Gamechanging education 1

Gamechanging education 1

D.W. NicollDirector of Entrepreneurship, Student placement and IndusityLimkokwing Lesotho

Co-evolving TLA with industry

The objective of this presentation is to:

1. Provide some foundation to why we must link with industry;

2. Argue why each of us must all aim at employability as the endgame for our students, not just graduation;

3. Consider the skills necessary for our students to compete for jobs or clients at the local, regional and global levels;

4. Consider offering a broader range of skills beyond domain-specific or technical academic skills;

5. All in all, accommodate to what is special or unique about Lesotho – or any other particular operating environment - and how best to orientate our programmes and TLA to best suit economy and society;

‘Industry’ refers here to organisations operating in the private as well as public and not-for-profit sectors

What do we do?

We work in classrooms and labs with students, imparting knowledge, sharing experiences, giving examples, and practicing necessary skills

If the classroom is uncomfortable and the imparting of knowledge is impeded due to our lack of it. If the practicing of necessary skills is prevented by non-functioning or non-existent equipment, and the sharing of examples hampered due to us not having any, then the only experiences shared will surely be negative ones…

Why don’t students just go and learn what they must in the factory, workshop, office, and lab?

Why don’t students just go out to the communities in which they live and learn or just simply do what needs to be done?

All in the hope of when they graduate, they are employed or are able to self-employ themselves… doing what they want, or doing what they can…

With high unemployment underscoring the skills market in Lesotho, there is more of an imperative for us to enable them to sell themselves and their talents, and to develop within them, commercial and entrepreneurial outlooks – we need them to be…

gamechangers…

People often says the ‘mindset’ has to change in Lesotho if it wants to progress, so what is this mindset and why must it change?

How can it change?

Gamechangers don’t accept things only on face value, they will break the rules if necessary, interrogate the rulebook, steal, assimilate, incorporate, mash-up, unlearn, reverse engineer, and dismantle, use the old as new, and mask the new as old, all in the name of creativity and innovation. They are flexible and they make the problem malleable...

We want them to be restless, to look at how things could be improved, and how to improve upon things...

Is this a picture of Lesotho’s economy?

45% unemployment, HIV, garment factories, remittances from mine workers declining...or

A place with a unique heritage, fabulous tourism opportunities, high literacy rates, great opportunities for entrepreneurs

Which is it to be, half-full or half-empty?

IS IT?

Or more

Towards luxury,

exclusivity,

distinction

Towards basic needs,

cooking, shelter, clothing,

health and hygiene

Towards security,

entertainment,

education, fashion

Food, water, sanitation, transport,

communications

Diamond encrusted iPOD, Versace helicopter

Solar cooker, Hippo water barrel

Very Small market, high cost

Super Large market low cost

"the Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP)-almost four billion people, or nearly two-thirds of humanity, who live at the bottom of the economic pyramid, with a vast majority of them struggling to survive on less than two dollars a day."

"a pressing business responsibility that is a significant new business opportunity."

Is the BoP best served and understood by local designers and design and social researchers, or by people from far away? There is a debate just now about the imperialism of humanitarian design? It join wider debates regarding economic aid, and land rights...

Its not just about building products for the poor, it is at the same time about sustainable design, humanitarian design, social entrepreneurship… being ‘ecofreindly’ and ‘green’ from necessity and not luxury

The old style of university has its roots in Northern, western religious study and has traditionally stood aloof or ‘outside’ of society, at best it has observed society from its ivory tower, and reported to industry and government.

The modern university and design school is very much in the midst of societal problem solving, whether that is working out how patient care could be improved in local hospitals, to better supply networks for local farmers, through to improvements in shop design, through to designing a new range of signature outfits which could define and even brand the country.

Where are our graduates going?

Existing businesses in Lesotho. Resurrecting, revitalising and otherwise augmenting existing business processes.

The biggest challenge is to persuade local businesses that good design is good for business, that they can improve the propensity of business through design to compete on local, regional or global markets.

Existing businesses in neighbouring South Africa.

Our graduates must be of a calibre sufficient to compete in the S.A. Skills market, against local candidates. They must have the presentation skills and portfolios that help them win.

Create new businesses in Lesotho.

