Exploring the Future of Universities Through Experimental Foresight

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-336
Author(s):  
Derek Woodgate ◽  
Helga Veigl
Keyword(s):  
Education System ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Future Time ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Time Horizons ◽  
Methods And Techniques ◽  
The Future ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
Norwegian Education ◽  
The University

Throughout 2018/2019, The Futures Lab, Inc. (TFL) was commissioned to undertake a comprehensive foresight study on the potential futures for universities in Norway. For the most part, the project followed the full, TFL comprehensive six-stage foresight process and a number of customized approaches that leveraged the specificities of the Norwegian Education System. The foresight project covered two future time horizons, namely 2025 to 2030 and 2031 to 2040. Rather than focus here on the Future of the University project itself, this paper considers five experimental foresight methods that produced an extra edge to the creative inputs to this project and delivered some unexpected and critical insights that became decisive platforms and framing cues for the ultimate seven futures scenarios that were delivered, and for which strategies and action plans were created. The term experimental foresight is interpreted as freeform thinking, testing the boundaries, incorporating unorthodox, disparate approaches, tools, artifacts and environment, and real-time improvization, it is about testing new techniques and repurposing and updating older ones. Experimental foresight is closely allied with and some would claim often indistinguishable from experiential futures, which has become prominent within foresight. We distinguish the two insomuch that experiential refers to the way the foresight is conducted, whereas experimental is what is conducted. The paper describes the five experimental foresight methods and techniques based upon theory, practice and proprietary development processes, reflecting various approaches to creative thinking. The paper outlines the design and architecture of each method as well as how it was applied to the Future of the University project, the outcomes, values and benefits. Where appropriate examples of the outcomes have been used to explain or underpin the purpose and benefits of the method under discussion. The methods selected are always harmonized with the more linear, mathematical and modeling applied in the practice of foresight.

scholarly journals Melatih Keterampilan Berpikir Kreatif melalui Pembelajaran Berbasis Proyek dalam Mempersiapkan Tenaga Kerja untuk Menghadapi Kompetisi Global

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-44
Author(s):  
Muhammad Munib
Keyword(s):  
Education System ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Soft Skills ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Technology Literacy ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Skilled Workers ◽  
The Future ◽  
High Level

Often we find the fact that skills gaps begin with the basic idea that many jobs exist, but skilled workers do not. The relationship exists between labor readiness, business and industrial development, and educational institutions have been around for a long time. However, this relationship cannot refute the fact that prospective employees are not ready to enter the workplace in the future. The Law of the Republic of Indonesia concerning the national education system addresses the importance of training in creative thinking skills by stating that the education system must develop the potential of students to be religious, respectful, well-educated, and competent in thinking creatively, independently, democratically, and responsibly. While empirical studies show that Indonesian students have unsatisfactory creative thinking skills. This study aims to describe how to train Creative Thinking Skills through project-based learning in preparing the Workforce to face global competition. From the results of the discussion it was concluded: 1) The government needs to be more serious in entering tertiary education and setting targets for maximum workforce readiness. 2) Educational institutions in their learning activities need to improve their mastery of high-level thinking skills in determining their educational success by improving high-level cognitive functions (metacognition, metamemory and metacomprehension, or assessing the truth of one's own memories; solving problems, or taking appropriate steps when dealing with unknown things, and think critically, or evaluate the quality of ideas). 3) For most educators today who are well connected and driven by technology, the mastery of technology literacy in education is still lacking, therefore mastery of technology literacy needs to be improved at the level of the teachers in this country. 4) Potential to integrate Project Based Learning (PBL) in the classroom to improve students' soft skills which in turn will ensure greater results for them in the future. To achieve that, their soft skills need to be improved by using the PBL approach. This approach is relevant to the concept of 21st century learning, especially in education.

scholarly journals Methodological System For Organizing Joint Innovation Activities Of The University And Enterprises

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1136-1138
Author(s):  
Sh.S. Fayzibayev, Et. al.
Keyword(s):  
Education System ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Quality Level ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Innovation Activities ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The University ◽  
Industry Sectors

The content and the role of the methodological system, which provides for close interaction of higher educational institutions and enterprises of the country's industry sectors are considered in the process of training modern innovative professionally-oriented graduates with creative thinking, capable of creating innovations and implementing them into the real sector of the economy The education system of the republic is aimed at ensuring high quality level of graduates. The determining content and quality of such training in the education system are innovative processes: complex, mutually influencing and mutually enriching processes. The choice of an innovation-oriented development path contributes to the provision of the education system with a high quality of training of specialists and an increase in the integration level of the market of educational services into the labor market by attracting faculty and students to the innovative activities of the republic's economy sectors. This will make it possible to orient the modern system of higher education towards a science-intensive, practically directed system of training and retraining of specialists [1].

scholarly journals Search for Reserves in the Grip of the “Imputed”: Paradoxes of Our Education Strategy

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (12) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Kh. G. Tkhagapsoev ◽  
M. M. Yakhutlov
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Education Standards ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Education Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Development Processes ◽  
The University

