Monday, January 30, 2012

Open Leadership

Charlene Li (2010) establishes the standard for Open Leadership in her book of that title. Often, leaders look to see how they can communicate simply within the organization rather than how to communicate beyond the organization. In Higher Education, we often look at a chain of communication from senior leadership through administrative channels to faculty and staff, and then a relay from faculty and staff to students. What is often forgotten is the communication, particularly with the opportunities that exist via social technologies available today, should also occur from leadership directly out to both students and stakeholders of all forms. According to Li, open leadership focuses on developing authenticity and transparency to build actual relationships. These relationships are to encourage an environment of engagement with authentic “truth sharing.” Such an environment fosters the sharing of vision as well as participation in it. The key element here is that the open leader believes in the leadership ability of all individuals and is willing to share leadership roles. The open leader writes the rules for risk taking rather than avoiding them.

The differentiation from traditional academic leadership is obvious. Often leadership in higher education structures are the antithesis of these practices. Post-secondary institutions often have fixed leadership styles, limited in their functioning with limited opportunities for participating in leadership. (see OPEN COMMUNICATION and OPEN GOVERNANCE below). The School for Graduate Studies, as part of its transformation with new program development, has used such as an opportunity to create new leadership opportunities for faculty and staff to participate in leadership roles. There has been the opportunity both to create and develop new programs as well as opportunities to play leadership roles in those programs. Faculty roles such as Program Chairs and Coordinators as well as staff positions such as directors have been created to allow leadership and participatory opportunities. This has involved a great deal of risk taking. Some opportunities have worked, others have not worked, but a significant characteristic of open leadership is being aware of, open to and prepared for initiatives not succeeding, as well as knowing how far the organization can absorb risk.

On the review page of the book on Amazon (2011), Li attached the following chart to clarify the primary direction of her work:















The importance of Li’s work is that it provides the vehicle through which the changes in Higher Education need to be made. Leadership functions on modeling of desired behaviors. Just as I release this work under a creative commons by-license, as a leader in a Higher Education institution, I have to ensure that I follow the principles of Open Leadership as means of making openness a practice throughout the organization.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Open Innovation

Open Innovation is a model developed by Henry Chesbrough (2006) which reflects new models of innovation and development by companies in current times. Seth Godin (2010) describes the role of the individual employee in that economy.

In Chesbrough’s concept, the closed company relied on an innovation monopoly. Given the structure and openness of innovation and information today, that model is no longer viable. In defining the new practice of open innovation, four factors stand out for organizing internal Research and Development:

1. To identify, understand, select from, and connect to the wealth of available external knowledge

2. To fill in the missing pieces of knowledge not being externally developed

3. To integrate internal and external knowledge to form more complex combinations of knowledge, to create new systems and architectures

4. To generate additional revenues and profits from selling research outputs to other firms for use in their own systems (p. 53)

In a world of freely available information and learning resources, the role of the educational institution also changes and its patterns follow those outlined by Chesbrough. No longer is the institution the singular place of the creation of content. It now identifies understands, selects form, and connects available learning resources—as part of this, it must develop the same skills in its students. With the available resources of the internet, a contemporary student does not need to be given information, rather they need to learn how to evaluate, integrate and validate resources they find. They must also understand how these pieces fit into larger and more complex ideas and theories. This leads to Chesbrough’s second bullet as the institution’s role is to determine and create the pieces of knowledge which are not readily available and which bridge the gap between those pieces which do. In short, the professor moves to the role of rhapsode—a song stitcher—in bringing together multiple pieces into a singular narrative (were not the first identified as teachers in western culture rhapsodes who recited and performed exegeses on the works of Homer). This is accentuated though by the third bullet which in education is the creation of synergy. The learning experience within the institution leads to the creation of complex architectures of ideas wherein the sum is greater than the total of the parts—this is where the value is added for the experience of the institution. The institution's role within society and its public face and value are reflected in its publicly available work. [see OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES below] The synergy created here returns to the structure of metaphor above.

