The issue I want to raise this time is about the relationship between demonstrable creative production and the digital environment’s pressure for “quick and dirty” solutions for generating new ideas.   The pressure to demonstrate high quality skills is at the core of a show reel – to show what we can do and to distinguish one’s work from the competition.  This weighs heavily on the student and the learning institution and it’s tempting to find short cuts when we need to stand out from the rest.

In this post I describe the development and evaluation of a prototype training school in China that was the result of frustrations with formal education systems around the world.  Four key principles were used to formulate the program design, curricula and learning process - enhanced learning through rapid iteration, ubiquitous critique and feedback, critical and creative thinking and professional mentorship.

A training school was developed and ran for two years based on optimizing these principles and the results made available for evaluation and review.

Creative transformation means re-visioning the learning environment by adopting a set of principles that enable authentic learning experiences.  Traditional teaching techniques are no longer appropriate in a world of rapid technical and conceptual change. Successful learning practices need to be flexible and individualistic but also capable of mirroring professional practices at their best.  This post details a preliminary list of principles designed to establish a set of transformational practices that create and support authentic learning.

How do we best prepare ourselves, and those we train, mentor and educate, to acquire life-long learning skills for the Conceptual Age?   When imagination and creativity are more critical than facts and theories, the rapid evolution of our technical and conceptual environment demands that we rethink how, when and where we are to best acquire competencies that will sustain us in the coming years.

 

In this post, the author further expands on the core characteristics need to transform learning in formal institutions.

Assuming that a revolution in educational institutions is not only necessary but inevitable, key practices that can be designed into new learning frameworks must be open, flexible, and customized.

Rather than simply throw new technologies into the mix, it essential to transform the methods we use today. This means a complete reevaluation of what works and what doesn't work. It's everyone's responsibility to be fully prepared for the future and that demands we acknowledging the urgent need for radical change in all our learning communities.

Breakthrough ideas have never been more important than they are now in education and training because current practices are simply inadequate to the task of preparing for the future. You can expect a lot of resistance to change – on many levels up and down the academic hierarchy – including from your cohorts.

Sometimes blind faith is more important than academic logic when it comes to breaking new boundaries and this is an example of why experimentation and breaking boundaries are so important if we are to reinvent learning.

Companies need a valid, reliable, unbiased and efficient screening method by which to evaluate the performance standards of job applicants.

Educational and training institutions should be able to guarantee that graduate skills meet predictable, industry-accepted standards of performance to employers and to their graduates.