Starting up my future of higher education seminar this week

Last night I held the first meeting of my Future of Higher Education seminar at Georgetown University. The students were awesome.

Here I’d like to share some of the thinking behind the class design, as well as the syllabus.

The topical goal is to explore the future of higher ed, obviously, which means diving into two domains: the futures field and how the academic ecosystem functions. Each class meeting engages both of those worlds, twining them together to help students forecast. For futures work I have them try out different methods, including horizon scanning, trends analysis, scenario creation, and gaming. For higher ed they read scholarly books and articles about academia’s present functioning, recent history, and unfolding future.

I’ve taught this before, and have changed things somewhat. I wasn’t happy with how we handled technology and education and knew this was a major interest for LDT students, so I cut a number of those readings and instead give students space to design several sessions, from topics to materials to exercises. I’ll prepare and assist them, in keeping with the program’s emphasis on design thinking and student empowerment.

On the technology side I’ve found that students didn’t take natively to RSS or Twitter lists, so I’m going to mandate that this time. They have to choose one tech and practice it over the semester. For RSS readers I’m pointing to Inoreader. For Twitter lists, Twitter. We’ll also consider…