What Should a 21st Century Education Look Like? Ten Hints
Higher education (and education in general) is changing.
Not only are our existing educational models expensive and inefficient, we too often don’t help students learn how to learn, or how to adapt and thrive in the 21st century.
I’ve been researching innovative developments in the future of education (like agile design thinking frameworks), and here are some of the coolest trends and programs that I’ve found. If you know of other inspiring visions of what education could be, please send them my way!
Coolest Resources I’ve Found (this Week) In The Future of Education
Apple’s DNA = Technology + Liberal Arts: Steve Jobs (in 2011) gives us a nice framework for the following list of resources. He says: “technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the result that makes our hearts sing.”
Big Picture Learning: An interesting framework for K-12 education that can definitely apply to adult education. In their words: “It is our vision that all students live lives of their own design, supported by caring mentors and equitable opportunities to achieve their greatest potential.”
Minerva Habits of Mind: Minerva, the most far-out (and foresighted) university I’ve heard of, is the subject of Building the Intentional University: Minerva and the Future of Higher Education (2018). They say: “Your undergraduate education needs to be as multidimensional as you are.” We agree.
Tiny Habits Free Five-Day Program: by the head of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford, BJ Fogg, this is an interesting example of how academic researchers are spinning their research into accessible programs for public benefit.
Mission Statement of New College of Florida: shows authentic design-based education in the context of a traditional liberal arts university: “an academic program that is uniquely suited for, and designed by, each individual student.”
Wayfinding Academy: Presenting (another) new vision of higher education, the founder, Michelle Jones, believes that education should help us get closer to the person we’d like to be, and that “the real choice is what life to pick.” With my long-time interest in Designing Your Life framework, I like this very much.
Ross School: In NYC, here’s an inspirational framework for K-12 education that clearly could extend beyond into a model for continuing education, since their framework is based on research on how we learn and how the brain develops.
Write of Passage School: A $4,000 (or $6,000) six-week program on how to use writing a blog to advance your career. A well-created and well-curated curriculum with some good free resources as well.
AltMBA: Designed by marketing guru Seth Godin, a $4500 four-week intensive sprint designed to give you everything a traditinal MBA will give you, but in four weeks. The traditional MBA is in trouble.
FutureProof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation: By NYT columnist Kevin Roose — Looks like a nice outline of how to be better humans, and retain the best of our humanity in the future of increasingly automated work.
Which of these ideas seem the most exciting to you? What did I miss?
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