Do you have any idea why higher education is still mainly delivered as classroom teaching? Most lecturers know that a lot more is possible and some of them even enrich classroom teaching with innovations such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and iTunes U. But knowing it is one thing, applying this knowledge is another thing. Why?

A few days ago I suggested a colleague that we could make a clip about the basics of communication theory and put this clip on YouTube or iTunes U. This would replace a traditional classroom lesson with PowerPoint. The idea is that students have to watch the clip before class and during class we can discuss it and go more into depth about it. This would allow us to use contact hours more efficiently and hopefully this also would help more effective learning. My colleague really liked the idea! She thought it was great to think about more creative ways of teaching.

Good. But when we had to make plans about how to do this she was quite resolute in saying that we do not have enough time for it and that it would be more efficient for us to re-use the PowerPoint slides of previous years. And you know what? I think she is right!

Lecturers like to learn and share new things. Teaching is a creative profession. But lecturers have only just enough time to do what they are asked to do. This is coherent with Toyota’s just-in-time-principle. Lecturers work in a “diploma factory”: massive amounts of students have to be processed on an assembly line resulting in the ultimate product of a school: diploma’s. As many diploma’s as possible should be produced with a minimal amount of resources. This demand-centered production leaves little room for activities that do not directly attribute to maximum output.

This “diploma factory” could be an explanation of my colleagues’ reaction, and for the fact that in general innovation in education develops very slowly.

So, is innovation in education hopeless? Will any attempt to make education more challenging – more centered around gaining competencies – be futile? Of course it isn’t! But the innovation-game has to be played on another playing field. As follows.

Simplified, in the factory work two kinds of people: “laborers” and “managers”. Laborers form one of the resources (that is: human resource) and are supposed to help production without deviating from the assembly line. The playing field of the assembly line and the laborers is not the place for innovation because this game is all about predictability.

Innovation is a managers game, they can decide to allow that resources are used for things that do not immediately result in more production. This is the playing field where innovation of education should be initiated. If managers decide that a school should develop a blended learning environment – in order to create more effective and efficient teaching, resulting in more diploma’s and a higher level of professionalism of graduates – they are the ones who can relocate resources for it, on the expense of direct production.

Innovation in education is not hopeless but we have to learn to play the game. The ideas of Csikszentmihalyi can be helpful here. He developed the Domain-Individual-Field-Interaction framework (DIFI) for creative systems (Csikszentmihalyi 1988), he didn’t visualize this but Rob Saunders did:

 

Source: Artificial Creative Systems: Completing the Creative Cycle; Rob Saunders; Design Lab, University of Sydney; June 26, 2009

According to this model a creative individual adds an innovation to a professional domain like music, mathematics etc. but this is only possible if the field of professionals accepts this new idea. These professionals guard which idea will be accepted and which one will not. This process of accepting and adopting the new idea is a social process. When the new idea is accepted it will become part of the system of symbols: “culture”.

If we apply this on innovation in education, the domain is the policy that managers make. The field of professionals are the managers. These managers guard which ideas are accepted: which innovations are allowed to play a role in the domain of policy. This game on the professional field is a social process.

As an individual you can have a creative new idea, but as long as it is just your idea it will not lead to innovation. As an individual you will have to convince one of the managers that your idea is worth considering. When the manager is convinced he will influence the social process on the professional field of managers. This results in a change on the domain of policy.

This works! In January I suggested my manager that our faculty could archive reports digitally instead of on paper, this as part of the streamlining process that management already initiated. Also I suggested that next year we could go even further by investigating what can be digitized in all processes, ultimately leading to a paperless office. I tipped that he should convince our managing director (this managing director plays an important social role in the field). Last month I suggested my manager that we could digitize our readers.

Soon the results will be visible. In June our students do not have to hand in four copies – as in previous years – but only two. In September a task force will investigate what can be digitized in all processes. Probably from September on most of our readers will be offered digitally instead of on paper.

tagged with: digitizing, csikszentmihalyi, blended learning, innovation, education

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