...helping higher education contribute to a livable future

 Strategy 

2002
Q4

HIGHER EDge brochure, packet and web site. 501(c) 3. Two Board Meetings.
Develop and present models and literature promoting and clarifying key concepts
Outline book: Higher Education and Human Survival: Technology, Truth & Transformation in the Global Community and begin draft
Interview key people to develop ideas and gain critique, additional sources, and support (see Advisory Council, below). Study related research and publications*
Identify critical decision points and develop strategies for influencing outcomes*
Develop related data-base to support dynamic web-site, to track concepts, sources, and people and to support development of grants, projects, and publications*

2003
Q1-3

Finish draft of book, continuing related activities. Use draft to support the following:
Establish and maintain Advisory Council of people interested in these issues and concepts for dialogue, sources, critique, promotion of work, and exploration of partnerships* [See also “Institute for Advanced Learning Systems”, IALS, below.]
Evaluate and write grant and business proposals working with carefully selected partners to implement strategies listed below.
Prioritize proposal options based upon (1) advice from Board and Council, (2) viability of opportunities and partners, (3) revenue needs, and (4) strategic importance (i.e. vis a vis timing, positioning, and the nature and magnitude of change that may be leveraged by the proposed actions.)

Q3-4

Circulate draft to Board, Council, & key reviewers. Market book. Revise. Publish.
Publish articles promiting book in Technology Source, Converge, Syllabus, League for Innovation, Change Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, etc.*

2004-7

With Advisory Council, take active role in defining and implementing standards. Seek contacts and speaking engagements intended to influence standards.
Implement grant and business proposals, developing and testing prototypes for content, tools, and learning, community, and knowledge objects.
Initiate other writing and learning resources development projects, in an open source environment as far as possible.
Distribute and/or market products and publications. Seek commercial partnerships where consistent with goals.

*On-going activities

1. Develop and maintain a dynamic knowledge repository that supports sharing of questions and answers among those in the network and that provides examples and sources usable in courses that are teaching these principles or by educators acting upon them, emphasizing vivid examples of proven or promising solutions.
   1. Analyze In Context, Yes! Magazine, Change, and the publications, web-sites, and list serves of organizations with similar goals for specific examples, tools, and contacts
   2. Select best knowledge management software and develop or adapt an appropriate framework for organizing these materials
   3. Promote community among, contributions to, and reliance upon this knowledge base by educators and those seeking to align with these goals the of their professions, higher education, and society
   4. Locate, develop or help develop viable economic models to support these knowledge functions
2. Develop or locate learning products and processes, e.g. software, knowledge tools, curriculum, materials, policies and protocols that embody HIGHER EDge concepts and result in the outcomes listed below. Conduct pilots to test and implement these products and processes in as wide an array of usage contexts, purposes, and users as possible. Promote, distribute, share and market them.
   1. Support the most effective approaches to learning
   2. Teach and/or promote the use of higher learning (college success, information literacy, critical discourse, writing, team-building, problem-solving,inter-cultural and non-violent communication). Build them into courses and across the curriculum. Promote their incorporation into professional standards.
   3. Integrate key fields of knowledge, using the “Mandala” or other integrated, problem/performance-based approaches to defining and fulfilling the breadth requirements of tertiary education (with versions also targeting secondary and primary schooling)
   4. Put “knowledge in place” questions, options, and solutions in the hands of designers, decision-makers, educators, professionals, and local farms, businesses, and communities, urban, village
   5. Supplement and/or redirect professional standards and the content of courses and on the job tools towards knowledge and practice supportive of a livable future
   6. Provide a revenue stream sufficient to make HIGHER EDge self-supporting
3. With and as part of the above, seek to influence standards and practices
   1. Network: attend meetings, research web-sites, participate in list-serves and otherwise connect with organizations and individuals who share these concerns
   2. Develop a data-base that identifies expertise of interested people, links to their writings and resources and facilitates the sharing of ideas and materials and on issues and the development of the Institute described below
   3. Maintain regular contact with network, soliciting their input, sharing materials, participating in and supporting their activities, promoting on-line and in-person dialogue on key issues, and influencing their venues and networks
   4. Convene meetings, real and virtual, among educational and technology leaders to consider and refine the understandings discussed above and to involve them in HIGHER EDge activities as described below
   5. Identify bodies able to adopt and enforce international standards. Network and convene meetings with them, make presentations at their conferences and get on their policy-making agendas
   6. Identify key efforts to establish or implement international standards and seek to influence them
      1. WASC accreditation of foreign institutions as meeting American standards
      2. GATS agreement
      3. EU common University standards
      4. Proposed new Educational Master Plan for California
      5. Standards for graduate education, professional certification and good practice in key professions In each case, the objective would be to make these standards center on social, environmental, and economic sustainability; self-organizing skills among workers; cultural inclusion; and accessibility to poor and disenfranchised people.
4. With these leaders, locate, or if needed, establish an Institute for Advanced Learning Systems to promote international standards, conduct research, and/or offer graduate degrees, and collaborate with other institutions and organizations to promote HIGHER EDge’s goals and strategies as follows:
   1. Identify long term knowledge and career development needs of educators, trainers, managers and policy-makers who will work in and across distributed learning environments—academic, corporate, communal, and international
   2. Promote standards and program content based upon HIGHER EDge principles and practices that meet these needs
   3. Develop viable social, economic, and institutional models that permit the widespread implementation of these standards on a sustainable basis
   4. Promote desirability of such standards and content in the design of other graduate programs and in the hiring and promotion of educators working in academic, and government settings
   5. Consult, contract, partner and otherwise collaborate with efforts throughout other institutions, e.g. innovative government, socially responsible businesses and coops,village development, etc. wherever these embody and advance the conditions of a livable future, particularly as these affect learning opportunities, academic, corporate, and civic.

• Divided No More, by Parker Palmer, first published in Change Magazine, where he urges that the transformation of higher education may be within our power, but not through bureaucratic reforms. Rather it requires a social movement on the scale of the civil rights or women’s movement—and the transformation of our own deepest perceptions on a par with what those movements both demanded and enabled.
• Finding the Leverage for Change, wherein Robert Gilman suggests how to find precisely the points in an organizational system where the application of effort to induce change may yield the greatest payoffs.