Future Trends in Education

The Accelerating Rate of Change and Skill Depreciation

As Robin Chase, former CEO and founder of ZipCar, puts it, “Our parents had one job, I will have seven jobs, and our children will do seven jobs at one time.”  As the expectations for employment and fulfillment change, continuous and lifelong learning becomes increasingly important. Individuals are looking for not just learning but guidance in navigating the changing world to find the best learning and career opportunities. 

Individuals are also challenged by an accelerating cycle of skill obsolescence in a period of unprecedented transition from skill set to skill set. The rapidly changing business landscape demands constant learning of new skills and domains, retraining, and applying existing capabilities in new contexts. It also demands a greater fluency in digital tools and comfort in virtual environments. It rewards those with greater capacity to seek and access resources and to build social capital through personal networks and participation in communities.

Moreover, by 2020, it is estimated that the work-related knowledge a college student acquires will have an expected shelf life of less than five years. Fabio Rosati, the CEO of Elance (which recently merged with oDesk),states, “The technologies that were relevant even two to three years ago are different than the technologies that are going to be relevant in the next two to three years, [and that’s moving] at increased speed.”

Social learning

One of the most profound effects of learning in a networked age is the importance of social learning. Social learning, according to the Educause Review, is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about the content rather than on the content itself. As such, learning institutions should focus less on what the individual is learning than on how the individual is learning.

Social communities, combined with online content and resources such as the Meetups, are a step forward in providing social context for lifelong learning in non-traditional settings. The drawback with social communities is that some lack content or structures to use the community effectively as a mechanism for collaboration. Te next step lies in creating communities of discovery where new content is created through collaboration.

Creation spaces

A real opportunity for learning institutions to amplify learning is to build deliberately constructed environments, “creation spaces,” that combine the advantages of tightly knit teams with the ability to involve an ever-increasing number of participants. This is where the “power of pull”—the ability to attract people and resources around a challenge or interest—comes in. Creation spaces are intended to bring learners together in the creation of new knowledge. Rather than focusing a discussion on content, learners within the creation space work together to create their own content and gain new insights, while the creation space connects individuals to a richer learning environment that encourages interactions.

Creation spaces require three key ingredients: a critical mass of participants, the co-evolution of interactions within the team and with a broader set of participants, and an environment that supports various layers of activities.

Lifelong learners seek coursework not just to learn but to improve their performance, and that type of learning comes from moving beyond hearing and reading to doing—alone and as a member of a group.

This expanding ecosystem of semi-structured learning fits the model of how learners—or at least a certain type of learner—want to proceed through their learning. The mobilizer serves as a spark or catalyst.

Learning Illiteracy

As psychologist Herbert Gerjuoy’s quote in Future Shock is commonly paraphrased, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Montessori

Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Will Wright (the Sims series), Sergey Brin (Google), Jimmy Wales (wikipedia) and Julia Child: every one of them went to Montessori schools.

Can we build a Montessori for adults?

What is the value of PUGS

Feedback from students in the April "Problem with Privilege" course.

• learn something new and a way to plan change. new concept of white fragility very helpful.
• Learning. Bringing people together.
• PUGS has allowed me to stimulate my mind outside of its usual confines. I have learned so much and more important, spent more time thinking about my world in new ways.
• definitely education/knowledge. And community. Thank you!
• getting to talk about subjects that interest me with other people - having other opinions, experiences, etc. 
• reawakening my dormant desire to LEARN.
• PUGS was a great opportunity to learn new info in a relaxed low-pressure environment. Appreciate the 90 minute format (vs. longer 2 or 3 hour format)
• comfort, community, great caring people, insight, education
• connecting with community, learning cool new stuff
• PUGS has given me community, change within myself, opening new doors, rethinking my past education, friendships and complexity.
• new ways of thinking about where I fit in regards to racism. White fragility - I'd never heard the term - a way to talk about racism. PUGS gives me access to challenging and relevant content that I've been hungry to learn but didn't know how to find. Thank you PUGS!
• what value! exposure to new ideas, opportunities to think about how to be a better Portlander, exposure to the wisdom and activism that is alive in Portland!
• stimulated introspection, valuable paradigm shifting information
• helpful in organizing next steps in my life.
• insights on key issues into which I could not gain access in the past.
• community, others' ideas
• open discussion with people who have had various experiences and ideas and approaches to interacting with the world.
• it's more accessible for learning and traditional school or learning spaces.
• I value having a structure environment to learn new topics. I could read online casually, but PUGS lets me talk to like-minded people and made me do homework.