In the model of metaphor, new anti-linear structures must be formulated to allow a movement away from fixed traditional structures, These traditional structures tend to focus on the absolute entity of the three hour course which is the self-containment of all knowledge which functions in a limited definition and supply of external resources controlled by a singular individual will eventually fade away. The second law of thermodynamics applies as much here as it does anywhere. The more closed the system, the more it tends toward entropy—I do not need to list off the countless examples which clearly illustrate this. The very nature of an Open University turns this around and the multiple knowledge feeds from multiple points enrich the environment and supports it through its diversity. [see DIVERSITY below]

In short, in Open Innovation, one moves into the idea of lateral thinking posed by Edward de Bono (1973). As he notes, “Richness is what matters in lateral thinking.” In an Openly innovative education, the richness is what is sought. A closed innovation model aims for rightness; however, when one considers examples of Open Innovation, for example, Linux as an open source model, richness is what drives the innovation. By allowing a democracy of participation, the best possible ideas are allowed to rise to the top. [See OPENNESS above].

What role then does a graduate school play in a world of open innovation? Quite simply, the application of open innovation requires a unique and novel thought process and thinking about education. It is the role of graduate schools in general to be able to develop and deploy such systems. In particular, as the demand for graduate education becomes increasingly professional and a student is expected to bring a higher level of experience and academic experience with them, with a higher expectation of applying the learning to a current situation in an openly innovative world stands at a higher level.

Seth Godin (2010) argues that the essence of the individual and their value in our information economy is no longer based on the factory metaphor where students are neatly lined up in rows and taught to be replaceable like the cog in a factory machine—at one point the definition of success. Even as few as five to ten years ago (and I am sure that in some quarters it is still practiced as true), leadership candidates were taught to not make a unique but a replaceable impact on their organizations. Today's definition of success is in being what Godin calls “the linchpin”--the individual whose uniqueness and acts of brilliance makes them irreplaceable—but replaceable by another individual with an equally unique, but different, stamp. Graduate students today need to be trained as linchpins. They need to be trained and supported to make this transformation through their learning. They must learn the skills of developing creativity, evaluating and combining learning—rather than being taught the content, they need to be taught the process. As graduate schools are currently in that area and have fewer content responsibilities (versus the general education requirements usually placed on undergraduate education). To put it bluntly, graduate students need to learn to define their own positions in the academy and learning experience (beyond simply in research specialization) as opposed to pursing the ever elusive research position.

Higher education needs to fit within the world it lives in, and as Cathy Davidson (2011) writes in The Chronicle Review: “current practices in our educational institutions—and workplaces—are a mismatch between the age we live in and the institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years.” SUNY Empire State College, as the brain child of Ernest Boyer, was created in 1971 as an institution to meet the needs of a new world. In its evolution, this need and this direction remain paramount. As the School for Graduate Studies works with professionals who seek to move forward in their careers, we are realizing the need for new forms of learning and the shifting nature of higher education.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Openness (a general academic meandering of a priori issues related to the concept)

The concept of openness requires a basic shifting of the structure of education from one which is metonymical to metaphorical (the terms are borrowed from Jakobson 1956). In a metonymical structure, the sememes[1] are arranged in a linear style wherein there is a singular mono-causal path. Each portion requires the order laid out be followed. When we apply this structure to learning and education, we find that formal education, as our culture perceives it, usually follows this mode. The connections are to the preceding knowledge (based on the concept of pre-existent knowledge that Aristotle puts forward in the Posterior Analytics) and to form the pre-existent for the next section. Culturally, this has become a norm as Freud, in Civilization and its Discontents, provides a supporting argument—that where the pre-existing knowledge does not exist—i.e., a relationship does not exist between ideas, the brain compensates by creating its own (1961). We place this structure not only on the curriculum of the student in a given university curriculum, but throughout the entire educational process—assuming that it finally manifests itself in knowledge applicable to the workplace and in navigating the world itself.

There are many critiques of this structure; perhaps most problematic is that it is for the most part based on theoretical assumptions. As the saying goes, no one knows the entire curriculum except the student.[2] While each individual who thinks about education has undergone a curriculum, none have experienced every curriculum. More importantly, as many curricula on college campuses are designed by committee, those designing only know the larger issues and topics proposed leaving the student to know and navigate the curriculum.