The dominant orientation of the domestic strategy of higher education (standards, competencies) towards the current demands of the labor market slows down and constrains the development processes at universities. The ability and readiness to respond to the challenges of the future is steadily becoming a real basis for the success of higher education institutions in conditions of modern technological and socio-economic changes. Time and situation require taking into account in university strategies not only the demands of the labor market, but also the features of the future and trends in knowledge development. And this, in turn, dictates the need to liberalize the existing education strategy, as well as to “synchronize” the development of the university both with trends and prospects for the development of technologies and infrastructures, and the historical and epistemological patterns of knowledge development, its functions, ways of organization and forms of life.

scholarly journals Language about the future on social media as a novel marker of anxiety and depression: A big-data and experimental analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cole Robertson ◽  
James Carney ◽  
Shane Trudel
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Temporal Discounting ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Future Tense ◽  
Future Time ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Time Horizons ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events

Anxiety and depression are mood disorders which negatively impact many people. Psychology studies suggest depression is associated with future time horizons, or how "far" into the future people tend to think, and anxiety is associated with temporal discounting, or how much people devalue delayed future rewards. Separate studies from linguistics and economics have shown that individual differences in how people refer to future time predict temporal discounting. Yet no one—that we know of—has investigated whether future time reference habits are a marker of anxiety and/or depression. In Study 1, we analysed data from the social media website Reddit to test for relationships between these variables. Users who had previously posted popular contributions to forums dedicated to anxiety and depression referenced the future and the past more often than controls, had more proximal future and past time horizons, and significantly differed in their linguistic future time reference patterns. They used fewer future tense constructions (e.g. will), fewer high-certainty constructions (e.g. certainly), more low-certainty constructions (e.g. could), more bouletic modal constructions (e.g. hope), and more deontic modal constructions (e.g. must). This motivated Study 2, a survey-based mediation analysis. Self-reported anxious participants represented future events as more temporally distal and therefore temporally discounted to a greater degree. The same was not true of depression. We contextualise the results using two theoretical frameworks: construal level theory and functionalist approaches to clinical psychology. We conclude that methods which combine big-data with experimental paradigms can help identify novel markers of mental illness, which can aid in the development of new therapies and diagnostic criteria.

scholarly journals The Future of the University

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (S1) ◽  
pp. S181-S189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Mittelstrass
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Education System ◽  
Work Situation ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
The Future ◽  
University Life ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Keywords Education ◽  
The University

I am not a prophet, nor can I look into the future – not even at the end of this productive conference on essential changes in the higher education system. When the work situation of the academic profession, its diversification and academic freedom are at issue, the university as a whole is called into question, at least the university as we have known and appreciated it for a long time. Will that university have a future? This is not clear at all, especially when we consider the managerial university and the ever increasing marketisation of all aspects of university life. In the following, I present a few remarks about the continuously fading theory of the university, centred on the keywords education, university, universality, and quality.

Higher education in Russia: challenges of time and look into the future

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Aleshnikova ◽  
Aleksey Ahmetshin ◽  
Vera Basova ◽  
Ol'ga Vdovina ◽  
Andrey Voloshin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education System ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Future ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Doctoral Candidates

The monograph is devoted to analysis of the current state and prospects of development of the higher education system of Russia. The first section discusses the General problems of development of higher education as a driver of innovation shifts, the second examines the impact of digitization on higher education, the third section is devoted to the improvement of administrative and pedagogical potential of higher education, the fourth - the management of student environment of the University. Addressed to specialists who study the problems of higher education and of interest to postgraduates, doctoral candidates and students.

scholarly journals Education as the practice of freedom, from past to future: Student movements and the corporate university

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Hush ◽  
Andy Mason
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Corporate University ◽  
The Future ◽  
Critical Pedagogies ◽  
Grassroots Advocacy ◽  
Justice Movements ◽  
The University

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up.

scholarly journals Integrating machine learning and blockchain to develop a system to veto the forgeries and provide efficient results in education sector

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhruvil Shah ◽  
Devarsh Patel ◽  
Jainish Adesara ◽  
Pruthvi Hingu ◽  
Manan Shah
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
Education Sector ◽  
Student Records ◽  
Job Roles ◽  
Student Data ◽  
Disruptive Technologies ◽  
Valid Data ◽  
The Future ◽  
Student Achievements ◽  
The University

AbstractAlthough the education sector is improving more quickly than ever with the help of advancing technologies, there are still many areas yet to be discovered, and there will always be room for further enhancements. Two of the most disruptive technologies, machine learning (ML) and blockchain, have helped replace conventional approaches used in the education sector with highly technical and effective methods. In this study, a system is proposed that combines these two radiant technologies and helps resolve problems such as forgeries of educational records and fake degrees. The idea here is that if these technologies can be merged and a system can be developed that uses blockchain to store student data and ML to accurately predict the future job roles for students after graduation, the problems of further counterfeiting and insecurity in the student achievements can be avoided. Further, ML models will be used to train and predict valid data. This system will provide the university with an official decentralized database of student records who have graduated from there. In addition, this system provides employers with a platform where the educational records of the employees can be verified. Students can share their educational information in their e-portfolios on platforms such as LinkedIn, which is a platform for managing professional profiles. This allows students, companies, and other industries to find approval for student data more easily.

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