{"id":42271,"date":"2014-02-08T17:27:19","date_gmt":"2014-02-08T22:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=42271"},"modified":"2014-02-08T18:36:37","modified_gmt":"2014-02-08T23:36:37","slug":"creating-better-alignment-between-the-corporate-world-the-world-of-higher-education-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2014\/02\/08\/creating-better-alignment-between-the-corporate-world-the-world-of-higher-education-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating better alignment between the corporate world &#038; the world of higher education [Christian]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"color: #800000;\">From DSC:<\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #008000;\"><strong>Whereas:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">We often hear from the corporate world that our students aren&#8217;t graduating with the sort of skills that the corporate world needs<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">We are now on exponential curves vs linear curves in a number of areas (technological changes being one of them)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The half-lives of information are shrinking from 30 years down to 5 years <a href=\"http:\/\/bigthink.com\/big-think-edge\/the-value-of-scalable-learning-or-how-a-hardcore-geek-became-a-softy?\" target=\"_blank\">(see John Seeley Brown)<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The pace of disruptive innovations seems to have picked up and businesses can be obsoleted within a short amount of time (i.e. Blockbuster, Kodak, Smith Corona, DEC, others)<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Automation, artificial intelligence, and algorithms are influencing what&#8217;s available &#8212; or not &#8212; out in the job market for humans (see the work of \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Race-Against-The-Machine-Accelerating-ebook\/dp\/B005WTR4ZI\" target=\"_blank\">Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee<\/a>)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">The corporate world is forced to adapt or die, and to be more nimble<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><strong>I can&#8217;t help but wonder, especially in my role as an Instructional Designer:<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\"><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><strong>Should the corporate world be setting or significantly guiding what is covered on the <em>assessments<\/em> within higher education?\u00a0<\/strong><\/span> Then the faculty members and Instructional Designers can work backwards from there to design the necessary scaffolding, modules, and streams of content.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Such a setup would:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Create stronger alignments between the skills needed in the workplace and the skills of our graduates<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Help faculty members know where to invest their time, resources, and their own learning <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Address the accountability concerns\/skepticism being placed upon higher education<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">Two other thoughts\/ideas here:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">We need better communities of practice whereby some members come from the corporate world and some members come from the world of higher education (faculty members, staff, and students)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #800000;\">I wonder if corporations could post real-world needs, ideas, and situations to higher ed faculty members and students &#8212; in order to create some solid, cross-disciplinary, project-based learning experiences&#8230;?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">I can hear some of you asking, &#8220;What about the liberal arts!? All of this sounds very vocational and job-oriented. There&#8217;s more to higher education than that.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">And I would agree with you. I graduated with a liberal arts degree and I work for a Christian college that is focused on the liberal arts.\u00a0 So I think that there is still <em>very much<\/em> a place for liberal arts.\u00a0 <em>However, I fear that those disciplines will only thrive again when the prices of obtaining such degrees are significantly reduced.<\/em>\u00a0 It&#8217;s one thing to get a $5,000-$10,000 degree in a liberal arts-related discipline (as it was years ago). It&#8217;s entirely another thing when it costs $100,000+ and then you struggle to find a job or you are told that a Master&#8217;s is the new undergrad degree (as is sometimes the case today).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #800000;\">So, I am back to wondering how we can re-architect our learning ecosystems to insure better alignments. The above thoughts are some of my ideas in this area.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #800000;\">A somewhat related posting:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/articles\/2012\/08\/14\/01wagner.h32.html?override=web\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Graduating All Students Innovation-Ready<\/strong> <\/a>&#8212; from edweek.org by Tony Wagner<br \/>\n<em>Excerpt:<\/em><br \/>\nWhat matters today, however, is not how much our students know, but what they can do with what they know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From DSC: Whereas: We often hear from the corporate world that our students aren&#8217;t graduating with the sort of skills that the corporate world needs We are now on exponential curves vs linear curves in a number of areas (technological changes being one of them) The half-lives of information are shrinking from 30 years down [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,387,127,498,112,57,72,3,180,7,50,299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-business","category-collaboration","category-communities-of-practice","category-corporate-business-world","category-cost-of-getting-a-degree","category-daniel-s-christian","category-higher-education","category-innovation","category-learning-ecosystem","category-teaching-learning","category-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42271"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44713,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42271\/revisions\/44713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}