The significant challenge lies in the imperative to create a strong creative industries cluster in Lesotho. The pioneers of this should be our best students working in new start-ups with seed capital, serving the local public, private and not-for-profit sectors. They will also vie for regional and global business by undercutting cost and delivering high quality output – a.k.a. Nollywood, Philippines animation, IT in Bangalore...

“Our sons and daughters will not hew, forge, mine, plough or weld. They will serve, design, advise, create, compose, analyse, judge and write.’”

Charles Leadbeater

They need to have skills and knowledge recognised by industry to deliver value at the local, regional, and global levels

Technical and cognitive academic skills – programming, developing a brochure or website, producing a documentary, writing a magazine article, doing a report on a company, designing a new skirt, developing a plan for new hotel interiors and so on… They need more than this…

Employability skills are also sometimes referred to as ‘generic skills’, ‘capabilities’, ‘enabling skills’ or ‘key competencies’.

*Communication skills*Teamwork skills*Problem-solving skills*Initiative and enterprise skills*Planning and organising skills*Self-management skills*Learning skills*Technology skills

*Academic ability (27%)*Seeing problems from different angles (50%)*Grasping complex information (68%)

Daniel H. Pink refers to ‘the conceptual age’ – as a new age in economic history which will elevate those who are nimble and creative

From the Agricultural Ag to the Conceptual Age

18th Century

19th Century

20th Century

21st Century

Agricultural Age (Farmers)

Industrial Age(Factory Workers)

Information Age (Knowledge Workers)

Conceptual Age

(Creators and Empathizers)

ATG

(Affluence, Technology, Globalisation)

Daniel H. Pink “A Whole New Mind”

Pink’s three questions for creative individuals and businesses

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?

2. Can a computer do it faster

3. Is what I am offering in demand in an age of abundance?

Link technical and cognitive skills and employability skills to industry

i.e. What team working skills are involved in TV production?

Which self-management skills are involved in producing a new logo design?

What are your students aiming at when they finish their studies?

Ask them repeatedly?

Can they sell fish in a unique way in the market? place?

What are your students aiming at when they finish their studies?

Then where should we be aiming our teaching at? What should and how should they learn? How should assessments be carried out? What are out benchmarks?

Do they need a portfolio?

Do they need strong presentation skills, to package and sell themselves and what they can do?

If they want to work locally – what is the current state of the industry? Who are the players? How developed is the sector/local economy? What are the present challenges? How much room is there for improvement?

When an industry is new or incumbant, students will have to know how to package and sell unfamiliar skills to those who may need persuading –they, and we, must educate business to the relevance of the creative industries

If they want to work regionally – what is the state of the industry? Who are the main players? What are they looking for in new staff?

When an industry is established, students will have to have regionally comparable skills levels and know how to compete for jobs or clients

So what’s the difference between the workplace and the lab or classroom?

Should there be a difference? If so, what? If not, why are we doing what we do?

How do we add value to a society, to an economy?

Classes and labs are spaces where we can trial and error in safety, ask questions without having to be accountable financially, criticise the way things are depicted and done without the criticism of a fussy boss or client – through this students can orientate towards a discipline or field or careers

As lecturers we are all leaders.

We have in our everyday working lives a fairly high degree of autonomy in deciding upon the way in which we work with students.

what topics to include and which to leave out; the order in which those topics will be presented; which pedagogical methods to use (e.g., lecture, discussion, hands-on experiments); appropriate means of assessing the students; materials and technology to employ; how to get feedback; etc.

As an instructor, you make decisions about:

Worst case scenario

We could make a pact with students, tell them not to turn up, nor will we, they in turn will give us good feedback, we in turn will give good attendance reports and provide exam answers, and mark them all as ‘A’s

The net result

Students which have learned nothing, can do nothing, nothing more than what they came to us with – we then foster students which are not in anyway prepared for subsequent, more advanced classes.

Nor are they being prepared in any respect for work, locally or regionally, they are students who are not, in any meaningful way, able or equipped with the skills, know-how or attitudes to start their own business.

At best they only benefited for a while from a government sponsored loan of money which they will never pay back… University is only a place to hang out with other young people, and in some cases make them pregnant

We as an institution will have a short shelf life

better case scenario

The university provides teaching kits – module outlines, sometimes student hand-outs, lecturer notes, assessment examples, PowerPoint slides.

