The internet now is veritably vibrating with ideas of how to change learning systems - Maker Labs, Project-based Learning, ePortfolio, Future Skills, Community Mentors, mLearning - the list of potential innovations goes on and on. But there is only one way to see change, and that is if the corresponding elements in the learning system are also changed. If we want to see real change, we need to employ one powerful underlying framework: the systems model.
I remember proposing to the Qatar Foundation a project to gather all the stellar innovations showcased at WISE and position them in a systems framework in order to systematize implementation. I guess I didn't explain it well enough. Here are my FuturEd principles for changing learning systems from a systems-based approach.
Education and training, at all levels everywhere, exist as dynamic systems within an external environment that controls them. Each system is a circle of inputs, processes, outputs, with feedback decisions.
A change in any one element results in or requires a change in all the others. To achieve different outcomes (e.g., creativity and critical thinking skills), we need different teaching processes (e.g., problem-based projects) supported by different resources (e.g., curriculum and teacher expertise). Likewise, a reduction or change in staff or budgets results in reduced or restructured processes and outcomes. It is pure logic.
The world is full of good ideas to improve learning systems, and the reason most proposed innovations fail to fulfill their potential is that they are treated in isolation - great new teaching resources without proper training for staff, great new curriculum ideas without external support. We cannot, e.g., expect traditional educators to teach entrepreneurship, we cannot teach creativity with a lecture, we cannot measure life skills with a standardized test. Academia has produced countless great discussions about skills for the future, so if we want different outcomes, we need to work backward and ask: what are the necessary processes and procedures to teach to and test for those objectives, and what are the necessary environments and expertise required to achieve those processes? And critically, where is the evaluation strategy to judge whether it is working and should be continued? What does excellence look like and how will we know if we achieve it? Where is the Return on Investment and lessons learned?
Second, although a change in any element of the system (inputs, processes, outputs, or quality feedback) results in or requires a change in all others, it is difficult to deal with all at one time. In a best-case scenario of options and opportunities, the question becomes: where to start? What is the most important? What is even possible? Having a choice, systems can ask: what is it that our learners really need and how do we provide it (e.g., morning breakfast or workplace experience)? However, there isn't always a chance to choose when a disaster happens and it is a worst-case scenario. If, as is the case now, schools are closed worldwide for health reasons, traditional physical and human resources (i.e., inputs) are just not there. Where possible, teachers and teaching processes have adapted to online and distance delivery, however, they are essentially intending to achieve and measure the same outcomes or learning objectives, and that is not possible in most cases. In fact, different outcomes result from this change, some good (e.g., new digital skills for staff and students) and some bad (e.g., isolation and learning loss for those without computers and internet). Online and distance learning, eLearning and mLearning, can only be successful as processes if the necessary resources are put in place and if the intended learning outcomes are modified or completely transformed. A change in any element of the learning system will result in a change going forward in the system, but not backward.
Third, systems theory provides an easy framework for handling forced change. The leap to eLearning and the inability to open schools in the predicable future means we need to change the resources and intended outcomes if we are going to see eLearning as the continued solution. Degrees earned by eLearning have not been accepted by many national governments because of veracity and validity issues, which have just now been swept under the rug. These issues will resurface but now we have time and need to focus on quality assurance in eLearning products and services. FuturEd thought of that in 1998 and created the CanREGS - the Canadian Recommended eLearning Guidelines - for the Government of Canada which, it turned out, has no authority to implement them. The CanREGS were intended to ensure that early eLearning was of a quality that inspired early adopters to trust and utilize it, and clearly, that didn't happen. FuturEd even produced the eQcheck eLearning quality certification system, in keeping with the FuturEd transformation model (national standards for producers, consumer's guide for purchasers) but eLearning has remained questioned and marginalized until now. I know because in my position as a special advisor on higher education to the minister in Qatar, in 2015-16, I consistently lost the argument to support and implement eLearning properly. At a time of teacher shortages, they even fired all the Ethiopian teachers who had earned their education degrees online. Unless the efforts to implement online learning now need to be examined closely and quality assured, they will be discarded as quickly as possible to return to the classroom. If we want online learning to succeed, we need, first, to rethink and redesign the intended learning outcomes and, second, prepare and support teaching professionals in new and better ways. I personally think we should make the leap to mLearning and ePortfolio-managed education now while we can.
In summation, if we are going to see real lasting transformation of learning systems - and we must - we must take a consistent systems-based approach rather than tinkering with individual elements.