Feedback from students in the April Puppetry course.

• PUGS offers courses that I've never seen anywhere else - thought-provoking, creative, unique, innovative and really inspirational.
• Fun enlightenment, meet great people and keep learning with them class after class.
• PUGS is a great little secret like a flower growing in the cracks of concrete.
• To take a short class of 4 weeks is really a unique way to delve into a new or expand on a familiar topic. A good way to meet people.
• Oh man! I love that there's this random learning community that feels very accessible. I'm inspired to maybe even teach in the future!

Project Orange: Entrepreneurial learners in learning ecosystems.

Here's the 20th century notion of education: picking up a fixed set of assets. Your skillset was authoritative, exclusive, and static. It was transferred to you in a fixed delivery models – often called schooling.  Your knowledge was something other people didn't have. Only lawyers knew the law. Going to law school was entering into a guild with secret knowledge of how the world worked.

We used to know how to know. We got our answers from books or experts. We’d nail down the facts and move on. We even had canons. 

- David Weinburger 

That world is gone.

Here's the 21st century version of education: constantly reinventing and augmenting your abilities. Your skillset is evolving, constantly on the edge, constantly growing. Knowledge is open, everywhere, and in everyone. These lower barriers to entry means more competition. It also means people will have more opportunity (and demands) to change and grow.

“In the future, it seems, there will be no fixed canons of texts and no fixed epistemological boundaries between disciplines, only paths of inquiry, modes of integration, and moments of encounter.”

Carla Hesse Professor of History UC Berkeley

As the pace of change continues to increase exponentially, the half-lives of skills will decrease exponentially as well. 

No one knows what the implications of that are, except it's going to unsettle the entire education and work worlds.

To add to the disruption, not only is knowledge everywhere, knowledge is also being created at a rate that is incomprehensible.  Buckminster Fuller noticed the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”: until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately 100 years. By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years. Now information is doubling every 13 months.  According to IBM, the "Internet of Things" will accelerate the rate to every 12 hours. 

“Our parents had one job, I will have seven jobs, and our children will do seven jobs at one time.”  As the expectations for employment and fulfillment change, continuous and lifelong learning becomes increasingly important. Individuals are looking for not just learning but guidance in navigating the changing world to find the best learning and career opportunities. -Robin Chase, former CEO and founder of ZipCar

More details on the future trends in education and employment here.

This is the context for 21st century learning. If information is no longer static, what if the future of education?

Entrepreneurial learners (with credit to John Seeley Brown)

This is the future of post-secondary education: no schools. Yet education all the time.

People will have to learn new types of things all the time, because that is the world that we are moving into – a world of constant and rapid change. To stand still will mean being left behind.

In the 21st century, learning won't be (solely) in the classroom. It won't be (solely) in person or (solely) online. Education will happen everywhere, all the time. People will have to be empowered to learn and teach throughout their lives. They will have to figure out what to learn.

As educators, we will have to teach curiosity. We will have to teach presence. We will have to teach wisdom. 

The current educational model primarily “pushes” information to "students." I say let's get rid of the term "student." The assumptions embedded in it are wrong: passive, supplicant, ignorant, and time-bound. To use an old metaphor in the education world: they were vessels in which you poured information into. We're going to have to find a new word: the entrepreneurial learner. 

The entrepreneurial learner will be constantly looking for new ways, new resources, new peers and potential mentors to learn new things. People are realizing that they can find information themselves and will do so increasingly more in the future. The Internet now allows everyone to “pull” information and resources to them at any moment. People will no longer be satisfied being "students" and become a very different type of learner: active, empowered, seeking, already equipped, and lifelong. They will no longer be only recipients, but creators as well. They will take information, play with it, and pass it forward changed, due to their unique perspectives.

Dispositions of an entrepreneurial learner:

• Always, questing, connecting, probing.

• Deeply curious and listening to others.

• Always learning with and from others.

• Reads contexts as much as content. 

