Can University meet the needs of our time let alone the future? A few friends are going to use our weblogs to discuss this and to see what a new "school" would be like. Here is the first shot by Steve Walmsley.
Development Guild
Environmental Scan
1. Organization – business and government - in crisis, enormous overload. They need to recruit people who are already open and aware and practicing the “new” model.
What is the new model? Michael Fullan is the Dean of OISE. Here are some of his views on what the outcome of an education should be today. (Change Forces - Probing the Depths of Educational Reform)
"The development of a sense of community and the habits and skills of collaboration is also a central tenet of all proposals to develop schools as Learning Organizations ... The real world demands collaboration, the collective solving of problems.. learning to get along.. to function effectively in a group is essential.. the act of sharing ideas, of having to put one's views clearly to others, of finding defensible compromises is in itself educative"
What are the skills of the student that are most needed now in organizations? Fullan quotes the Conference Board of Canada as follows:
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People who can communicate think and continue to learn throughout their lives
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People who can demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviours, responsibility and adaptability and
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People who can work with others
Above all Fullan suggests (quoting Sarason)"Should not our aim be to judge whatever we do for our children ..by the criterion of how were are fostering the desire to learn about self, others and the world, to live in the world of ideas and possibilities, to see the life span as an endless intellectual and personal quest for knowledge"
2. University education as the singular entry ticket to career work is under threat - On the whole University is focused on processes and outcomes that are opposed to what Fullan describes as the ideal.They use a pedagogy that assumes that the professor knows it all and text bocks that contain the truth - all the student has to do is to regurgitate. So the essential complexity of the world is banished and the experience of struggling with complexity is not available. Yet because society is itself transitioning from state to another, only dealing with complexity will enable us to find the insight to cope. The university process, with its emphasis on individual work and of "texts" and teachers who know it all is not aligned to that of a learning organization. You cannot teach continuous learning if the learning process is the sage on the stage. The entire process has to model the experience of learning by experience. This then demands a learning different process and a different type of teacher
3. Students and early career professionals have different expectations of how they are developed and how they work
§ Community – a sense of belonging based on compatibility
§ Flexibility – work on their time, on demand - This trend is very powerful. More and more students have to work and study at the same time.Turning up in person for "class" is very challenging for those that have jobs and maybe families. Many students do not fit the teen early twenties model either. In the next decade a host of boomers will want to learn new skills. A huge market for adult learning will open up as Boomers reposition themselves for the latter years
§ Interactive and technology based - Tools like Weblogs and Groove are inexpensive and useful and provide the group of learners with great interactivity at low cost
§ Emphasize participation and engagement rather than traditional, largely passive receivers
4. Universities have real challenges:
§ At risk of being out of touch and archaic even in professions where they are the only provider (medicine, law, education, etcetera).
§ Demography and professors –professors retiring and shrinking supply of business PhD candidates. Universities in Canada are very vulnerable to demography. Nearly 40% of professors will be eligible for retirement in the next 10 years. Just as the cohort coming up will be small. The insistence on PhD's, the ticket, reduces the pool further not just in numbers but in quality. If the PHD remains the ticket, Universities will have to hire a large number of Profs who can neither teach well or know anything other than the exceptionally narrow aspect of their field. The PHD process itself can be questioned as a foundation for teaching - it demands a tight specialization where as the problems that we face demand a broad sense of the field. The PHD demands adherence to conventional wisdom whereas our world today demands innovation. The PHD demands a full time extension in school whereas the world demands our experience. The type of research that is driven by the PHD is often so narrow as to have no bearing on issues and problems that will help us make the transition - the track is to look ever deeper and in ever more esoteric areas where no one has looked before
§ Student expectations changing – expectations of what they get out of it, and expectations of how they get it. More kids are going to have to work while at school- time pressures and flexibility become critical. Going to demand online courses.
§ Student cost increasing - ~$15k pa for education and residence, and increasing. Many undergrads are leaving school today with between 20 and 40,000 in loans. Parents of 12 year olds today will need to find perhaps 25,000 a year. It cannot be done and the money aspects of a 4 year residence will overwhelm undergrads in the next 5-10 years. There will have to be another way
The Opportunity
- Develop a guild model of development.
- Target market for pre-career, mid-career and quarter career.
- Validate it with “test markets” – UPEI, TCS, maybe another?
- Franchise it
The Offering
Development Guild provides development in technical/professional areas – affinity marketing, digital business models, sales and marketing disciplines, strategy management, etcetera. Many places can provide that, and our guild differentiates because we provide the development of these capabilities integrated with the “Natural Step” business model.
I think that the key emphasis is to make the courses experience based and to deliberately set up "communities of practice that can carry on after the "course" elements are over. So the student joins a learning community that could extend indefinitely.
I think that where the Natural Step comes in is perhaps as a foundation of common ideas that help the student see the "systems" aspects of any field where nature rather than the machine is the better metaphor
Additionally, we emphasize:
1. Engagement and Judgment – our “students” are engaged in the learning, in real-life situations. The learning and supplementary projects provide an experiential environment, with a strong results expectation. Emphasized real-life judgment, insight and action.
2. Tools – practical tools that work in the networked, dynamic world of work.
The guild as a metaphor emphasizes a community, sometimes a place. Master craftspeople seek the guild for collaboration, belonging and for multi-disciplinary development – their own, their products.
Journeymen come and go, they seek specific learning to help advance – specific tools, specific advanced techniques, sometimes personal development.
Apprentices – tend to be more engaged, ongoing while they get the fundamentals. The development and the work are connected, not separate. The approaches emphasize action learning, with theory as reinforcement.
These programs will be designed to help “students” prepare themselves for the work they want to engage in, or to shift and enhance the work they are already engaged in.
Principles evolving
1. Build on the foundation that kids already have in their learning
2. Instructors are actively involved in the leading edge of today’s business world
3. Brining the most up-to-date experience
4. Dealing with transition from command and control, machine based metaphor to a natural, collegial, distributed organism
5. Use materials and projects that are extremely current
6. We have experiential class-room style, model in what we do the new business organization
7. Professor as coach, working collaboratively at a distance, they speak personally
8. Try and include a project in real situation in every course i.e. a strategy to implement the Natural Step in agriculture in PEI. Next is to market lobster – shift from commodity to a positioning that is more in keeping with the reality that lobster is a scarce and valuable resource
Risks
1. Threat to traditional university faculty - I think that traditional faculties will hate this idea as it attacks their whole life's work and all the effort that they have made to protect their position
2. Does our offering need to be eligible for university credit? I think that maybe in technical areas maybe not - My son James who is on the leading edge of web based art can depend only on his peers and is judged only by the quality of his output. So he needs no credit. But for those in the social sciences I fear that a credit may be essential. If this is so how do we co-opt a degree granting body to perform this role?
Clearer segments -
· Some want more from work
· Some want less from work
· Some want more from life
It will be appeal most to those who – as described in Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class - expect their work and life to be
· Highly integrated
· Challenging and fulfilling
· Tap into new models of belonging - affinity based on values and interests - community not organization - intention not obligation
· Expect local diversity and accessibility in their communities - work & play, creativity and spirituality,
Development guild curriculum provides “students” with choices of courses authored and delivered by 6 professionals. Each of these has significant experience as a teacher, coach, mentor and as a business executive. Their own worldview and the design of this program come together.
1. The Natural Step
2. The Natural World as a place to learn
3. Connecting to one’s self – using western business technique and eastern models of self discovery and personal development to bring more fulfilling success
4. Building a successful digital business
5. Etc [Stephen Walmsley's Radio Weblog]
8:32:46 AM 
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