Leader's guide
The steps link to your cohort once you lead one. Plan a cohort
A cohort
- Length
- Five weeks, after a prep week
- Meets
- Weekly on Google Meet, for 60 or 75 minutes
- Groups
- Groups of three, once there are eight learners
- Calls hosted by
- meet@humanshaped.org, one calendar event per session
- Leaders
- One or more per cohort
Your work is running the sessions, reading the checks, and noticing who needs a word. Nobody needs to be an expert in building apps to lead.
Before the first session
- Co-lead one session first
A first session goes best when it already feels familiar. Ask a leader to add you to their cohort, and take the parts of one session you are most comfortable with.
- Set the day and time
The day, time, start date, and length that every session is built from. People see them on Open cohorts before they join, each on their own clock.
- Make the sessions
A prep session and one for each week, each starting from the course’s plan at your session’s length. Each becomes its own calendar event with its own Meet link, sent to everyone in the cohort within the hour, and to each person who joins later.
- Make the GitHub repository
The cohort’s shared space: a private repository in the humanshaped organization that holds its conversation, its Try my app board, and its files. One button makes it, with a team of the cohort’s people, a README, and a safeguard that keeps a copy of anything a push writes over. Learners are added as they join.
- Watch the repository
Watching it on GitHub means GitHub emails you about new conversations, requests to try an app, and files, by your own settings. Each learner can do the same from Conversation.
- Open for joining
The cohort appears on Open cohorts and people can join. Until then, only its leaders can see it. People you invited from a time poll get an email from meet@humanshaped.org with a link that joins them.
- Read each session’s plan
Each session’s page holds its plan, with every part’s words in plain view and your own notes. Change anything there before it runs; learners read the same plan without your notes.
- Make the groups, from eight learners
With eight learners or more, groups of three stay together all five weeks, so someone is there to show to when one person is away. Below eight, everyone shows their work to the whole call.
- Check each learner’s place in the repository
Learners add files and post by default, and leaders manage the repository. If someone needs less, choose Read only, or Read, and sort asks, beside their name, and GitHub changes within seconds. Every change there can be undone from its history.
- Connect your agent (optional)
Your own Claude or Gemini can read the cohort with you: the roster, each learner’s work across the weeks, and the class as it stands right now. It only reads, and it never speaks for you.
Each session
Join the call from its calendar event and open the Human Shaped add-on from Meet’s Activities (add it to Google Meet once, with the Google account you join calls with). The add-on holds the plan you prepared: press Start the session, move from part to part, ask the checks, and see who is waiting to show their work, all without leaving the call. When you open the main stage, Meet asks everyone in the call to join it and offers the add-on to anyone without it; a learner on a phone, or on an account whose school turns add-ons off, opens the same panel from the session’s page. The session’s thread opens in Conversation on its own the day before.
The four parts
- Bring back
Each person shows the stage’s “Be ready to...” on the device it runs on and explains one decision with the agent closed. The others ask one question to understand it, then answer the three questions: where is it going, how is it going, and what is next. In groups from eight learners; below that, to the whole call.
- One thing that unblocks the next stage
A few minutes from the next stage’s own text, then everyone tries it on their own app, often on the board.
- Start
Everyone sends the first prompt of the next stage to their agent, so they leave with the week already begun.
- The check
Each learner answers two questions privately: the week’s question, and “What is still muddy?” You read every answer before the next session.
Between sessions
- Read the checks and say what changes
Read every answer before the next session, since they show who understood the week and who needs a word. What you write shows as people arrive next time.
- Answer feedback and questions
Learners ask for feedback on what they built, or ask a question. Each waits here, oldest first, until a leader answers it.
- Write each learner a follow-up
Follow-up gathers what each person did in the session (what they showed, asked, and answered) with a place to write them a note. A note stays in your browser until you send it.
- Write to anyone who missed the session
The course asks for a private note within two days, with an easy way back in and an easy way out. Follow-up lists who has not been seen since the week began, and opens your own email for anyone who allows it.
- Look at Try my app
Who has asked for their app to be tried on a device they do not have. In weeks 3 and 4, make sure each request finds someone, and take one yourself if it waits.
- Put the week’s materials in Files
Slides, readings, and examples go in that week’s folder, so the cohort finds them in one place and every version is kept.
- Prepare next week’s session
On its page, adjust its parts, their words, and the check to what you heard.
When the cohort finishes
- Mark the cohort finished
The people who stayed can still read the cohort. Each session’s questions and answers are deleted, and credentials can be recorded.
- Record each credential that was earned
Open each person’s repository and every link first. A signer then signs the credential, and anyone can check it at its own address.
When someone is stuck
About twenty minutes of trying, then their group, then you. When you help, ask what they have already tried before suggesting anything.
Asking to lead
Leading is by invitation while the first cohorts find their shape.