Everyone today seems to be talking about George Siemen's latest blog post White House: Innovation in Higher Education and I felt I would be remiss not to mention it myself. In the post George presents his personal reactions to a meeting on Innovation and Quality in Higher Education which he was invited to at the White House.
The two big points that seem to be getting the most discussion are #3:
"No one knows what HE (higher education) is becoming. Forget the think tanks and the
consultants and the keynote speakers. No one knows how these trends will
track or what the university will look like in the future. This
unknowability stems from HE being a complex systems with many
interacting elements. We can’t yet see how these will connect and
inter-relate going forward. The best strategy in a time of uncertainty
is not to seek or force the way forward, but to enter a cycle of
experimentation. The Cynefin Framework provides the best guidance that I’ve seen on how to function in our current context."
and #12:
"I’m getting exceptionally irritated with the narrative of higher
education is broken and universities haven’t changed. This is one of the
most inaccurate pieces of @#%$ floating around in the “disrupt and
transform” learning crowd. Universities are exceptional at innovating
and changing. Explore any campus today. It’s a new world on most
campuses, never mind the online, competency, and related systems. And if
your slide deck includes an image of desks and argues that nothing has
changed, you’re being dishonest and disingenuous. Repent. Healing is
possible for you, but first you must see the falseness of your words."
Both seem to be getting a resounding amount of "here, here" but I can't help but think that perhaps the bigger story is the amount of conversation this post has generated.
Hi Lillian,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the link to George Siemen's lastest blog post. His theory of connectivism sparked a lot of curiosity for me in our last course but I haven't had the chance to go back and read more about his theory and ideas, so it was very nice to come across this blog post of yours. After reading his latest blog post, I can see why his reflections are generating a great amount of conservation. Also, somewhere in that conversation, I see the great potential for future research of exploring innovation in higher education.