“Systems Change in Social Innovation Education,” by Daniela Papi-Thornton & Joshua Cubista, in Stanford Social Innovation Review

“Systems change—the idea that we can design interventions that fundamentally reshape social or environmental systems that perpetuate injustice or negative results—continues to gain interest across the social sector. Indeed, the term is popping up all over social innovation and social entrepreneurship convenings, publications, and dialogues. Yet many of the educational models we use to teach social entrepreneurship and innovation fail to teach students to think critically about or build activities that contribute to systems change.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

If the Basecamp team is correct, then entrepreneurship education is still on the far left side of the Hype Cycle, which means that schools that build programs now will enjoy the advantage of “compound interest” if they stick with it through the inevitable “trough of disillusionment.”

For that effort to succeed, schools will need to ensure that systems change is part of the curriculum.

The Basecamp team is proud to have helped co-found SocEntEDU (Social Entrepreneurship Education), which has placed systems change and design-for-equity at the center of its conversations. For educators who plan to attend the NAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia, we hope you’ll consider joining the SocEntEDU community for a happy hour on Feb 26th.

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“The dormant potential of extracurriculars for remaking assessment,” by Chelsea Waite, on the Christensen Institute blog

“Given the emerging state of deeper learning assessments, I’m putting forward a proposal that may raise eyebrows: the pathway to deeper learning in subjects like math and English isn’t to remake assessments in those subjects. Instead, we should work on nailing assessments for deeper learning on the periphery, like in theatre programs. […]

“These assessments will need to account for environments where students are learning at least in part through experience and inquiry. That means that the process of learning (for example, trying a hard-line diplomatic strategy in Model UN only to see it fail, then working to rebuild relations and reach a compromise) is just as important as the outcome (successfully identifying different diplomatic strategies and their applications). And in more open-ended learning environments, the learning outcomes from experiences are not set from the start—assessments will need to account for the fact that outcomes may not be predictable or universal for each learning experience.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Because deeper learning assessments (eg, projects or public demonstrations of learning) do not yet scale, schools have an excuse not to evolve the learning experience in core subjects.

But rather than focus on re-engineering core subjects, why not focus on “the periphery” where deeper learning is the experience? As educators learn from assessment experiments at the periphery, they can share learnings with “the core.”

For a longer read on this notion of innovation emerging from passing ideas from periphery to the core, we strongly recommend Safi Bacall’s Loonshots, one of our Top 3 books of 2019.

…for another story about experiments at the periphery that could influence the core…

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“Kits: Building the NGDLE Outside the LMS,” by Jolie Tingen, on Educause Review

“The ideal academic technology strategy should support the diversity of disciplinary and pedagogical needs. It should be pluralistic—giving faculty, staff, and students scalable, excellent, and integrated choices. Developed outside the LMS and evolved from a homegrown group management solution, Duke's Kits project is the university's latest effort to provide a next generation digital learning environment (NGDLE) for the Duke community and, as an open-source project, to the wider world.”

Why does this matter to the future of learning?

Last year I taught “Nonprofit Fundraising & Philanthropic Capital,” a 100% online course in the Nonprofit Leadership Program at U. Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful experience, in part because Penn provides a team of course designers to support instructors.

While an institution like Penn can afford that, most schools can’t. So a drag-and-drop “kit” for course design and generation would represents a huge step forward.

What if high school teachers experimented with 1-2 week online courses (for credit) during Winter, Spring, and Summer breaks? An open source resource like Duke’s Kits project would lower the barrier to entry and amplify opportunities for rapid learning.

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Question of the week:

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