• Thrives outside of the formal curriculum 

Most entrepreneurial learners won't be autodidacts: self-motivating solo learners. Most will be social learners. They will need a way to connect and collaborate, creative and imagine. They will need a way to keep accountable to themselves and their personal vision. They will need to create places and systems where they can sparks of new ideas and perspectives.

The learning ecosystems

We need to build learning environments, entire communities, and cities, that foster entrepreneurial learners. 

Just creating classes makes drive-by community; not enough face-time to make relationships. 

To match the ubiquity of knowledge, we need to create institutions that create an "ubiquity of learning."

A ubiquity of learning will replicate the deep connections of the college experience: the classroom, but also the dining hall, the cafe, and the dorm room.  But the 21st learning ecosystem will have to fit in our daily lives and eliminate the astronomical cost of the university industrial complex. Social media networks will have to fill in the gap. 

For PUGS, we will try using Slack to replace the college dorm: a place where people hang out between classes, share ideas, help each other out. Dorms are places of serendipity, where late night conversations and unexpected encounters bring moments of unanticipated insight and growth.

Have you ever sat with a friend when in the course of an easy and pleasant conversation the talk took a new turn and you both listened avidly to the other and to something that was emerging in your visit? You found yourselves saying things that astonished you and finally you stopped talking and there was an immense naturalness about the long silent pause that followed. In that silent interval you were possessed by what you had discovered together. If this has happened to you, you know that when you come up out of such an experience, there is a memory of rapture and a feeling in the heart of having touched holy ground.

- Douglas Steere 

The Future of PUGS

PUGS is great; people love the experience. But it's not where it needs to be. Right now, it's "education as entertainment." It's it transformative? Not yet. We don't require work. Because of that, the commitment and community level is low. We can do better by explicitly serving the new 21st century learner. Entrepreneurial learners will need a place to go where they will be expected to both learn and contribute something. PUGS needs to be a place where learning becomes:

• participatory
• collaborative
• peer-to-peer
• peer-to-master

The future of PUGSpdx is to be a learning ecosystem. It needs to:

(1) be praxis, i.e. “where knowledge and practice meet.” It needs to be a safe place for entrepreneurial learners to listen, think, ponder, tinker, experiment, fail, fail, fail, reflect, reflect, and grow.
(2) teach everyone to be a teacher.

We will need to teach everyone in society how to be good teachers. Only at that point will a learning ecosystem flourish by itself.

The role of the teacher

The 21st century teacher guides students with a framework, but the real teacher in the room is the work. The work is, in Quaker terms, the Inner Teacher. Learning is an internal process. You can't "learn" someone, and that's not just a grammatical joke. Learning happens within the learner. Our job as teachers is to facilitate that internal process. 

“The whole key (is students) are in charge of their own process. (Teachers) have to inspire them, guide them, but get out of the way.” 

- Montessori schools

You wanna know what's so powerful about Montessori pedagogy? Click here.

But let's go further: performance and work is where people learn. Any didactic instructor takes away from that. The teacher should act as designer and guide, not holder of knowledge. The teacher's job will be to create learning through prompts that spark great work.

The Plan
The Ziglar Plan for PUGS Project Orange, including advisers from altMBA.

A plan for Project Orange

BACKGROUND:

The current iteration of PUGSpdx is "education as entertainment." People (1) register, (2) do the reading and (3) come to class and discuss. It's all pretty enjoyable. But do people actually learn? Learning is fundamentally about change: the ability to generalize beyond what has been taught, act thoughtfully, and adapt what is taught to new situations. I want PUGSpdx to be a place where people learn.

20th century education was instructor-centered, content-based. Lectures and tests. Generally, it was effective to create compliant employees who could take directions. But the 21st century will be different. Our parents had one job throughout their lives. We will have seven. Our children will have 7 jobs at a time. PUGSpdx will be on the forefront of a transformation in education: learner-centered, performance-based.

altMBA was a example of excellent pedagogy. It was learner-centered, not instructor-centered. As Garth and I were fond of saying, "Seth's not here." The lessons were personally relevant and emotionally resonant. The commitment was peer-to-peer accountability. The lessons were performance-based, not content-based. It put people in groups with prompts and responsibility and let them do it themselves. 

Because of that, we all invested. And we all produced. And we all learned.

