4.1 - Welcome to the Future: 10 Ways to Change the Paradigm of Higher Education

Hi, welcome back. We're in Part 2 of the course, "The Future of Higher Education", and we're filming today in the very beautiful Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. For the next 3 weeks, we will be focusing on the future of higher education, looking at the best examples we know of how to change the paradigms of education today.

So here we are, Week 4: The Future of Higher Education. We're in the beautiful National Museum of art designed by the famous architect Rafael Viñoly. It's a wonderful symbol of the future of higher education. Just to recap a little bit: in the past 3 weeks, we've been looking at the history of higher education, but remember our idea of history is that you need history. You need to understand how you got to the present before you can shape what's going to happen in the future. So our history has been a purposive and an activist history, designed to give you the foundations for understanding what things can be changed, because they were changed in the past. And that gives us the freedom to know what we're going to change in the future.

The second thing we've emphasized in the first three weeks of these classes is there's always someone behind the camera. Today since we're filming at the Nasher, there are many people behind the camera; not only my two marvelous assistants today, who are doing the filming, holding cue cards, and doing everything else to help, but the whole institution of the Nasher Museum of Art. And all it takes to bring art to us in our present. There's always somebody behind the camera.

3) We're going to be emphasizing today-- and we've emphasized throughout the course-- the relationship of local and global knowledges. A lot of this course is focused on the history of American higher education, or Euro-American higher education: the origins in Europe, the way it exists today in the United States. But you, as members of this course, as participants in the course are being able to flesh out a much broader history of higher education from your own background and your own local knowledges.

A fourth thing we're doing is talking about MOOCs, and what it means to learn massively together at the same time as being able to collaborate peer to peer and be able to share knowledge together. We're trying to take his form of the MOOC and make it a more hybrid forum by encouraging participation and interaction in the forums. And thank you so much for your participation; it makes it a far richer experience for everybody.

5) We've been focusing, so far, on what our hashtag is in this class: life unlearning. And the process that we all spend lifelong of adjusting to change and learning what we have to do to, not only adapt to change, but to master it-- and maybe even to level up, to go to the next level of challenges.

Something we're going to be adding in the future of higher education in Part 2 of this course is the idea of proximity-- and that's the idea that, wherever we are in life, there's always moments of brilliance and inspiration around us. In fact, we're going to be looking at 10 main ways to shift the paradigm of higher education. Actually we're going to sneak in a bonus there; so it'll be 10 plus 1 ways of shifting the paradigm of higher education. And we're going to be looking at things that happen basically within a 100 mile radius of the filming of this MOOC. The metaphor there is, wherever you are-- and I mean that literally: wherever you are-- there are examples of creativity, ingenuity, and brilliance. And the trick is, not that the brilliance isn't there, but the trick is in mentally being prepared to find it and seek it. Because unless you're seeking brilliance, you will never see it. Sometimes brilliance needs a little polishing. Sometimes it's a diamond in the rough. Sometimes it's just there and has been there all along, but you need to be in the right mindset to seek it. So one of the things we're going to be doing in this segment-- and it's why we began in the Nasher Museum of Art-- is we believe art is one of those tactics and methods and practices that allow us to see brilliance where we didn't see it before. Artists have a particular gift of seeing that which is moving; that which is important; that which is significant, where the rest of us just see the ordinary. And, in fact, one of the metaphors of art we're going to be talking about in this second segment of the course-- the future of higher education-- is how an artist can take the mundane and transform it into something magical. And, that's a model, that's an inspiration for all of us.

We're going to be looking close, we're going to be looking far. We're going to be looking at history, we're going to be looking at the future. We're going to be looking at technology, and we're going to be looking at art. Because, that, altogether-- you and me and the people behind the camera-- that's what the future of higher education is. Thank you.