Institute For The Future

Hacking The Future of Higher Education

Higher education worldwide is moving toward creative disruption on multiple fronts. As signals emerge that these disruptions are beginning to take hold, IFTF is expanding on its long history of work in education to more deeply explore the situation that higher education providers face and the frontier projects that are dramatically reimagining this area for the future. In this first step, we have partnered up with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities to host an internal workshop, Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange to explore these unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MARCH 22, 2012

Leading Thinkers Convene to Hack the Future of Higher Education

PALO ALTO, CA — What does learning in the 21st century look like and what can happen when you convene a diverse group of cutting edge innovators, scholars, administrators, education advocates, and students for a higher education hack day? You discover hope for the next generation of learners and for the future of education.

The Institute for the Future (IFTF), in partnership with Autodesk and Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, today announced the Redesigning Education: An Innovation Leaders Exchange on March 24th to explore the unprecedented disruptions and opportunities facing our higher education institutions and to design new learning environments for the future.

The exchange will take place at IFTF’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California and will provide an interactive process combining informative “lightning talks” from experts such as Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U, Jim Spohrer, Director of IBM Global University Programs, and the Institute’s own Executive Director and education author, Marina Gorbis, among many others.

The conventional system of higher education, which has been a dominant force in our society for generations, is being disrupted in the United States and abroad. The system is at an important point of transformation, and the Institute for the Future has a long history of convening experts and innovators working at the edges to make sense of the future and to help navigate the transition.

“Young people today are caught in the transition between two worlds—the world of institutional production of education and a new world of possibilities for highly personalized on-demand continuous learning,” offered Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future. “It is a typical 2-curve problem with mass-produced education delivered through existing institutions on the decline; on the rise are new forms of education and learning that combine technologies with the best of social tools to enable learning that is personalized and meaningful. This week we are convening a group of thinkers representing different parts of the new education ecosystem to exchange best practices and to dream together about how to build the best learning environments given today’s sets of tools and technologies.”

Featured participants include:

• Paul Baker, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities
• Nancy Clark Brown, Autodesk Education Programs
• Marina Gorbis, Executive Director Institute for the Future
• Howard Rheingold, Author
• Jason Rosoff, Khan Academy
• Will Wright, Creator of the Sim Cities and Spore computer programs
• Hal Plotkin, US Department of Education
• Jim Sporer, Director, IBM Research Lab
• Scholars and Professors from Stanford, Cal, and CSU systems, from ASU
• Leaders from Carnegie, Knowledgeworks, Gordon and Betty Moore, Kauffman, and the Gates Foundations.

Exchange session structures will include, Lightning Talks: Flashes Of Insight where presenters outline groundbreaking initiatives they are working on and key challenges in pursuing their work—in 5 minutes or less. Then participants will engage in Prototyping The Future Of Higher Ed by breaking into interdisciplinary teams to design learning environments for the future.

“Now is the time to envision the bold, collaborative moves necessary to ensure that the promise of higher education is fulfilled for the next generation,” said Nancy Brown, head of Autodesk Education Market Development. “Engaging workshops such as Redesigning Education are critical for exploring the new thinking necessary to lead successful, impactful change in education.”

“The higher-education market is reinventing what a university is, what a course is, what a student is, and what the value is,” said Rich DeMillo, Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. “Whenever you have this kind of technological change, where there’s a large incumbency, the incumbents are inherently at a disadvantage. If you want to be an important institution 20 years from now, you have to position yourself so that you can adapt to whatever those technology changes are. Events like Redesigning Education that bring a range of actors into conversation are critical to game change; and one that can deliver bold ideas and new directions.”

For more information on IFTF’s higher education work contact Devin Fidler at [email protected] or 650.233.6322.

Media contact: Jean Hagan, [email protected], 650.233.9551