Sunday Posts

  Popular belief may hold that there is nothing better than getting out of the building and learn from doing things . Still, the cha otic, costly and unique nature of experience means that these may not translate into meaningful learning. The data bears it out: Though the employers give weight to relevant work experience, the correlation between work experience and work performance is at best tenuous. This is a serious limitation for all work-based learning models, including apprenticeships and co-operative education .   The key to learning from experience is a prepared mind. It is not enough to have the experience , but the person having the experience must be able to engage consciously in the activity . Always be learning should be the motto, and each action should be understood in its context. To construct a learning system that enables our learners to do this, we educate our learners through a learn-connect-lead cycle.   Learn-Connect-Lead   Learning is ...

  The limits of experiential learning     Guilty as charged , we evangelised experiential learning as the most appropriate education format to meet the demands of rapidly changing workplaces.   Dismayed by over-reliance on uninteresting lectures with hundreds of slides, we emphasised practical enga gement. Our point was that the solitary content consumption, whether from books or from videos, does not allow anyone to prepare for rapid shifts in technology or workplace practices. Instead, the lear ners need to work with other people, as most work today is done in teams, and they should solve real-life problems, as only by application are thin gs really learnt.   But there must be more than this if one is  to create a learning experience in the twenty-first century. That application is a better way of learning than reading textbooks is rather well known. No one denies that experiential learning works better in preparing for practical work. Rather, it ...

Last year, I went in search of serendipity. It was part recovery - my previous stab at entrepreneurship not having worked out - and part exploration - of living unexpectedly. So, I took on something quite contrary to my nature: I bottled my natural inclinations to experiment and took on a process-oriented role. I decided to live on the other side of the fence, right in the middle of employer-land. As I gradually near the end of this year-long 'experiment', I am, perhaps quite naturally, in a reflective mood. The experience has been very rewarding in more than one way.  The project I ran was successful, achieving its mandate in time and within budget, and I am sure I shall look back at this year with some satisfaction. My role was to introduce a completely new way of doing things within the bounds of a conservative organisation in a conservative and risk-averse sector. Therefore, the appreciation that the work received is really remarkable. It is truly gratifying to s...

In 2013, when we started U-Aspire, I developed a certification for Global Business Professional. This was endorsed by UK's Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) and subsequently, we got this recognised for Masters credit by the University of Greenwich. However, when we started marketing, we put more effort in selling longer programmes like an Higher National Diploma, offering a pathway to UK degrees. This is what everyone apparently wanted to talk about, and we somehow accepted that as a small company with little capital, we did not have the wherewithal to change the conversation. And, yet, when I look back at the U-Aspire experience with the benefit of hindsight, I consider this to be one of our 'original sins', as we got to obsessed with degrees. With the talk of degrees, comes the question of ranking, legitimacy and the rest, a conversation a small and unknown company can hardly win. Alternative credentials, even if new and unknown, has its own attractions, and,...

The problem of connecting educators and employers is not a new one. There are many organisations and institutions working at creating this interface, some more successfully than others. The field is full of well-meaning individuals and fascinating ideas, some more workable than others. However, one key lesson, a common one, has perhaps been ignored by most of the people: That no closed, proprietary solution may actually work. This should have been obvious in a field where the key problem arise because of the closed, proprietary approaches. The Educators mostly believe they are doing a great job - at least, the best possible one - and the degrees and grades they give out, under the full authority of the state and with the gravitas of their quality assurance, should be accepted at the face value by the employers. The employers, in turn, believe that the people they require should appear, with right skills and attitude, a perfect understanding of their cultures and customers, an...

I have been working on Projects-Based Learning, and recorded my experiences and reflections on this blog as I went along. Through this engagement, I have learnt the following things: 1. Content is over-rated. Because it costs money and effort to create, content owners believe Content equals Learning. Yes, the learners use content to learn, but they do not learn from content. It is the baseline, not an end in itself. 2. Teachers make a lot of difference, but not through 'teaching'. The relationships that underpin teaching, rather than the process of teaching, as in delivering lectures, is fundamental to learning. A good teacher knows the learners - not just their 'strengths and weakness', but their fears, aspirations, what inspires and intimidates them, what they love and loath. The act of 'teaching' is more about inspiring, empowering and connecting, than delivering, disciplining and evaluating. 3. Because the way we have come to see learning, a...

Whether one is a technology utopian or a skeptic, everyone seems to agree that we are seeing some revolutionary technological breakthroughs and that these would change our lives inalterably (the disagreements, mostly, are about whether this would be good or bad). The focus of my work is to think what these changes mean for work and for education, and how educational innovations would be fit for this 'second machine age'.  Fundamentally, I believe that we are entering a THIRD age of what we have come to call 'Higher Education'. And, by this, I mean the social functions related to creation and dissemination of knowledge necessary to define the relationship between the nature and us, and indeed, inbetween ourselves. I use the broad definition to stay outside various policy terms - college, universities, research and teaching institutions etc - and focus on the fundamental idea, that our relationships with nature and between ourselves is a knowledge process that requi...

There is a certain role of 'degree' and 'diploma' in our society.  These, supported by a generally elaborate regulation structure and recognition from Governments, are not unlike the currency: A diploma holder's worth is transparent and understood generally as a mark of competence. Also, it is important to acknowledge the link between the degree and diploma and commercial employment. We can indulge in as much fantasy about monastic life and pure quest of knowledge for its own sake, but most of the state-funded, modern, mass education system is closely tied to the requirements of the industrial society and its employers, both state and commercial houses [as well as the Research Universities, which should be seen as a specific kind of employer with a specific requirement]. Degrees and Diplomas, therefore, are currencies of competence, to be accepted by the employers. However, we have arrived at a stage where the regulation structure is too elaborate and ...