Design Thinking - Learning Ecosystems

What would higher ed (or even K-12) look like if you could completely scrap it and start over? [Carty]

On 03/11/2023, in business side of he, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Design Thinking, higher education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, reinvent, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, vocational / trades, writing, by Daniel Christian

Transfers From Community College Continue to Fall — from insidehighered.com by Sara Weissman
Despite the decline in transfers, a new report also says six-year college completion rates among transfer students improved.

Excerpt:

Transfers between community colleges and four-year institutions continued to drop last fall, an ongoing trend since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. But the report also contains some good news, including that six-year college completion rates among transfer students improved, despite the disruptive nature of the pandemic.
…
“Upward transfer has continued to decline pretty steadily at this point in every year since the pandemic,” Shapiro said during a media briefing Wednesday. “This suggests that baccalaureate attainment is beginning to appear increasingly out of reach for community college students,” particularly for students enrolled in urban and suburban community colleges, which saw steeper declines in transfers to universities than community colleges in towns or rural areas.

Reflections on “Why The Education Economy Is The Next Big Thing For The American Workforce” [Busteed]

On 02/22/2023, in business, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, Design Thinking, education, education reform, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, motivation, participation, passions, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Why The Education Economy Is The Next Big Thing For The American Workforce — from fastcompany.com by Brandon Busteed
How can integrating our educational system, our employers, and our job creators affect our modern economy?

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Though the economy and education have long been topics of top concern to Americans, we haven’t created strong linkages between the two.

The topics are more like two castles with a large moat between them. Yet there is nothing more important we can do as a country than to build the world’s most effective “educonomy,” which would seamlessly integrate our educational system, our employers, and our job creators.
…
All told, we collected the voices of close to 1 million Americans on this subject in the past year alone. And what we’ve learned is alarming:

Student engagement in school drops precipitously from 5th grade through 12th grade. About three quarters of elementary school kids (76%) are engaged in school, while only 44% of high school kids are engaged. The longer students stay in school, the less engaged they become. If we were doing this right, the trend would be going in the exact opposite direction.

From DSC:
I appreciated the imagery of the economy and education being like two castles with a large moat between them. I, like many others, also use the term siloed to describe our various learning ecosystems — PreK-12, higher education and vocational programming, and the corporate/business world (I realize I could also include those who work in other areas such as the government, but hopefully folks get the gist of what I’m trying to say).

But here’s the most disturbing part (albeit likely not a surprise to those working within K-12 environments):

About seven in 10 K-12 teachers are not engaged in their work (69%), and as a profession, teachers are dead last among all professions Gallup studied in saying their “opinions count” at work and their “supervisors create an open and trusting environment.” We also found that teacher engagement is the most important driver of student engagement. We’ll never improve student engagement until we boost teachers’ own workplace engagement first.

Our older daughter works in an elementary school where several of the teachers left prior to Christmas and more have announced that they are leaving after this academic year. For teachers to leave halfway through the year, you know something is majorly wrong!

I think that legislators are part of the problem, as they straight-jacket teachers, principals, and administrators with all kinds of standardized testing.

Standardized testing is like a wrecking ball on our educational systems -- impacting things like our students' and teachers' sense of joy, play, wonder, and motivation

I would think that such testing dictates the pace and the content and the overall agendas out there. I don’t recall taking nearly as many standardized tests as our youth do today. Looking back, each of my teachers was engaged and seemed to be happy and enthusiastic. I don’t think that’s the case any longer. Let’s ask the teachers — not the legislators — why that is the case and what they would recommend to change things (before it’s too late).

The Broken Higher Education System: Addressing Stakeholder Needs for a More Adaptive Model — from educationoneducation.substack.com

Excerpt:

Higher education Chief Academic Officers (CAOs) must shift their perspective and strive to increase customer satisfaction to ensure the highest quality of educational products. A recent survey by Higher Education found that only 25% of customers were satisfied with the results higher education provided, contradicting the satisfaction differences of 99% of CAOs. Clearly, a disconnect exists between what higher education leaders deliver and what students, employers, and the changing labor market requirements are. To bridge this gap, higher education must develop products focusing on stakeholder feedback in product design, job requirements, and practical skills development.

From DSC:
So in terms of Design Thinking for reinventing lifelong learning, it seems to me that we need much more collaboration between the existing siloes. That is, we need students, educators, administrators, employers, and other stakeholders at the (re)design table. More experiments and what I call TrimTab Groups are needed.

