The Future of Higher Education (Rebooting Higher Education)

Considering:

- technology has brought along a profound change in the way we relate to information and knowledge,
- most of our students are on the Internet as they attend and follow lectures,
- many high profile universities around the world have opened their lectures and even full curricula (including detailed indications on how to follow them) in OpenCourseWare (not certifying, but MIT will be offering credentials in 2012 under the "MITx" label),
- some students are increasingly complementing their certifying curricula with such OpenCourseWare material,
- physical mobility is often an issue in dense areas where schools and universities are located and people wish to be able to study anywhere, anytime,
- a significant part of the world population has or is about to have access to most of the world's encyclopedic knowledge, in the palm of their hand and in a few clicks,
- general treaties and agreements have standardized most processes in higher education (credits, BA, MA, PhD, etc.),

several questions concerning the existing educational systems need to be raised, and the traditional answers may not apply.

Therefore, the purpose of this workshop is to bring together educators, researchers, students, professionals and interested citizens to co-creatively and openly explore this issue, trying to re-think out of the box, to figure out what higher education could be in a not so distant future given the above transformations.

Moreover, if any of the ideas expressed by the following experts inspire you (definitely not a complete list) :

- Prof. Sugata Mitra on the Future of Universities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs9B0di3CmI
- Sir Ken Robinson, Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity, 2006
seminal talk, http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
- Sir Ken Robinson, Bring on the learning revolution!,
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html
- Sir Ken Robinson and RSA Animate, Changing Education Paradigms,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
- MindShift, KQED, School Day of the Future,
http://mindshift.kqed.org/tag/school-day-of-the-future/?order=asc
- Marcel Kampman, Reinventing School, Project Dream School :
http://klewel.com/conferences/lift11/index.php?talkID=47
- Denis de Rougemont, 1929 essay (revisited in 1971), The Misdeeds of
Public Education (Les méfaits de l'instruction publique)
http://bit.ly/eJGhZb
- Frog Design Blog, No Right Brain Left Behind, Design Mind,
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/no-right-brain-left-behind.html?
- Michel Serres, Eduquer au XXIe siècle, LeMonde.fr, 5 mars 2011,
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2011/03/05/eduquer-au-xxie-siecle_14...

or if you want to bring your own contribution to the subject, come join us!

As a thought provoking set of initial questions and challenges for the future, here are some we plan to raise during the workshop :

- what is the role of a university professor?
- what is an academic assessment, a certification, a degree and ultimately a curriculum?
- what is a university and the role of its strategic board (rector, provost, president, etc.)?
- what is an elective / required course, where and how can it be taken and assessed?
- how do we link research to education again?
- how do we bring back talent and passion into standardized curricula?
- is there room for tailor-made curricula based on local and remote courses available elsewhere?
- how can all of this play out?
- etc.

If you feel committed to thinking about these issues in a creative setting, join us and we'll decide together what we can do with the outcome of this workshop...

On a side note, you may also want to know :
1) who we are : Concerned educators, researchers, foresight professionals, Int. Org. members, activists.
Jean-Henry Morin and Laurent Moccozet (UNIGE)
Giorgio Pauletto (OT-Lab)
Robert Shaw (ITU, to be confirmed)
Philippa Martin King (IEC, to be confirmed)
Marcel Kampman (DreamSchool foundation, to be confirmed)
+ some game changing people in this area but also to be confirmed and it would be a nice surprise...

2) what the workshop is about : The Future of Higher Education in a globalized, networked, social society (i.e., rebooting higer education to make it simple!)

3) what interactivity elements does the workshop offer: based on a "Remember the Future" innovation game, participants will engage in story telling, foresight, and creative thinking

4) what are the take-aways for the participants : a set of possible future scenarios to be used as game changing inspiration to make changes happen and possibly a call for action, a roadmap or anything else the crowd may come up with...

See you @Lift and let's give this a try!