University Business - December 2012 - (Page 69)

and universities to make choices between quality and cash. Pedagogy. How we teach has come under fire. From the preciousness of “sage on the stage” to co-created teaching experiences, how best to engage students in meaningful learning continues to be uncertain. This lack of clear direction is exacerbated by the inconsistent and uneven application of new learning about learning. Source of content and curriculum. Western Governors University, a successful not-for-profit online university, buys all of its curriculum, or accumulates it from the open source community. Teachers do not write books for their classes and they do not develop curriculum. They deliver curriculum. How pervasive this approach becomes is uncertain. Flipped classrooms encourage the continued development of free and open content that students can study. The adoption of open sourced content creates a common repository from which to build educational experiences. That algebra can be standardized is of little dispute. Whether educational institutions can converge on a set of algebra assets that can be “mashed up” for student consumption remains to be seen. These are just a few of the uncertainties that will affect global educational instructions in the future, regardless of their business model. Why Scenarios Help Scenarios help organizations navigate the future by putting a name on uncertainty. It cannot be stated too emphatically that people easily ignore what can’t be known, or apply a biased value and pretend they know what the future will bring. Scenario planning forces organizations to confront what they can’t know, put a name on it, and then think about the implications for their institution. One of the most disabling issues in public higher education at the moment is the inability for public institutions to imag- UBTech announces keynote speakers Vanishing Boundaries... See page 4 The loss of trust ubtechconference.com in educational institutions also comes from the inability of many institutions to offer a compelling ROI. Vanishing Boundaries... ine a future of increased funding and operational surpluses. Plans ubtechconference.com are curtailed by mental models focused on cost reductions, revenue enhancements, personnel layoffs, operational efficiencies, and program eliminations. Scenario planning can help provide the freedom to imagine a more positive future, unleash creative forces, and explore alternative entry points for activating new ideas. More specifically, scenarios help organizations: Create a consensus reality. If you don’t put a name on uncertainty, people will have their own lists that cast doubt and foster misunderstanding. By making uncertainty explicit, organizations can make better decisions because they share a well-documented, and common view of ...Emerging Opportunities ubtechconference.com the world and the forces at play in it. Discover emergent ideas. As the uncertainties play off against each other, new ideas will emerge, and new perspectives will help existing ideas become richer and more resilient. Anticipate the future. Scenarios facilitate the development of implications that, combined with monitoring, provide a framework for rapidly identifying and mitigating risk, or leveraging new opportunities more competitively. Avoid surprises. Scenarios offer a kind of mental practice for the future. If you only have one future and don’t understand the uncertainties that underlie it, any deviation from your forecast becomes a surprise. Scenarios also help organizations couch their visions in more realistic tones. Rather than setting a single stake in the ground, they let organizations actively see the bubble of uncertainty that surrounds their vision. As the future unfolds, internal decisions and external factors eliminate certainty in one area, while unleashing new uncertainties. Elements of the vision, therefore, may be drawn out or brought in. Vision is not a fixed thing against a fixed point in time, but a dynamic reflection of what the organization wants to be in the future, reflected in the very real path of moving into the future. And like the strategy, the vision should be more detailed than a single phrase or idea—it should consist of a set of elements, each of which holds its own aspiration date. Those dates can be easily modified to reflect the organization’s current perspective on that particular element, in light of its current priorities. ➜ See Daniel Rasmus’ UBTech 2012 presentation at ubtechconference.com/danielrasmus Registration opens January 2013 ubtechconference.com universitybusiness.com December 2012 | 69 http://www.ubtechconference.com/danielrasmus http://www.ubtechconference.com http://www.ubtechconference.com http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - December 2012

University Business - December 2012
Contents
Editor’s Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Money Matters
Independent Outlook
5 Reasons Flipped Classrooms Work
Test Driving Mobile
Open Source Myth Busters
Models of Efficiency
1st Annual Readers’ Choice Awards
Education Innovators
Viewpoint
Endowments: New Questions
End Note

University Business - December 2012