The other structure which Jakobson places in antithesis is that of metaphor. In metaphor, the sememes are interconnected in multiple directions—in short, they form a network or web of interconnections. The relationship is unidirectional (one can move from one sememe to another, including back to a previous sememe, from any interconnecting sememe).[3] In such a model, knowledge and learning can be interconnected and the individual learner can pursue their own path. However, the opportunity and resources have to exist for the individual to follow such a path. The opportunity need not be formalized with professionally created or reviewed materials, but can be opportunity to seek knowledge from others, both those who have previously been exposed to formalized resources as well as those who have gained learning from their own experiences[4]. In a networked world, there is no closed structure that forces the learner to follow a metonymical structure. Even if we insist that we do not like the model or the open and public resources available (an argument not appropriate here[5]), the fact is, they are available and will be used.

In short, the path defines the particle. The greater the number of possible paths one can take from one point in learning, the greater the opportunities for their learning to be enhanced. As T. S. Eliot (1920) notes: “The new impressions modify the impressions received from the objects already known. An impression needs to be constantly refreshed by new impressions in order that it may persist at all; it needs to take its place in a system of impressions.” Each new piece of learning modifies the previous, and the following must connect to it to keep it vital. In a metonymy, the linear order of the sememes has mono-causal and singular points of contact (while there are two points of contact, each can only flow in one direction). The same is true of a linear curriculum; the learning is based on a previous point with only one opportunity to maintain that learning. In a metaphorical order of sememes, there are multiple possibilities which flow in multiple directions, and the relationships are homologous allowing the learner to create their own structure. It requires a creativity which itself is based on trial and error. A learning environment is a safe place where students can make their mistakes in their struggle to become creative and contributory. C. S. Peirce notes the possibility of infinite semiosis—however, an individual makes choices about where to end the process (like inference, it is a combination of experience and probability). As Henri Poincare notes, “To create consists precisely in not making useless combinations and in making those which are useful and which are only a small minority. Invention is discernment choice” (Poincare 1908). A learner is in themselves a dynamic system, constantly evolving not only in its learning, but the evolution of its universe linguistically through their idiolect. This dynamic nature reframes and reinterprets each piece of data passed on as learning. As Seth Lloyd (2006) notes: “The significance of a bit of information depends on how that information is processed. All physical systems register information, and when they evolve dynamically in time, they transform and process that information.” In this interaction both the information and the learner are in a constant state of transformation.

In terms of how this applies to an Open University, a student can enter at their point of choice and need and navigate through an individual pathway meeting their own need as they decide what the next point is. They also have access to multiple resources to help them determine the path they would like to navigate. Because sememes are interconnected, they can get to the point they would like—it will not always be a straight line nor will every point lead to every other, but a path will exist. What this means is that in an open environment, pre-requisites go away only as a singular path. In other words, a student may need a certain level of understanding to take a course, for easy illustration say Calculus II; however, that does not need to be a situation where a formalized course in Calculus I is the only possibility. There are multiple ways to demonstrate the learning outcomes to show that one is prepared to enter that level of study. The student also needs to be part of the decision about their readiness and have access to the appropriate preparatory and remedial materials which will help them succeed in that course of study. Ultimately, in such a model, it comes down to a matter of student choice an student acceptance of responsibility for those choices.

This is but a brief overview of a theory of openness. The true focus of this essay is on the practical applications for the School for Graduate Studies of SUNY—Empire State College.



[1] According to Eco (1986): “a sememe is a virtual or potential text and ...a text isthe expansion of one or more sememes” (p. 69). In other words, the sememe is the core or “atomic level” (as in indivisible) of meaning.

[2] I must credit my mentor, Marvin Barker, retired provost of Tennessee Tech University. Any time we had a discussion of curriculum within the university, he always found it important to remind people of this simple, but oft forgotten truth.

[3] Colin Wilson’s Faculty of X makes an excellent parallel here.

[4] A.k.a., experiential learning.

