Rewriting Paradigms

A recent article in the Chronicle by Judith Shapiro, The Value of a Shared Education, laid out the principles of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as part of an intriguing discussion on trends in college curricula. The main question Shapiro poses is “To what extent are undergraduates moving through overlapping though largely differentiated networks, and to what extent do they share experiences, priorities, and goals?” Shapiro walks us through a series of considerations including

Advisement has received increased attention these past few years in large part due to relationships between performance (meaning retention and graduation rates) and federal funding. Interest in the role of advising at the college level prompted us to examine the state of the state in the world of education through a 70:20:10 lens. Whatever the current impetus, the results of increased advising could and indeed should impact positively on those students. Even better would be a

My own educational philosophy is deeply rooted in the concept of learn-by-doing and an understanding of the role that failure plays in learning.  So, when the New York Times came out with its annual “Innovation” issue cloaked in the premise of failure, I was very interested. Adam Davidson’s “Welcome to the Failure Age” develops a curious, almost distasteful, narrative around failure through the metaphor of the Weird Stuff, the Silicon Valley reseller that has built its own su

Software has deeply impacted my life as a teacher and learning designer, but it has not eaten me . . . yet. Here’s how I learned to protect myself. After over a decade of teaching at the university level, I was fortunate enough to be targeted as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for a series of online courses built in partnership with one of the world’s premier developers of scenario-based learning programs. My experience with the learning designers in that company built on my ye

Prepare Your Audience We know that many of the traits associated with entrepreneurship are characteristics shared by the vast majority of veterans. Both are: Good risk takers Results-driven Able to persevere through challenging circumstances So, many veterans will come to entrepreneurship naturally, and many will come “pre-loaded” with some of the traits that can help drive their success as business owners. There are others who may need support in exploring their career optio

In my previous blog, This is a School that Johnny Wants to Attend, I wrote about Johnny’s new school, an environment designed to optimize real-world learning experiences to better engage and better prepare kids for tomorrow’s workplace. In that scenario, Johnny spent a lot more time out of the classroom learning from community experts and also had more people coming into his class to share knowledge and guide Johnny and his classmates through different projects during the sch

I worry about Johnny, so I decided to design an optimal school for him. This school has: More material that is introduced at home for homework. He accesses these lessons on his computer, working through interactive learning modules and videos, responding to online quizzes, all in preparation for a deeper dive in school the following day. Less time in class listening to the teacher talking about a new topic, and more time asking questions of his peers and his teachers about wh

Overview There were a wide range of backgrounds and professions represented by the people who chose to comment on the article. Of the 71 people who commented, 18 are identified as teachers or involved in the field of education, 5 are students, 3 lawyers, 2 involved in law enforcement; and the rest in a range of industries from healthcare to software development either as practitioners, managers, or business owners. We divided the comments into the following categories to best