the existential crisis of universities
TRANSCRIPT
THE EXISTENTIAL CRISIS OF UNIVERSITIES
GRAHAM BROWN-MARTIN , CATALYST
@GrahamBM
my learning journey
Free Lunch for Children
China
RDFZ Xishan School
China
Jordan Education
Initiative
Jordan
Eastwood College
Lebanon
XSEED
India
National Institute of Education
Singapore
BBC Media Action
India
Essa Academy
United Kingdom
Raspberry Pi
United Kingdom
Worldreader
Ghana
Mobile Web Ghana
Ghana
GEMS Education
United Arab Emirates
AWSAJ Academy
Qatar
The programmesfeatured in this book
NAVE School
Brazil
Porvir
Brazil
High Tech High
United States of America
Quest to Learn
United States of America
120,000 miles, 36 cities, 18 countries, 6 continents, 18 months
NOAM CHOMSKY - MITCH RESNICK - JOHN MAEDA - SANDY SPEICHER - JOHANNES HEINLEIN - LOGAN SMALLEY - SIR KEN ROBINSON - DENG FEI - SUNEET SINGH TULI - PASI SAHLBERG - JULIA GILLARD - SUGATA MITRA - ANDREAS SCHLEICHER -SETH GODIN - KERI FACER - ALICE TAYLOR - CLIVE BEALE - ALAN O’DONOHUE -JAKE DAVIS - NOAM CHOMSKY - MITCH RESNICK - JOHN MAEDA - SANDY SPEICHER - JOHANNES HEINLEIN - LOGAN SMALLEY - SIR KEN ROBINSON - DENG FEI - SUNEET SINGH TULI - PASI SAHLBERG - JULIA GILLARD - SUGATA MITRA - ANDREAS SCHLEICHER -SETH GODIN - KERI FACER - ALICE TAYLOR - CLIVE BEALE - ALAN O’DONOHUE -JAKE DAVIS - NOAM CHOMSKY - MITCH RESNICK - JOHN MAEDA - SANDY SPEICHER - JOHANNES HEINLEIN - LOGAN SMALLEY - SIR KEN ROBINSON - DENG FEI - SUNEET SINGH TULI - PASI SAHLBERG - JULIA GILLARD - SUGATA MITRA - ANDREAS SCHLEICHER -SETH GODIN - KERI FACER - ALICE TAYLOR - CLIVE BEALE - ALAN O’DONOHUE -JAKE DAVIS - NOAM CHOMSKY - MITCH RESNICK - JOHN MAEDA - SANDY SPEICHER - JOHANNES HEINLEIN - LOGAN SMALLEY - SIR KEN ROBINSON - DENG FEI - SUNEET SINGH TULI - PASI SAHLBERG - JULIA GILLARD - SUGATA MITRA - ANDREAS SCHLEICHER -
National Union of Teachers
“A tour de force of the world of education is
presented in this comprehensive and powerful exploration of pedagogy and philosophy,
combined with politics and case studies.
Outstanding.”
http://www.grahambrownmartin.com/learning-reimagined/
“Blended learning is really about combining the best of a traditional in-classroom or a physical coming together and the technology to support learning outcomes.”
Johannes Heinlein VP, Strategic Partnerships, edX
what are universities for?
passport to a career?
“Sadly, universities are no longer places where self-realisation and introspective exploration are encouraged, but merely industrialised establishments of profit and production.”
Terry Eagleton
Who is university for?
the future
things we do know about the future: population
climate change antibiotic resistance ideology inequality ageing diversity
Universities have many different possible futures.
One is the possibility of a complete breakdown of the university purpose & values, which is the technologically driven trajectory towards university education simply as training that gets you a qualification and a bit of paper at the end of it.
“What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique. Since Margaret Thatcher, the role of academia has been to service the status quo, not challenge it in the name of justice, tradition, imagination, human welfare, the free play of the mind or alternative visions of the future.”
Terry Eagleton
obstacles to innovation
The innovation immune system
https://medium.com/innovation-culture/i-am-a-virus-4cca32b05c42
The innovation immune system is
how an organisation deals with
new ideas and can include
strategies that kill innovation.
HR practices designed to hire for consistency offer no hope of doing
something new. To ensure conformity HR can be about finding people
that are like existing employees — same school, same degrees, same
industry, same background…
Diversity
GroupThinkAt the heart of groupthink is the desire for harmony and conformity.
illusions of invulnerability*
*Irving Janis, Psychologist http://communicationtheory.org/groupthink/
Nokia, Swissair, Kodak, Enron…
How would I design a university?
Tokyo 1997
Design is what links creativity & innovation.
It shapes ideas to become practical & attractive propositions for users & customers.
Design may be described as creativity deployed to a specific end.
Universities are spaces for societies to think about, to debate and to understand their possible futures.
Universities are spaces for societies to think about, to debate and to understand their possible futures.
That means we need to protect them in some form that creates space for civil society dialogue.