[5] As with the footnote previous, hypertext could do wonders here—yet another proof of the failure of linear writing.

Structure

I will begin by discussing the three primary characteristics of a graduate school in an open university. I mix within these goals, values, practices, as I believe that these are all inseparable. In an effective organization, all aspects are integrated and inseparable. These three characteristics are Openness, Innovation, and Agility. The literature on any one of those three will inevitably lead to a reference to the other two. Specifically, this essay will cover the following topics:

Openness

Open Innovation

Open Leadership

Open Learning

Open Educational Resources and Open Assets

Open Science

Open University

Open Communication (including Open Governance)

Open Learning Environments

Open Source

Innovation

Entrepreneurial

Interdisciplinary

Diversity

Life-long Learning

Crowd Accelerated Innovation

Agility

Individuals and Interactions

Active and Intuitive Learning

Learner Collaboration

Responding To Change

After these characteristics, a discussion on the challenges of this model follows. Specifically, it will consider:

The purpose of a University

Role of Faculty

Marketing

Technology

Assessment

Pricing and Finance

Conclusion

Thursday, January 5, 2012

The Beginning

I have been working on this project for months now: what began as a bullet list is now a monograph, perhaps approaching a book. I warn you that as with all of my writing, I am truly trying to stretch the fences (which is why I sometimes end up tangled up in them).

To motivate myself, and to add depth, I am going to post the work in sections--hopefully one very two to three days, but if you have followed my previous blogs, you know that I can disappear....

Without further apology, grab a helmet, let's go:

Open, Innovative, and Agile:
A Promulgation of Subversion

This is not a fad which will fade. Resistance will only speed up the change.

All systems are in a tail spin; their fundamental natures are caught in vortices of change. An essential shift of cognitive awareness like Alice as she became aware that her two dimensional world was falling into a three dimensional rabbit hole. The standard measures and rubrics begin to fall apart, as grammar check did not recognize the previous sentence as a fragment.

Where once all wisdom sought the all powerful single force of the universe—be it divine or a unified field theory, all now turns toward the infinitely small—the human genome, nano-technology--the focus gets smaller and smaller. Even when we turn outwards towards the heavens, we find ourselves looking at the infinitely small again. We look for DNA in meteors from Mars. Yes, we are looking outward, but the evidence is in the refraction of light and atomic composition. Not only the evidence, but its meaning, our perception of it, and the context it exists in is all changed in very fundamental ways. In short, the very concept of reality shifts as the realm of possibilities opens exponentially. There are some who still yearn for a world where there is no science, no complexity, no wonder, a simple world where there is an answer key to every test.

Our economy is also changing. We no longer live in a factory driven economy of pure capital and easily replaced, cog-based labor. The fact is, we live in an age of information which thrives on the work of wizards and magicians. Not those who wave wands, but those who possess the magic of creativity and find the ability to create something in a way or place that no one thought possible. Their tools are not wands but systems of communication and the ability to bridge connections within complex systems. Ours is not the world of the linear assembly line—ours is the world of multiple connections: one which relies on the ability to see, find, define, and create meaning, whether that meaning be in the spin of an electron, a series of matrices, the structure of an amino acid, or the move of a dancer.

It was not only the Hindenburg that burned that Thursday afternoon in 1937—it was an entire mindset and way of looking at the world. Imagine a world where the Hindenburg had not burned, where the skies of New York are filled with airships tethered to sky-scrapers--a world in which air travel is based on the quality of the service and experience, as opposed to how fast this over crowded airplane can get you there. The Hindenburg's burning is not causally related, but functions on a more symbolic level--perhaps more a sign that there is no turning back.

In a world subject to this much change, the idea that educational systems can remain the same is absurd at best. Abelard founded his university in the medieval age which Ralph Adams Cram describes as on “a parabolic curve” that describes its trajectory out of ‘chaos and old night” (Abelard 2004). We too are on a parabolic curve—the speed at which the world knowledge doubles halves with each repetition (ASTD estimates that it is currently down to 18 months [Siemens 2004]).