Lecturers use them verbatim – that is, how they come, regardless if they are good or bad, localised or not, and with very little personal input. They switch the slides on automatic and they leave the room…

MANAGEMENT

77

Organisational Authority

Delegationof Authority

Degree ofCentralisation

Chain ofCommand

Line versusStaff Authority

The vertical line of authority in an organisation

• Clarifies who reports to whom• Unity of command• workers report to only one boss• matrix organisations violate this principle

Line authority: the right to command immediate subordinates in the chain of command

Staff authority: the right to advise but not command others

Delegation of Authority: The assignment of direct authority and responsibility to a subordinate to complete tasks for which the manager is normally responsible.

[R.A.A]

Centralisation of authority: primary authority is held by upper managementDecentralisation: significant authority is found in lower levels of the organisationStandardisation: solving problems by applying rules, procedures, and processes

MANAGEMENT

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Why study job design?

Every manager must know the relationship between how organisation being structured, the job within and the linkages to organisational processes

MANAGEMENT

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Job design

SpecialisedJobs

Job Rotation, Enlargement,

Enrichment

JobCharacteristics

Model

A job that is a small part of a larger task or process Jobs are simple, easy to learn, and economical Can lead to low satisfaction, high absenteeism, &

employee turnover

Job Rotation: periodically moving workers from one specialised job to another

Job Enlargement: increasing the number of tasks performed by a worker

Job Enrichment: adding more tasks and authority to an employee’s job

A job redesign approach: that seeks to increase employee motivation

Emphasizes internal motivation: experience work as meaningful, experience responsibility for work outcomes, knowledge of results

MANAGEMENT

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Job Characteristics Model

MANAGEMENT

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Intra-organisational Processes

Reengineering

Empowerment

BehaviouralInformality

The net result

Lecturers read off the slides or notes, or direct from the book and get the students to copy whiteboard after whiteboard of dead material…

This is tantamount to the infamous rote learning – very little thought is required by students, just good memory. In response, they want and need notes, they write cheat scripts, they need to remember… boring, poor experiences

Best case scenario

In teaching lecturers vet the teaching materials in terms of both being up-to-date and for local relevance, they aim to ask more questions than provide answers

They draw upon their depth knowledge of the subject derived from experience of working in a directly related industry, or from research projects in the subject area – this would certainly enliven or animate any presentation and discussion of the theories or their applications…

Students are happy to work their six hours a week self-directed study, they use it to research the questions posed in the lecture, to discover examples to share in the next class, interview or otherwise get data for business plans from real world sources, do design research by photographing local examples and contrasting these with found examples on the internet …

But then some of us have little direct knowledge of the subject itself, as we have come straight from being taught ourselves, or we have no or little teaching experience, or we have taught at only secondary school level, or we are teaching out of subject…

Compromise scenario

We can still let the students do the finding out, what is it they need to know, why they need to know it, where or from whom they can find it out…

The time to take ownership of a set

of modules is now

As we approach one full academic cycle, we will repeat modules, as we do our knowledge will consolidate and increase

With our university background we should all be able to conduct desk based self-directed study and research, that is, constantly update ourselves and our modules.

We should all be aware of the recent developments in the field or area, technology, theories, techniques, styles, flavas!

The opposite of rote learning is to teach students to think, to use, to do, to learn how to learn… The most prominent learning mode is through doing…

Through trial and error, through asking questions, through interrogating and investigating... Instead of providing all the answers lecturers ask of the students mainly questions.

Traditional instruction starts with the conclusion and then tells students of the main reasons why that conclusion is true. Doing this we rob students of the experience of working through the issues and asking the key questions.

We often rob them of the most important point to the teaching - the context or relevance of learning this subject or topic – against how they will have to think through it in the workplace.

In the workplace students typically work in different conditions and under different circumstances – i.e. independent problem-solving and group problem-solving

A teaching example is when you want your students to gain the ability to work with others to solve a complex problem [course learning objective].

But if your students don't have basic teamwork skills [characteristic of the students], they may need training in that area before they can accomplish the objective you have set out.

You may not be comfortable teaching teamwork skills because it requires an active learning approach you’re not familiar with, or because it’s not your area of expertise [your qualities as an instructor].

In which case this is something to flag up to your PRL – they may devote some number of classes to developing student teamwork skills that will be taught by an expert in that area.

THANK YOU

Gamechanging education 1

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