But it was only a month long. The alumni-Slack is not the same experience. Without the social pressure, peer pressure, and our own need to fit in and achieve, it's hard to keep going. We have new skills. We have new tools. We have new friends. But how do we make a habit of change (i.e. learning)? 

At the bottom of it all, it's the work that transforms us. It's the work that builds the community, and tightens the bonds. The work is where we learn. But it's a self-reinforcing loop: we need the community to make us do the work. 

THE GOAL :

I want to PUGSpdx to be a lifelong learning community where members support each other and hold each other accountable for everyone reaching their full potential. Basically, I want to take the best features of altMBA (joint commitment, generosity, work, and community) with the added features of being in-person and continuous. I want people to live in a culture of supported growth and continuous improvement.

Project Orange will be a second level of PUGSpdx. The current iteration of PUGS will be the freemium version (cheap-mium). People will pay more for the premium Project Orange for the joint commitment, work, and community. In other words, sustained and supported growth and personal transformation. 

THE BENEFITS FOR ME:

• It will make me happier because it fulfills my mission statement of helping people learn and feel connected to their communities. 
• I will meet new people and make new friends. 
• I will get to live in a supportive culture of continual growth.
• It will generate more income than the current iteration of PUGSpdx because it is additional revenue and provides more value to people.

SKILLS/KNOWLEDGE NEEDED:

• Publicity and public relations. 
• Marketing
• Sales
• Writing good performance prompts. (curated resources, minimal interpretation, creative task?)
• Teaching how to write good performance prompts. A self-generating community of learners probably all know how to (1) research content (2) synthesize content, and (3) convert knowledge into a good performance prompt. 

OBSTACLES:

• Desire of people to take voluntary courses vs time in their daily life. (solve with emotionally compelling value proposition)
• Frame-setting with current iteration of PUGSpdx being so inexpensive. Do people expect a cheap product? (solve with emotionally compelling value proposition)
• Inexperience running a business. (talk with other entrepreneurs. stay connected to altMBA friends, learn through experimentation and reflection)
• Cash flow for major capacity-building. 
• Return on investment on any capital expenditure.

PEOPLE:

• altMBA Dream Team of advisors: Abbe and Alexa (marketing), Tom (operations), Garth (education), Sarah (vision).
• Connections in the Portland media.
• PUGSpdx students and instructors to spread the word initially.
• Community of Project Orange students that will grow and tell their friends (need to make their experience an excellent one).

PLAN OF ACTION with DEADLINES: CUSTOMER END

1. Hold first Catalyst course (May).
2. Do surveys and exit interviews (last date of class)
3. Figure out what students want and what they would be willing to pay for. Could be ongoing community for a monthly subscription fee or additional formal courses. (June)
4. Figure out how to test hypothesis with business data. Use Lean Startup ideas.
5. Run Catalyst course a second time (July). Reiterate feedback loop.
6. Choose a business model that generates the most revenue (August)

PLAN OF ACTION with DEADLINES: BUSINESS END

1. write better copy and tell a simple, emotionally compelling value proposition for booking time to voluntarily taking courses in their busy lives. Must connect to customer profiles. (PR copy, website copy) – (Advisors: Abbe, Alexa, Sara Guest)
2. Test ideas on how to build the sense of engagement and community that altMBA had. Slack? Happy hours? - 
3. make connections in media – end of June 
4. Publicity – get articles published about PUGSpdx – end of July (Advisors – Matt Pierson, Sara Guest)
5. Publicity – Project Orange video promo – end of May (Advisors: Beth)

Customer persona

I did a different customer persona with a friend and PUGS loyalist right after altMBA, here.

Alexa, Abbe - feel free to edit.

