...helping higher education contribute to a livable future

 Overview 

A global system of tertiary and professional education and training is emerging, as a natural concomitant of a global knowledge economy. The question is not whether such a system will emerge but of who will shape it and to what ends. At this watershed, small actions, well positioned, can have significant effects.

1. Promote understanding of the role of higher education, professional training, cultural traditions, and distributed knowledge systems in the creation of a livable future
2. Eliminate all institutional barriers to higher learning, enabling all people regardless of circumstance the means to contribute to and benefit from it
3. Reorient both general and professional education so that its standards, content, methods, and institutions enable our highest capacities and contribute to a livable future
4. Reengage academic and professional life with the life of the spirit, infusing social processes with compassion and openness to transformation
5. Preserve the capacity of higher education to pursue and teach knowledge for its own sake and to act as an independent source of validation, critique, and creativity

• Network among those who share these goals, connecting organizations and people within, outside of, and across institutions
• Ask the right questions
  • What are the conditions that best strengthen and fulfill people’s capacities to learn, heal, resolve conflicts, solve problems, and create knowledge?
  • Given that, what kinds of learning should we require and reward, in general and in the various professions?
  • What kinds of educational structures and processes should we require to best support that kind of learning for the greatest number of people?
  • What kinds of social, economic, and institutional practices—village and urban, corporate and civic, professional and informal—should education promote so as to best realize the benefit of these capacities among all people?
• Develop models synthesizing what is known so far and use them to organize concepts, examples, and sources within knowledge management systems that permit ready access to and sharing of knowledge in a form and at the point where it is most useful
• Publish web-pages, articles, and books advocating these goals and suggesting means for achieving them, pointing people to the above knowledge base; get them read by key decision-makers; and give related consultation, workshops, and speeches
• Leverage change already underway towards these answers by positioning HIGHER EDge queries, vision, and concepts at critical points of influence in the emerging global system of tertiary education, including in the:
  • Design, integration, distribution, and context of use for educational technology
  • Development, selection, labeling and organization of content
  • Goals, structure, sequence, and methodology of curriculum
  • Definition of national and international standards for primary and secondary schooling, and for the accreditation, funding, research, degree requirements, professional practice, hiring, promotion, and publication in tertiary education
  • Shaping of new structures, standards and practices for institutions
• Promote the redesign of institutional structures, allocation, feedback and reward systems towards values, standards, and practices most likely to yield a livable future
• Enable effective participation in the above by the greatest number and most diverse populations, especially the underserved and undervalued peoples of the world, using sustainable business models that keep open these resources for all

2002	HER EDge brochure, packet and web site. Selected presentations.
2003	Book: Higher Education and Human Survival: Truth, Technology, and Transformation in the Global Community Articles in Technology Source, Converge, Syllabus, League for Innovation, Change Magazine, and the Chronicle of Higher Education Development of initiatives, business and grant proposals
2004-9	Implementation of grants and initiatives (See Projects and Activities, below) Articles in publications directed towards the various professions

1. W9 Data-Base WWW/World-Wide Wisdom/What’s Working in the World
2. California Master Plan Incorporate conflict resolution, information, project and collaboration skills in courses required for graduation and college admissions
3. ALS Certification Influence accreditation and establish independent certification of exemplary on-line programs based on best practices and HI EDge goals
4. L2L On-Line Partnering with Learning to Learn® and Spherical Dynamics to assure access to core thinking and on-line research skills to virtually all learners
5. CD>CD Critical Discourse on a CD. Collaborative use of critical thinking skills in academic, professional, neighborhood, and village contexts, using examples from wide variety of cultures and purposes. Variety of interfaces for diverse uses, users.
6. TurnItOn: Collaborative writing skills for entrepreneurs, students, and activists, to be available on-line at point of use, for instruction & coaching, and for self-study (possibly with iParadigm’s TurnItIn)
7. Knowledge In Hand (Develop, embedding standards for different fields, using James Navarro’s HP system, Advantiv, other partners/products.)

1. Develop models and literature, promoting and clarifying key concepts
2. Connect people interested in these issues and concepts, attending, setting up and facilitating meetings.
3. Develop and maintain a dynamic knowledge repository that supports sharing of questions and answers and provides examples and sources usable in courses that are teaching these principles or by educators acting upon them
4. Connect with or help establish a formal structure to yield credibility, influence, and financial viability, e.g. a guild or an Institute for Advanced Learning Systems that can promote international standards, conduct research, develop or certify curriculum, and offer graduate degrees that promote HIGHER EDge goals and strategies above
5. With above, develop, locate, promote and market curriculum tools and materials as advanced learning systems [ALS] and components. Emphasize process skills and content integration, based on the Mandala, Critical Discourse and Clover models.
6. Conduct pilots to test and implement these concepts
7. Consult, contract, partner and otherwise collaborate to help institutions to discern, embody and advance the conditions of a livable future, particularly as these effect learning opportunities that occur in the academic, corporate, and civic domains

Explanations, glossaries, graphic models and draft chapters by Nancy Glock-Grueneich and related links that develop these concepts may be found at http://www.higheredge.org/.

Please email nglock@higheredge.org or register to receive quarterly updates, volunteer; to provide advice, feedback on drafts, links to related ideas or your own work; or to offer opportunities for partnerships, grant development, speaking, training, or consultation.