But I think that the culture of many institutions of traditional higher education will prevent this from occurring. Many in academia shy away from (to put it politely) the world of business (even though they themselves ARE a business). I know, it’s not fair nor does it make sense. But many faculty members lean towards much more noble purposes, while never seeing the mounting gorillas of debt that they’ve heaped upon their students’/graduates’ backs. Those in academia shouldn’t be so quick to see themselves as being so incredibly different from those working in the corporate/business world.

The following quote seems appropriate to place here:

Along the lines of other items in the higher education space, see:

New Data Shows Emergency Pandemic Aid Helped Keep 18 Million Students Enrolled — from forbes.com by Edward Conroy

Excerpt:

The Department of Education (ED) has released new data showing that 18 million students were helped by emergency aid for colleges and universities throughout the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than half of which was used to provide emergency grants to students. These funds were provided through three rounds of Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds (HEERF) In total, $76.2 billion was provided, with half of those funds going to support students directly. Unusually for funding in higher education, the money was not heavily means-tested, and was distributed very quickly.

The report indicates that the funds were used for several essential purposes, including student basic needs, keeping staff employed, and helping keep students enrolled. For example, students used funds to cover things like food and housing at a time when employment was drying up for many students, ensuring that the Pandemic did not plunge students who already had limited funds deeper into basic needs insecurity.

Flagships prosper, while regionals suffer — from chronicle.com by Lee Gardner
Competition is getting fierce, and the gap is widening

Excerpts:

Some key numbers are moving in the right direction at the University of Oregon. The flagship institution enrolled 5,338 freshmen in the fall of 2022, its largest entering class ever. First-year enrollment increased 16 percent over 2021, which was also a record year. Meanwhile, Western Oregon University, a regional public institution an hour’s drive north, just outside Salem, lost nearly 7 percent of its enrollment over the same period.
…
In 28 states, flagships have seen enrollment rise between 2010 to 2021, while regionals have trended down, according to a Chronicle analysis of U.S. Education Department data. Across all states, enrollment at 78 public flagships rose 12.3 percent from 2010 to 2021, the most recent year for which data is available. Enrollment at 396 public regional universities slumped more than 4 percent during the same period.

A Chronicle analysis of federal data showed, for example, that in Michigan, a state being hit hard by demographic shifts and with no central higher-ed authority, the flagship University of Michigan at Ann Arbor saw undergraduate enrollment rise 16 percent between 2010 and 2020. Over the same period, it fell at 11 of the state’s 12 other four-year public campuses.

Preparing Today’s Students for the Future Workforce — from rdene915.com by Rachelle Dené Poth

Excerpt:

Today’s high school students are the future of our workforce. Before long they will be in college or starting full-time jobs of their own. But how are today’s students preparing for their futures? What will the workforce look like when these students move on to the next stage of their lives?

Schools, districts, and even state education departments provide various programs for students to gain relevant work experience and gain necessary skills outside of the classroom.

What Are These Programs?
There are a number of school-based programs that support student growth through work such as…

Also relevant/see:

One Foot in the Future — from the BIG questions institute

As an excerpt from an email describing this new/free ebook, Homa Tavangar and Will Richardson write:

We need a fresh set of tools, frameworks, and lenses if we are to meet the future effectively.

With this new ebook, “One Foot in the Future,” we’re charting a different path forward, introducing readers to things like:

Design Fiction – A tool to help us become “archeologists of the future” and help us
Regenerative Learning – A lens that helps us see our work as it impacts all living things
Schoolpunk – A movement and a community to help imagine the future of education together.

And much more.

Our sense is that there is growing appetite to get out of the traditional school box and to design a more aspirational future. This new ebook is a great starting point for anyone who wants to do just that.

Brandon Busteed (emphasis DSC):

This is a Titanic moment. The iceberg is right in front of us and there just isn’t enough time to turn the massive U.S. education/higher education/employer training ship. Unless… We all go to work on work.

From DSC:
My comment on that string from Brandon was:

And I can’t help but think that part of that work involves Design Thinking…reinventing what lifelong learning looks/acts like.

