Disrupting Education Some More. Here’s how.
The 70s saw an array of subjects being disrupted and industrialised to accommodate a demand for knowledge. For instance literary programmes divested from journalism and its critique. Journalism would now fashion its own needs and departments.
What followed was a finessing of a modular system of learning via fixed standardised units of knowledge. Each course you entered was structured by a set of offerings.
Fixed modules work because largely what you learn is the nominal requirement for industry. It works because you can readily transition into the world of work’s epic cog wheel. It works because in the finance model one lecturer can purportedly meet the needs of supposedly 300 students in a session. Why fix this?
But what if you want to transfer your knowledge and skills to another field that is burgeoning or wide of your discipline. In their best seller Designing Your Life, authors Bill Burnet and Dave Evans write:
…in the United States only 27 percent of college grads end up in a career related to their majors.
Your choice of subjects being the lodestar for your intended career represents one of several of education’s dysfunctional belief, say the authors.
What then if there’s a real-world problem that requires solving in your industry, and needs an innovative touch? For example, how do you work within the law to prevent tenants, particularly students, being ripped off by landlords? What if the subjects you’re learning are anaemic to cultural and racial issues that envelop everyday life?
What if you seek to maximise, or explore new technologies towards your career choice, and hence frame new policies. Traditionally, these events are left for researchers and PhD students. Why?
How do you bridge the gap between the two positions, or otherwise drive innovation in Post grad/grad programmes? Before I frame some answers that are part of our Story hub, a bit about my colleague and I.
James Taylor, known as JT whom I work with, is a creative technologist whose insight into technical problem-solving and creative solutions is second to none.
Apple, Google, BBC, British Government, and a Pulitzer judge are some of the institutions or personnel that have commented on my work, from associations.
David offers a rare combination of skills in hands-on field reporting, technical innovations, and academic teaching and research — BBC
Imagine your first day walking into a lecture room and being met with the comment there is no set curriculum. That doesn’t mean there’s no structure, it’s just means you will eventually build your own learning programme. Imagine too that you’re being nudged to experiment on real world problems.
- How do you create a micro financing scheme to help people, who would normally not save money, save?
- How could you prevent streams of teachers from leaving the profession in their first year of training?
- How could you prevent politicians from blatantly lying on television and getting away with it? This one’s my pet project using AI.
There are two constants for the environment cohorts enter: ‘failing’ is part of the process of learning. The journey will reveal a multitude of problem-solving incidents. An examination of the top set requirements for a future world of work include: creativity, complex problem solving as collaborations, and critical thinking and storytelling.
On the first day it’s not unusual for cohorts to look unsure. “Trust us”, I ask. Fortunately too we have graduates from the previous year who echo this.
“David and JT are going to introduce you to a number of games. We won’t tell you what they are but trust them. It’ll reveal some things”, say the previous graduates to the new intake.
A safe space created from the onset encourages serious gaming and inclusivity. There’s no such thing as an erroneous question and there’s a method for feedback and critiquing we’ll soon adopt that should bolster confidence.
Part of the process will not be unfamiliar to hacks. Multiple ideations, rapid paper prototyping and stress testing towards a product. At a BBC Hackathon we attended (later with students), the process is as follows:
(A) Ideate on a problem. Bringing multiple views together
(B) Create an ideas dashboard, which can be stress tested
(C) Produce a workflow mind map
(D) Create an illustration of the prototype
(E) Apply it to the product
(F) Story tell the outcome
(G) Presentation to Industry figures
However, it’s the general pedagogy within each stage that’s been refined into a fresh methodology.
What makes for a good idea? How do you research ideas and critically review them in a limited space of time? How does the process of visualisation enhance problem solving? What’s the ideal delivery process that might include decks, VR, AI, films, websites etc? And how do you read the audience via demographics and personal traits? These and many more challenges emerge from the programme.
Specific disciplinary knowledge via pecha kucha exchanges can be crafted to each stage to enhance learning. From a standing start to presentations it can be anything from 6 contact points lasting four hours as a small group, and then four x 4 afterwards for each individual pursuing projects.
There’s an emphasis placed on memory and its retention and how that aligns with autobiographical memories that shape behaviour.
In a number of experiments conducted over the years, it’s interesting to note how younger audiences generally veer to cinema stories that reflect autobiographical memories and constant plot change, rather than films that focus on characters and solidified themes.
This matches with work by Kate McLean, professor of Psychology at Western Washington University. She uncovered distinct preferences between young and older groups in shaping in story styles and their identities.
This has wider implication in the way younger audiences engage with news, details even, and social media. Behind the scenes are industry mentors who bring real world experience to the cohort’s journey of discovery.
Flipping classrooms isn’t new. You can cast your thoughts back to Wired Magazine’s popular 2012 article: University Just Flipped by Steven Leckart and Tom Cheshire. Udacity was introduced to a wider group and Khan’s academy proved proof of purpose.
In 2012 too, I was nine years into a teaching programme showing Masters students how to build online platforms in six — one day contact points. It was straight out of dotcoms, with students doing death marches and going down rabbit holes.
They would deliver their pitches and insight to senior personnel at google and the BBC drawing much praise.
Years later I would head up our first story lab. What’s different now is the acknowledgement of different models, of how Westcentric ways of working aren’t the only approach to pedagogy, and just how pressing the issue is for not just writing about seemingly intractable problems e.g. Climate, but creating various solutions.
The approach seeks to bring learning towards questioning or reframing policy in design and systems thinking. To do so, doesn’t just require necessarily flipping knowledge, but reworking it. From reviewing several processes, from Lean, beyond Design thinking, Codestar and the Toyota Way, what we came up with was the Stacked model.
Given both our science-based backgrounds and arts, we’ve introduced an added dimension. Thus far it seems to be working.
The feedback from students has been encouraging; we believe it has the potential to be scaled up and in effect that’s where the story begins this May, when we open the doors to a wider group to participate in the programme and document their findings in a new journal we’re launching.
In my next post I ask readers to rethink how storytelling and journalism works in an ever complex system of info ops , misinformation and the diffusion of power by acknowledging story craft framed around statecraft
If you’re interested in hearing more, collaborating etc, you can contact me here by leaving a message or at Gyimahd(at)Cardiff.ac.uk