• Professional, college educated, perhaps with college debt.
• Progressive, wants to make positive change.
• 20s and 30s, possibly mid career 40s
• career focused, lower management, wants to move up. Or do something different, more creative. 
• Incredibly busy, burns candle on both ends.
• Runs side business, goes out to eat 3-5 times a week, happy hour with friends.
• Wants creative fulfilment throughout her career
• Demonstrate my unique sense of taste
• A breadth of rewarding experiences over material possessions
• Wellness - a healthy mind and body
• Concerned about sustainability and climate change.
• A healthy work/life balance
• intellectually engaged: NYTimes, Atlantic, QZ, Fast Company.
• Willing to try new ideas if they make sense.
• Disposable income: Whole Foods, microbrews, wine, high end coffee (no to Starbucks). Buys organic, into sustainability, votes progressive. 
• Yoga, occasional massages, Amazon Prime, music festivals. 
• Subscribes to HBO. Binge watches. No cable TV.  
• Travel. SE Asia. Weekend ski or hiking trips. Lives with  partner of 2-3 years. Thinking of getting married. Probably doesn't admit it to partner or friends.
• Abhors the status quo. Future facing.
• Works hard on how people perceive her.

Possible PUGSpivot lessons

• Planning
• Understanding people. Empathy and SPIN selling
• Beauty of Constraints. Boundaries.
• The Right Decisions. Simon Sinek's Why.
• Decision making.
• Selling
• Behavioral Economics
• Marketing What is it for? Semiotics. Customer personas
• Public Speaking
• Brainstorming
• Value Propositions
• Business Models
• Sales Funnels
• Jumping the Chasm and the adoption curve
• Art and Creative Entrepreneurialism
• Copywriting
• 
  

Backnotes on Project Orange: The experience of the 21st century grad school

What a 21st century grad school should look and feel like from the perspective of the student.

The Product

• accountability of the community
• emotionally resonant prompts and themes
• a routine, previously setup and agreed upon
• a strong set of IT tools, working relatively well together
• working with people who were up for a challenge (application/selection process).
• "the process" 
• a bigger network of switched on people
• concrete skillset development

The Experience

• Working in groups with instructions that pushes you to take responsibility for the outcomes.
• making the decision to pitch in wholeheartedly.
• deadlines and shipping requirements.
• Real work
• Video work
• the feedback loop of commenting and reflecting (not always welcome, but very valuable)
• communicating happily and with ease through writing. 
• The value of being on both sides of the feedback loop was more than what I had anticipated.

The transformation

• I reframed my life so it has an extra level of meaning and a clearer definition of how I express my purpose.
• I greatly increased my sense of the value of my work and it is giving me courage to speak out about what's important, even when other people want me to do something "safer" or more acceptable.
• I was trying to be a better cog in the machinery at work, and instead ended up wanting to build my own machine.
• Taking ownership of my future.
• Shake-up: hanging out with a crowd willing to engage in more depth, get involved with new projects with deadlines
• I learned about the cutting-edge of entrepreneurship / business, contribute to the growth of others.

Project Orange: The PUGSpdx pivot

I spent the day on the Oregon Coast, read Seth's All Marketers Are Liars, and built a pitch for what PUGSpdx should be. Pictures are from the day while I worked on this post.

Project Orange: the PUGSpivot
It is courses for people who want to pivot and change to something better in their lives. It's a pivot for PUGSpdx. It's pivotal.

The name may be lame. Open to others.

The PUGSpivot pitch
This is grad school for people who want to make a difference. 

Other subpitches

• The 20th century model of grad school is broken. This is the 21st cenutury grad school. 
• Instead of being a better cog in the machinery, build your own machine.
• Take ownership of your future.
• Further your frontiers

The pedagogy
1. Personally meaningful curriculum 
2. Clear structure and defined goals
3. Concrete skillset development through performance projects
4. Collaborative and active community
5. Regular and consistent feedback and reflection
 

Possible subjects for people who want to make a difference.

Start with The Catalyst Course:

1. business and entrepreneurship
2. parenting 
3. creativity, craft, and artistry
4. social change

First list of individual lessons/courses here. 

Customer persona 
Click here.

Customer Value Proposition (tentative, feel free to edit, Abbe and Alexa)

• Improved skillset for professional growth
• Connection in an intellectual community
• Making career dreams into reality
• Accountability for own growth
• Looking like an innovative person to friends and family
• Proof of Mastery
• Quantifiable indicators of curiosity and learning for LinkedIn profile.
• More connections
• Feeling challenged and satisfied.
• Feeling of accomplishment and personal fulfillment
• Growth: mastery, membership & meaning
• Learning that is self-financed, instead of debt

Customer Insight: 
"I’m a unique creative individual and I’ve got a lot to offer the world."

The 20th century university system is broken.