Reflections on “Incremental Change Didn’t Save Blockbuster. It Won’t Save Education, Either” [Miles]

On 02/02/2023, in change, changing business models, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, Design Thinking, future, game-changing environment, ideas, innovation, instructional design, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, student-related, teachers, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

Incremental Change Didn’t Save Blockbuster. It Won’t Save Education, Either — from the74million.org by Mike Miles; with thanks to Rob Reynolds for this resource
Broken public school systems need wholescale change if they are going to prepare students for the skills they will need by 2035

Excerpt:

Perhaps the biggest failure of the current education ecosystem is its inability to envision what the future holds for our students and to make systemic changes now to prepare them for that future. Shackled to a monolithic, change-resistant system, school and district leaders continue to make incremental and piecemeal changes to a broken system expecting to get different outcomes.

In an analogous way, almost all public-school systems are like Blockbusters in the late 1990s — unwilling to assess the impact of technological advances and consider how they might need to revisit their design principles. In the end, if an organization does not move purposefully toward some likely future, then any path forward will do, and it is likely to be the path they are currently on.

From DSC:
The following quote…

Using a split-screen strategy, a district would not attempt to make systemic changes district-wide. Rather, it would implement transformative changes in one or two schools while continuing to make incremental improvements in the rest of the district. Once the schools operating with the new system principles achieve the outcomes and succeed, they will become proof points to allow the district to implement systemic change in even more schools over a period of time.

…made me think of a graphic (see below) — and an article out at evoLLLtion.com — I developed a while back re: the need for more Trim Tab Groups. I think we’re talking about the same thing here.

Addendum on 2/4/23:

A Few Educators ‘Going the Extra Mile’ Cannot Save the Education System — from edsurge.com by Jennifer Yoo-Brannon

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Not a Pyramid, But a Garden
Instead of a pyramid, let’s adopt a new image, a more organic one. School communities are webs of complex relationships, like gardens. Imagine if we all understood a school community like a Three Sisters Garden. In this Indigenous agricultural practice, corn, beans and squash grow together to create a sustainable cycle of growth in which the whole garden can thrive. Corn provides the tall stalks for the beans to climb. The large squash plant leaves provide shade so the soil can retain moisture, and the beans provide the nitrogen to fertilize the soil. The garden does not rely on the exploitation of one crop to allow the rest to grow.

From DSC:
Re: the emphasized text immediately above…that sounds like a learning ecosystem to me! 🙂

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner [Nate McClennen & Co.]

On 01/31/2023, in assessment, Blockchain, change, changing business models, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, credentialing, Design Thinking, education, education reform, engagement / engaging students, ideas, innovation, instructional design, K-12 related, leadership, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, love of learning, marketplaces, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, motivation, new business models, online learning, participation, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, reinvent, society, streams of content, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), ubiquitous learning, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, vocational / trades, youth, by Daniel Christian

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen “with contributions from the Getting Smart team and numerous friends and partners in the field”

Excerpts:

In this publication, we articulate the critical steps needed to unbundle the learning ecosystem, build core competencies, design learning experiences, curate new opportunities, and rebundle these experiences into coherent pathways.
.

Vision

Every learner deserves an unlimited number of unbundled opportunities to explore, engage, and define experiences that advance their progress along a co-designed educational pathway. Each pathway provides equitable and personalized access to stacked learning experiences leading to post-secondary credentials and secure family-sustaining employment. Throughout the journey, supportive coaches focus on helping learners build skills to navigate with agency. In parallel, learners develop foundational skills (literacy, math), technical skills, and durable skills and connect these to challenging co-designed experiences. The breadth and depth of experiences increase over time, and, in partnership, learners and coaches map progress towards reaching community-defined goals. This vision is only enabled by an unbundled learning ecosystem.
…

Recommendations

Solutions already exist in the ecosystem and need to be combined and scaled. Funding models (like My Tech High), badging/credentialing at the competency level (like VLACS), coaching models (like Big Thought), and open ecosystems (like NH Learn Everywhere) provide an excellent foundation. Thus, building unbundled systems has already begun but needs systemic changes to become widely available and accepted.

1. 1. Build a robust competency-based system.
  2. Create a two-way marketplace for unbundled learning.
  3. Implement policy to support credit for out-of-system experiences.
  4. Invest in technology infrastructure for Learning and Employment Records.
  5. Design interoperable badging systems that connect to credentials.

