Here are some important points from the Distinguished Faculty Lecture at Santa Ana College. I invite you to post you comments by clicking on the “Post Comments” button at the top and bottom of this blog. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say and look forward to adding my thoughts to your comments. It will be quite interesting to hear from everyone around the world about these ideas.
10 big ideas
- Apply learning to real world problems – input from employers, develop practical skills
- Learn from students – interactive, fast, learner focused
- Broaden student perspectives and creative abilities – open-minded, innovative, strategic
- Use cutting-edge technology – smarter about new sources of information
- Engaged curiosity – the desire to question and continue to learn
- Create open curriculum – interdisciplinary
- Form partnerships – collaborate
- Form global networks – know about the world
- Develop individual excellence – courage
- Develop organizational skills – team skills, people skills, operational skills
Blueprint for Institutional Success
- Management Commitment. Prioritize. Get the right people, give them what they need to be successful (money and resources) and keep the bureaucracy out of their way. Incentivize excellence.
- Learning Innovation Center. Eight to ten people in a high tech media lab to assist with learning. Teachers have ideas and go to the lab to make the innovative pedagogy work.
- Intellectual Property. Creativity with faculty on developing innovative content. Co-ownership of IP rights, CCSA licenses, entrepreneurial schools.
- Global. Commit to connecting classrooms with other classrooms around the world.
- Curricula. Commit to global open source curricula development. Teach the future as well as the past.
- Hiring. Think outside the box – younger faculty, incentives for retirement, advertise openings more expansively, hire people who don’t look like the people they are replacing, let younger faculty control hiring committees. Legacy transfer issues.
- Counseling. Reorient counselors from only assisting with the efficient attainment of degrees, to telling students that they need degrees, but also skills to make them unique.
- Interdisciplinary. Encourage physical, social and intellectual interactions between faculty from diverse areas faculty lounges or faculty social networks. Incentivize collaboration across disciplines.
- Practical. Collaboration between universities, community colleges, executive education programs and the business community.
- Textbooks. Mass personalization. Shorter, less expensive, targeted content. Alternative delivery systems. Mobile learning.
Posted by mikehie 
