The DGree Group: great value and good thinking.

On January 7-8, about 100 people, drawn from a wide variety of educational, technical, labor, non-profit, and business backgrounds, gathered at Cavallo Point, a conference center in Sausalito. Sponsored by the Lumina Foundation, the topic was “Envisioning the Future of Higher Education”. For this old warrior, it was a bright moment in time when principles and potential for the future of higher education were expressed clearly and honestly, without regard for whether they would go down easily with the traditional academy.Called the DGree group, the conversation was tactical: how to protect the need for robust innovation in a conservative financial and political climate. But it was also very strategic: articulating principles that will guide the unfolding of new educational delivery systems. They included:

1. Dramatically enhanced recognition and portability of learning is essential.

2. There will be a dynamic ecosphere in which most institutions will not work alone, the platform will be the organizing archtecture,  the netwowork will be the source of expertise, and students will demand more choice, more control, and more personalization.

3. Outcomes-based education, with carefully developed rubrics and third party independent evaluation to assure quality  will be a core element of this new more mobile curriculum.

4. The definition of academic quality will focus not on faculty credentials, but on reliable, valid, and consistent assessment of learning, including a separate, third party review.

There was much more. But as I left Sausalito for the Consumer Electronics Show Higher Education Summit , it was clear that the conversation had moved to a new level.  There has been agreement that the crisis we face, failing to successfully educate those who have been previously marginalized, is a direct threat to our national social, civic, and economic prosperity. We need fundamental change.

This meeting underscored that the existing institutions will not be able to control the fundamental change that is coming, because the levers for that change live outside the academy. These changes are coming, whether we are ready or not, driven by the new ecology of learning. For more on that, see Jossey-Bass, Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning (Smith, 2010).

Other participants of interest included:

lens

Carnegie Foundation

CEOs for Cities

Bennington College