It takes a village — from chieflearningofficer.com by Joe Mitchell
Colleges, companies and training providers have a unique opportunity to work together to address tech worker shortages and create more opportunities and upward mobility.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

But what higher education institutions and companies need isn’t a totally new approach that ignores the old systems — it’s someone to act as connective tissue between them. Fortunately, an emerging cadre of education providers are doing just that: developing the curriculum to help students earn industry-recognized credentials that can help them get good jobs right away in high-demand fields, and then working with universities to get that curriculum to their students.

The environment seems ripe for this type of collaboration. A 2020 survey of business leaders found that 70 percent think higher education institutions should be more involved in job training. Nearly 90 percent say colleges and universities could help their students learn industry-specific knowledge and advanced technical skills.

From DSC:
Below is another example of the need for Design Thinking as we rethink a cradle-to-grave learning ecosystem.

The United States Needs a Comprehensive Approach to Youth Policy — from cew.georgetown.edu

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

On the education front, federal legislation serves as an umbrella for many state and local policies and programs. Education policy is further fragmented into K–12 and postsecondary silos.

An all-one-system approach to youth policy would support young people along the entire continuum of their journey from school to work. It would help them attain both postsecondary education and quality work experience to support their transitions from education to good jobs. In this modernized approach, preschools, elementary and secondary schools, community colleges, four-year universities, employers, and governments would all follow an integrated playbook, helping to smooth out young people’s path from pre-K–12 to college and work. To transform youth policy, systemic reforms should incorporate the following:

Subject: The Edge: Today’s Issues in Schools; Tomorrow’s Higher-Ed Challenges

Excerpts:

Issues like chronic absenteeism in big urban and rural districts, the impact of classroom shootings on kids, and schools’ struggles to handle teenagers’ mental-health challenges might not be day-to-day concerns for college leaders and those who work with them. But these will matter to higher ed in the not-so-distant future, as those K-to-12 students make their way to college. And they could matter even more if those students don’t ever even make it to college.

Words of wisdom:

Those of us who might be a little higher-ed siloed in our thinking on education would do well to widen our perspective.

From DSC:
And it isn’t just about the impacts of COVID-19 either — though those things are very important. We would do well to get out of our siloes and practice some high-level design thinking to implement a cradle-to-grave, lifelong learning ecosystem. The vocational and corporate training worlds are highly relevant here as well.

Any politician about to vote on significant education-related policies, laws, etc. must first teach or observe for at least a month [Christian]

On 12/30/2022, in change, changing business models, collaboration, Daniel S. Christian, Design Thinking, education, education reform, experimentation, face-to-face, future, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, love of learning, more voice more choice more control, participation, passions, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, user experience (UX), vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
For me, I wish politicians and legislators would stay out of the way and let public and private educators make the decisions. But if any politician is about to vote on significant education-related policies, laws, etc. — I would like to suggest that society require them to either:

teach a K12-based class for at least one month
or
be in the classroom for the entire day to observe — and do this for at least one month

Perhaps we would have far less standardized testing. Perhaps we would have far more joy and wonder — for the teachers as well as for the students. Perhaps lifelong learning — and the love of learning — would get the wind in its sails that it so desperately needs.
.

From DSC:
Along these lines of enjoyment in everyday things, could this type of thing happen more within education?

Great idea! pic.twitter.com/udcL0nxbc3

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) December 26, 2022

From DSC:
For those seeking a doctorate in education: Here’s a potential topic for your doctoral thesis.

Homelessness is a huge issue. It’s a complex issue, with many layers, variables, and causes to it. I once heard Oprah Winfrey say that we are all one to two steps away from being homeless, and I agree with that.

But as I was passing a homeless person asking for money on the exit ramp from a local highway the other day, I wondered what place, if any, education played (or didn’t play) in people’s lives. Was/is there any common denominator or set of experiences with their education that we can look at? If so, can we use design thinking to get at some of those root issues? For examples:

Was school easy for them? Hard for them?
A source of joy for them? A source of pain for them?
Were they engaged or disengaged?
Were they able to pursue their interests and passions?

It might turn out that education had little to do with things. It could have been health issues, broken relationships, systemic issues, the loss of a job, addictions, intergenerational “chains,” or many other things.

But it’s worth someone researching this. Such studies and interviews could turn up some helpful directions and steps to take for our future.