Yet as with all cultural change, there are challenges to every argument—nothing new in a post-Hegelian world. Following such though, this essay does not present the end of the dialectic; rather, it poses a position from which to engage in discussion to continue the evolution of higher education—a vocation to which I have committed my life.

In endangering that, I have also chosen a unique system of both writing and citing this essay. It does not conform to any publicly recognizable standards, for the most part; however, we sometimes have to turn and fire into the castle to keep the defenses viable and ready. It has familiar elements, but all revolution requires a fixed point to rebel against. I will avoid the traditional digression into the idea of the term essay originating from attempt or try... that's been said too many times. The real challenge you will see in the body of this text is that I do not simply face the challenge of synchronicity, but one of dimensions. Undoubtedly these are issues which many writers have struggled with. We live in a three dimensional world and write in two dimensional linear logic. We produce thoughts in brains with three dimensional synaptic structures, replicated and related through the double helix of DNA, and we wish to describe it in terms and structures appropriate to intestines laid against a ruler on a lab table. The diachronic nature of the language act means that there is not an immediate overcoming with an alternative structure; what I have created is another subversion. Education is a subversive act; higher education is a subversion of education, and Empire State College is a subversion of Higher education itself.

My text is who I am: a compilation and interpretation of all signs which I have mediated in my life.[1] As a mediation, it seeks, as I do, to emerge from under authority. Writing styles, as Keith Fort (1971) notes, represents a form which not only frames in the writing, but also creates a framework for the classroom itself. He writes: “The form in which a classroom is conducted is related to what is learned and has its own psychological implications in shaping a student’s development…. Form is a ‘strategy’ for establishing a relation to reality.” This principle of form manifests itself in the way in which courses are structured as well as the ways in which individuals are allowed to write. To write about opening up strategies of learning and to follow within the traditions of formalized writing would be a contradiction and a concession which I refuse to make. I seek to overthrow existing authoritarian practices both in learning environment as well as in writing. Fort explains: “Formal tyranny in essay writing , as in any other expression is based on the need of those who are in control to make the appearance of the expression conform to a desired idea of which there is no doubt.” For example, the existence of a thesis statement assumes that a student can only have one idea which will be tested. All of the traditions of writing that we recognize and practice restrict and limit what can be said. What I wish to say is not in the margin or even on the desk, it is somewhere beyond the walls and over the fence.

With the threshold of the challenges of such an essay as this one, I must enter into my purpose (which is a purpose and not a thesis) as well as caveats. My purpose is to consider the role, nature and place of a graduate school in an open university--in particular, the place of the School for Graduate Studies of SUNY—Empire State College within the Open University of New York.

The danger is that because this argument will be controversial, each vulnerable place opens up a new point of potential challenge. To avoid the discussion getting side tracked, let me acknowledge that a graduate school in an Open University, and particularly one in SUNY—Empire State College, will still be all three, so some parts may seem redundant in that to migrate to such a position is not to renounce all existing factors, precepts and principles. Let me also identify the fact that there will be many seemingly overlapping characteristics implied because this is the testing of many hypotheses based on many conditions and many unique forms of relationships between ideas not often subscribed to in academic environments. Given the nature of the discussion, many points are homologously related and thus do not fit into the neat linear argument required of an essay. Finally, this text (for lack of a better term) has required a great deal of projection about the future of all of the complex issues which interconnect with Higher Education. These are conjectures. As a child, I was promised domestic space travel in the year 2000; likewise, my Weekly Reader also said that by 2000, every home would have a computer in its living room. The complexity and current pace of change make such projections even more difficult. I have, where possible, based my forecasts on current trends and practices which are themselves subject to momentary change as well. Finally, these issues are put forth as discussion questions.



[1] I know it has been said before, but DesCartes is Dead! DesCartes “I” implies an all, an end-point, and an edge. However, the individual who thinks is not an autonomous I as thought itself is the mediation of the ideas of others and mediatable points of existence outside of the I. The Self can only be mediated and determined in its relationship to the world and language. Just as I cannot oerceive the world without a body, , my mediation of world defines my body. The same homologous relationship exists with language. The language defines the self, and the self is the point of interaction with language.