I participated in the 50th annual meeting of the Society of College and University Planners in downtown Chicago on July 12 – 15, 2015. The president of our college, Dr. William Tammone, invited me to participate in a joint presentation regarding our efforts to convert the CMWEB Web Developer certificate to a competency based education format. I am honored that he asked.
The event itself was attended by over 1,700 people. Our session was on the first day in Grand Ballroom E. Since I participated in the entire conference, I thought readers of this blog might be interested in highlights of what I learned. I also included a copy of the slides we used in our presentation.
The event began on Monday, July 13 with a presentation by Jane McGonigal (How to make the future – with games). She presented games as a platform for problem solving and changing the future. I became aware of some interesting facts. There are over 1 billion gamers world wide. And they spend a collective 1.75 billion minutes each day crushing candy. That is over 3.3 million years of effort each day. Why does this matter? Because over 80% of all employees worldwide are not engaged in their jobs. Yet, we spend over 7 billion hours a week playing games because success is within our grasp. We are on a heroic quest and see a clear vision in the game. Imagine if we could apply that to education and similar efforts.
Although gamers feel a number of positive emotions, creativity is the number one emotion. Yes, she argues that creativity is an emotion. Most think of creativity as a skill or talent, but we can all take creative risks. Gamers also spend 80% of their time failing. Yet, they keep learning and stay optimistic. Where else can one experience this level of failure and remain positive? I particularly liked her quote – “the opposite of play isn’t work, it is depression.” She also prefers the term – super empowered hopeful individuals instead of gamer.
First session (Building a hive: creating interdisciplinary hubs of creativity, discovery and community). This focused on the Northrup building at the University of Minnesota. It is a historical building which was showing its age. It needed to be modernized and made more accessible and usable for current students, faculty, and staff. The project was described in detail and the end results displayed. There were significant improvements and they now experience over 400,000 visits by students and others every year.
Next session (Planning for maker spaces across disciplines and pedagogies). This was a panel discussion with representatives from MIT and Columbia College. They reviewed a number of approaches they employed in the creation of these spaces. The focus is on the iterative process where one works and learns, collaborates, and builds. They now have a Dean of innovation position. Interestingly, they discovered some faculty can not teach in the new spaces. They are not used to speaking in an environment where others are also speaking.
Next session (Active learning – be the catalyst on campus) focused on active learning including a hands on experience. There is an obvious movement away from spaces where 1/4 of the room is devoted to one person (the teacher) and the rest are squished together. They mentioned these insights – classrooms often pose physical and psychological barriers to teaching and learning. Classrooms also do not support the individual needs of students and teachers. The active learning ecosystem was discussed. There is a focus on lighting, acoustics, climate control, and individual ergonomic needs. Instructor roles are changing. We are also moving from individuals to teams. They argued the most important technology we can introduce to the classroom is the swivel chair. It was also noted there is 4 times the vertical space versus horizontal space, but we rarely use all the vertical space. They modeled active learning in an exercise. Otherwise, we are stuck with 21st century learners experiencing 19th century teaching practices.
The final Monday session (Using integrated planning to develop competency based education programs) was our joint presentation. There were a number of insightful questions and observations. We also were pleased to see representatives from Western Governor’s University and the Lumina Foundation in the audience. A copy of our slides is provided. I know the session was recorded, but I do not have direct access to the recording at the moment.
The first Tuesday session (A demographic look at the near future: The next America) was presented by Paul Taylor of Pew Research. This a most enlightening presentation. I particularly liked the quote “demographic change is drama in slow motion.” We have always been a nation of immigrants and that trend is accelerating. Given that most immigrants are strivers and optimists, if we harness this diversity we gain enormous strength moving forward. As a society, we are growing older. The age pyramid has become a rectangle. This is also true of many other areas (China and Japan were discussed in detail). He discussed the characteristics of the silent generation, the baby boomers, generation X, and the millenials. He ended with this quote “societies become great when old men plant trees knowing they will never sit in their shade.” I think this epitomizes what we try to accomplish as teachers.