#homelessness #society #education #passions #participation
#research #educationreform #K12 #lifelonglearning

From DSC:
Our son recently took a 3-day intensive course on the Business of Acting. It was offered by the folks at “My College Audition” — and importantly, the course was not offered by the university where he is currently working on a BFA in Acting. By the way, aspiring performing arts students may find this site very beneficial/helpful as well. (Example blog posting here.)

The course was actually three hours of learning on a Sunday night, a Monday night, and a Tuesday night from 6-9pm.

He learned things that he mentioned have not been taught in his undergrad program (at least not so far). When I asked him what he liked most about the course, he said:

These people are out there doing this (DSC insert: To me, this sounds like the use of adjunct faculty in higher ed)
There were 9 speakers in the 9 hours of classtime
They relayed plenty of resources that were very helpful and practical. He’s looking forward to pursuing these leads further.

He didn’t like that there were no discussion avenues/forums available. And as a paying parent, I didn’t like that we had to pay for yet another course and content that he wasn’t getting at his university. It may be that the university that he’s studying at will offer such a course later in the curriculum. But after two years of college experience, he hasn’t come across anything this practical and he is eagerly seeking out this type of practical/future-focused information. In fact, it’s critical to him staying with acting…or not. He needs this information sooner in his program.

It made me reflect on the place of adjunct faculty within higher education — folks who are out there “doing” what they are teaching about. They tend to be more up-to-date in their real-world knowledge. Sabbaticals are helpful in this regard for full-time faculty, but they don’t come around nearly enough to keep one’s practical, career-oriented knowledgebase up-to-date.

Again, this dilemma is to be expected, given our current higher education learning ecosystem. Faculties’ plates are full. They don’t have time to pursue this kind of endeavor in addition to their daily responsibilities. Staff aren’t able to be out there “doing” these things either.

This brings me back to design thinking. We’ve got to come up with better ways of offering student-centered education, programming, and content/resources.

My son walked away shaking his head a bit regarding his current university. At a time when students and families are questioning the return on their investments in traditional institutions of higher education, this issue needs to be taken very seriously.

Also potentially relevant for some of the performing arts students out there:

Voice Acting & Character Voices for Video Games & Animations — from udemy.com
Develop New Character Voices and Discover the Voice Acting Secrets of 10 Successful Voice Actors from Around The World!

Interesting conversations/brainstorming here: An Award-Winning Vision for A School of the Future

On 12/24/2022, in Design Thinking, education, education reform, future, innovation, instructional design, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, lifelong learning, love of learning, more voice more choice more control, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

DC: Interesting conversations/brainstorming here:

An Award-Winning Vision for A School of the Future | Tech & Learning#future #education #designthinking #innovation #change #learningecosystems https://t.co/Ordaqn63Zq

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) December 23, 2022

Also see:

Redbridge | The future of lifelong learning — from redbridgesf.org and with thanks to Michael Horn for this resource

Excerpts from their home page:

Red Bridge is a school that teaches students to set goals, work together, reflect, and own their learning.
For families who value lifelong learning and share a sense of responsibility for their community.
Our vision is for all students to graduate with a sense of ownership over their learning and their lives – so that no matter what the future looks like, they have the capacity to adapt and flourish.

The fastest growing segment of K–12 education is also one of the newest and least familiar: #microschools. @donsoifer, who was a leader in the charter school movement and has been advocating for microschools for many years now runs the @microschooling – https://t.co/CAC41TwLsu pic.twitter.com/pz9epOwXMD

— Michael B. Horn (@michaelbhorn) December 23, 2022

DSC: For all you folks out there who like to fish, you have to check this out!

On 12/21/2022, in Asia, creativity, design, Design Thinking, engineering, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
For all you folks out there who like to fish, you have to check this out! (Though I don’t think even this high-tech fishing rod could help me out.)

Overengineered Fishing Rod

A modified excerpt:

Handy Geng [shows off his] latest build: a multifunctional fishing rod with an ice-breaking shovel on one end, a smartphone-controlled motorized reel, accent lighting, and the ability to detect when a fish is on the hook. It also works as a pot stand for cooking your fresh catch.

Learning Ecosystems

“But what higher education institutions and companies need isn’t a totally new approach that ignores the old systems — it’s someone to act as connective tissue between them.” [Mitchell]

DSC: For all you folks out there who like to fish, you have to check this out!

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