exactly to what you need. It's all there.
So with listening, I got to reference Anthony and his work and our conversation together.
With writing, wonderful choices around writing, I could reference another very dear friend and colleague, Heather Leavitt Martinez and her book Lettering Journey.
On the call, the fantastic thing, people grab their copies.
They hold them up. We talk about our favorite parts of the book, and and with the document camera, I can certainly reference any specific thing I'd like to in the book and certainly, draw out anything that will help answer your questions.
So this particular call, we talked about listening.
We talked about lettering. On this call, somebody said, you know, I've been using Paper Mate Flairs, but I'm finding them a little bit hard to use, and I'm looking for thicker lines. What do you suggest?
So I could grab, in this case, some Pentel markers.
Veronique in Germany was recommending Stabilo pens, of which I just learned, they now have thicker chisel tips.
When we're talking about large scale writing, we're often, very often, I'm grabbing my beloved Neuland markers. We talked about good old Mr. Sketch.
The idea is you can ask anything. I welcome any kind of observation, and I meet you where you are.
The conversation takes us wherever the group wants to go.
So anything else I want to tell you about, module calls?
I think that might do it.
Hopefully, that kind of illustrates one of the beautiful benefits of being a studio member together.
And I know a lot of people talk about 'gatekeeping.'
Yeah, it's true.
You don't have access to the module calls unless you're a member in the studio.
But I can tell you, when you are a studio mate, alongside me, alongside other visual thinkers, these conversations, they're open.
I will answer any question you have, more than happy to answer.
And I absolutely love not only what you bring into the conversations with your questions, even more so,
what we learn from each other. Always recommend, if you have a suggestion, you have an idea that we, we are always all learning from each other.
So that is a little bit about the module calls here, not only in the virtual Loosetooth Studio, but coming from here in the physical Chicago studio space.
So hope to see you in the course. I would love to see you in the membership, and you know where to find me and where I'm going to be the next call on in this case, COLOR.
Resources Referenced
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About Brandy Agerbeck
Each month, Drawing Bee days are her #1 favorite day, followed by module call days. Since 2020, Brandy has led a year-round community of visual thinkers in her signature course, The Agerbeck Method.
She enjoys seeing who high-fives her for naming the course that, and how others think she may be getting too big for her britches.
Brandy's britches fit just fine.
Visual Thinking for:
Personal Work + Productivity
Writing + Speaking
Mapping Complex Systems
Learning + Teaching
Facilitation + Collaboration
Brandy's work
books | graphic facilitation | personal | sketchnotes | speaking
