From DSC:
We don’t want to be looking at a similar article — albeit directed at institutions of higher education this time — a few years from now. Innovation and being willing to experiment with new models/approaches/pedagogies/delivery mechanisms is key. We don’t have to have all the answers (as the answers/most optimal solutions will be in constant flux as well), but we need to be willing to change.
Disappearing Departments — from InsideHigherEd.com
Kean University department chairs have spent a year on the endangered species list, and now they appear headed for all-but-certain extinction.
A rough plan to eliminate chairs took shape last May amid heavy protest, and administrators now have a draft proposal they say could be carried out as early as July. The plan, which would replace departments with schools headed by presidentially-appointed “executive directors,” has been met with renewed furor from faculty, who view it as a power grab that leaves the future of many disciplines uncertain. The university has already moved to eliminate such departments as philosophy and social work, but this plan would kill even large departments like English and biology, dividing faculty members into new organizational structures they played no role in creating.
“The university has become a battlefield, [where administrators] do as they see fit, when they see fit without any academic justification,” said Bryan Lees, a chemistry professor (emphasis DSC).
From DSC:
And what would you do if you were in the administration’s position? Funds are running short…budgets are tightening big time…and we’re getting down to the bone in many institutions of higher education (if you doubt this, check out one of Ray Schroeder’s blogs).
Like it or not, institutions of higher education are businesses — most often with excellent, noble goals that better our societies around the world. But they are businesses; and, like so many other types of organizations out there, it comes down to funding and sound business models.
To survive and thrive today, we all must come to the table to help initiate change where it is necessary to do so. Let’s be proactive, and creative in our thinking — being willing to make changes — before it’s too late. If we do not, administration may have no choice (in many situations out there) but to make some tough decisions and you and I might find ourselves on the short end of the stick. The ax may have to come out.
Did we sit back and watch this situation unfold? What steps did we take to stop this bubble from getting any bigger? Regardless…the key question now is:
How can we survive and thrive during this period of change?
Teachers as Master Learners — from Will Richardson
Quoting Will:
More and more, though, as I look at my own kids and try to make sense what’s going to make them successful, I care less and less about a particular teacher’s content expertise and more about whether that person is a master learner, one from whom Tess or Tucker can get the skills and literacies to make sense of learning in every context, new and old. What I want are master learners, not master teachers, learners who see my kids as their apprentices for learning. Before public schooling, apprenticeship learning was the way kids were educated. They learned a trade or a skill from masters. When we moved to compulsory schooling, kids began to learn not from master doers so much as from master knowers, because we decided there were certain things that every child needed to know in order to be “educated.” And we looked for adults who could impart that knowledge, who could teach it in ways that every child could learn it.
From DSC:
Coming from the world of an instructional technologist, I would also like to add how key it is for teachers, instructors, professors, etc. to be willing to try new things out. Let’s forget about being experts in anything! It’s ok to not be an expert in something. For me, it’s almost unbelievable that anyone can be an expert these days…because for most of us, the world’s spinning far too fast to be an expert in anything anymore.
To Will’s point, we need to be constant learners. But we also need to be willing to try and do things differently (at least in areas where it makes sense to give things a try). Whether teaching or not, I think we all need to learn from our students…and from each other. Let’s be willing to try some new things out. We can fail and model learning from our failures. We can show courage; humility. We can show our students that they too are going to need to be willing to change.
Willingness…it’s key.