Universities have a story to tell you about their graduate schools. You'll gain knowledge, exclusivity, and prestige. It'll be worth it to pay $100,000. You will gain it all back. 

Is it true? 

You decide yourself. But PUGSpdx is an alternative. 

In the 21st century, knowledge is no longer exclusive to the ivory tower: it's everywhere now. On the internet. In books. With real-life practitioners. In the 21st century, prestige and exclusivity matter less and less while your demonstrable skills and abilities matter more and more. 

Let's put it another way: when is the last time someone hired you because where you went to college? Conversely, when was the last time someone hired you because they already knew you and knew you could do the job?

A vision for the 21st century grad school
The fundamental premise of PUGSpdx is that people learn if:

1. They get to participate and contribute to their learning.
2. They get to apply what they learn immediately.
3. They see the benefits to themselves of what they are learning.


The feelings and experience of PUGSpivot is described here. 

In the 21st century, grad school will be about action. Learning through performing, making mistakes, and continuously improving. To do that, people will need connection, accountability, and commitment. 

I envision graduate school in the 21st century will be:

• In your daily life, NOT disruptive to your life.
• Self-financed, NOT debt larger than a down payment.
• Practical and focused on producing incredible personal outcomes, NOT theoretical or focused on remembering generic content.
• Centered on improving students' skillsets, NOT on instructor's knowledge
• Community and joint commitment, NOT hierarchy or bureaucracy.

Debt and difference-making
Debt ties you to the system. If this is school for people who want to make a difference, the ability to self-finance are a big part of the value proposition. 

Without debt, you have the intellectual and emotional freedom to be a creator of change. I know because I had grad school debt for 10 years (I went to law school). It's not a coincidence that PUGSpdx started after that debt was paid off. It's harder to make the difference you want when you're in debt. It is mentally constraining. It limits your worldview. It narrows your imagination and sense of possibility. This is the freedom to move to who you want to be,  be a full-fledged citizen, to have creative agency in your life and others.

Oregon coast at the end of the day. 

Notes from the Dream Team: Zoom chat Friday April 15

Alexa Rohn
Abbi Vacek
Garth Nichols
Tom Anderson
Sarah McCrum
Douglas Tsoi

Lessons from altMBA.

AR: sprint gave me new habits. kicked up my baseline. retrained me. the community is the whole point. the alumni channel. instead of just shipping, the accountability of the community is integral to it. the slack alumni channel is the best invention ever.  the peer pressure of it and accountability does it for me. 

AV: agree with AR, kicked up my baseline. really hugely baseline. i can't maintain this pace, but i'm no longer a coach potato. the alumni channel is hugely important to me. still working with partners and the accountability is so important to me.

AR: the end of altmba people got burnt out but the cream rose to the top. the 

GN: runs a similar group of teachers. good way to step back and analyze. also there's something else to make it better. adopting the mindset of a business lense. cream rises to the top. can't keep up the two communities at the same time. So energizing. how can i apply that? how can i use that?

SM: no problem with shipping, no problem with accountability. wants a real thing to ship. real outputs, real outcomes. would be a great way to keep it going. would be a great way to integrate it and make it part of regular life.

TA: work on SCE. Making a ruckus.

Lessons for PUGSpdx pivot

GN: set up the architecture, even if the instructors don't want it. PUGS QR codes to videos.

AV: Local businesses: people have to connect classes to the city.

AR: Give people a lot of milk because they buy the cow. free 30-45 talks. Livestream. Give people a taste.

SM: power of altMBA. this is what I think people should learn and this is the whole way of learning. The real opportunity is defining what graduate school should be. Don't copy what graduate school SHOULD be. how can i produce something that produce outcomes that are incredible. message about money. if you think $90 is expensive, you will transmit it. people are willing to pay $thousands of for YOU.  they will ask for another one immediately. psychology of money, it's a throwaway.

GN: cohort. wordpress blog. badging program??? Cohort 21 Masters program. $1000 for a month. 

TA: Generous to a fault, except to yourself. Quit limiting yourself.

Abbe: Bottle of wine. Staggered pricing. PUGS is your vision and your personality. People will buy into that. Inject your personality into that. Repeat your why and inject why you do it. you get to set the culture. 

GN: Need a cadre of teachers, to make it notable. Training teachers to be generous.