The next Tuesday session (A blueprint for success: Reimagining how the community college delivers value) was presented by Gaylen DeHay and Cara Hamilton. They focused on their use of the IBM Component Business Model (CBM) in an educational setting. The new emphasis is on community colleges becoming the engine of value creation. The CBM is highly customized, highly visual and engaging, high level and strategic, and answers what happens at what level in the organization. It has been used successfully in business for 30 years. One first needs an academic program strategy. Then one can focus on targeted marketing. This is what leads to higher completion rates for students. As an example, they mentioned their college has a 64% success rate and is in the 95th percentile among transfer students. For every $1 spent, they realize $3 in return for their community. Faculty are highly involved in the process. For example, the marketing strategy effort was lead by faculty in their business department. Since everyone helps build the model, it is more accurate, understandable and impactful. This leads to more engagement.
During lunch, Persis Rickes lead a discussion on the impact of millenials on higher education. This group is technologically savvy and expects to be able to connect to information all the time. And some at our school wonder why I continually complain about poor wifi. Surprisingly, the conversation then turned to the need for competency based systems (glad I could contribute). There is a recognized need to teach more social skills. We also discussed craft studios and their resurgence as maker spaces available to all students. Lastly, we covered the question – what is the real function of a faculty office? We discussed the changes which need to be incorporated when hiring millenials.
The session after lunch (Accreditation: From gotta do to want to do) was lead by Karen Jones. She discussed the challenges to making accreditation useful and meaningful and the tension between accountability and improvement. One should use the accreditation process as a mini institutional effectiveness and planning document.
Beth “Z” then lead a session entitled “How do they do that? Secret tech weapons for college and university planners.” She covered a number of selected technologies. Examples include Magisto, Evernote, IFTTT, Trello, and LastPass. Although I knew about 90% or more of the apps discussed, it was helpful to see how others are using these. It was also beneficial to learn about roughly 10% new apps. I plan to investigate these in the coming months. One of my favorite new ones is the Big Box of No.
The last session of the day focused on the Magic of Transformational Leadership by Andrew Bennett. Andrew worked for EDS in the past and shared a number of stories related to the leadership of H. Ross Perot. He also has a background as a magician and presented his theories in the concept of making things appear, disappear, and restoring things. He asked a simple question – what in your daily work makes you go WOW? He focused on how few people are engaged at work these days.He focused on the need for both a burning platform and a burning desire. He used the Ann Arbor based Menlo Innovations company as an example. Their mission is to bring joy into the world through software design and development. They only have one meeting – a morning standup meeting each day which lasts for less than 10 minutes. People work in pairs on a bit of code for a week, them move to another project. This forces everyone to write clean, efficient and easy to understand code.
Wednesday had only morning sessions. The first I attended was Design disrupted: Education for a future yet to be defined. This was lead by David Hart and Susan Metros. They discussed the creation of a cross disciplinary learning environment. Their school received a $70 million endowment from Dr. Dre and Jimmy Lovine. Both were very disappointed with prior graduates they hired. For example, engineers knew nothing about design. The new program is a melding of arts, business, and engineering to focus on preparing students for careers which do not yet exist. They are looking for students willing to take risks and learn from failure. They typically receive over 400 applications for 25 spots. The process begins in year one where students are encouraged to think across disciplines. While students do receive a degree, they are really in the program to launch a business. In fact, 4 in the program already had significant businesses when they were accepted.
The next session was SCOPE it out! A model for team development and problem solving. The emphasis was on the acronym SCOPE which describes an iterative process – Signs/Symptoms >Causes >Options >Plan and perform >Evaluation. The first step is to fully understand the symptoms of the problem. We all participated in structured brainstorming and affinity charting as part of an exercise dealing with unproductive meetings. It is easy to confuse causes and symptoms. For example, lack of an agenda for a meeting is a cause, not a symptom. The symptom would be a sense of floundering during the meeting.
The final session, Data integration for strategic planning in the decentralized institution, was lead by representatives from the University of Utah. Although the focus was on data integration to make informed strategic decisions, it was stressed that decentralized data was inevitable. They have adopted a federation of linked data sources relying on web services as the means of linking. They are looking for real time information to find errors in data. More eyes are on the data which allows the institution to discover more anomalies. Data stewards should be those who are closest to the data.
As you can see, there was a lot of information presented at this conference. Although I attended a number of sessions, there were many sessions I was unable to attend (one can not be in two places at once). What impressed me the most was the common opportunities and challenges regardless of the institution’s size and reach. If any readers are interested in more detailed notes, please contact me directly (or post a comment). As always, I am interested in whether you found this summary useful and what your insights are after reading this far. I look forward to your comments.
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