Nothing is more important to the success of the learning process than motivation.

Talent is important, but talent without motivation simply doesn’t cut it.  Curiosity, persistence and a spirit of creative accomplishment are indispensable.  It’s the responsibility of the instructor and the institution to ensure that the learning environment is one that encourages openness, individuality, teamwork, sound problem solving and creativity.

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.

This blog lists examples of core competencies as a starting point for discussion about addressing the gap between graduate skills and employment standards.

This post, together with the last one, is intended to elicit feedback and comments from institutions and companies interested in exploring standards as a framework for further development and to promote discussion on standards development. It describes a simple standards system for discussion. 

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.

Every day we are exposed to a rapidly changing, moment-by-moment digital media environment that demands strategic filtering and immediate response to a multitude of visual and auditory stimuli and their underlying messages. Constant digital distractions, multitasking and task switching plague our ability to concentrate, our aptitude for sustained intellectual focus and they interfere with our capacity for deep, persistent engagement.   No wonder students find it difficult to focus!

Too many institutions are using Industrial Age methods to instruct digitally immersed Information Age students for the evolving Conceptual Age. It’s time to rethink and reinvent how we learn, share, mentor, and collaborate  in our consumer-driven, multitasking ecosystem where new technologies rapidly terraform the media landscape. 

Many of our instructional methods are poorly implemented and frequently obsolete.  Now is the time to reevaluate how we teach, how we learn and how to best prepare ourselves for the coming transformation.