Collaborative Strategic Foresight (hand-outs)

Collaborative Strategic Foresight(hand-outs)

Sandra RomenskaBeyond Distance Research Alliance

University of Leicester, UK

• Learning futures is a foresight methodology – it helps make sense of an uncertain future.

• The focus is on making informed decisions.

• The focus is on making democratic decisions.

Overview

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• The world is more complex than that envisaged when many of our institutions emerged. These institutions are faced with major new challenges and pressures.

• It is tough to be a leader in a time of such uncertainty.

• Decisions made today will have effects years into the future. What will the world look like then?

Rationales for Learning Futures 1

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Rationales for Learning Futures 2

• To motivate change.

• To guide choices.

• To generate a vision and an action-plan for realisation.

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• To sharpen the capacity to deal with the unexpected.

• To improve decision-making. • To understand trends in the context of their

influence on an individual, organisation, business sector or region.

• To detect emergence of new opportunities and to create strategies for achieving goals.

Rationales for Learning Futures 3

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• The future is not pre-determined or predictable.• If it were, there would be no point in taking action

today, because it would have no effect on the future.

• Full information about the future is never available.

• It makes sense to look for ways to understand the future to deal with uncertainty.

Key Assumptions for Learning Futures

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• Foresight is a way of thinking about the future which allows users to:– free up their thinking beyond the here and now;– explore plausible futures (ie always more than

one, because “the” future is not pre-determined); and

– think about implications for decision making today.

What is Foresight?

“A rapidly growing number of recent studies show that imagining the future depends on much of the same neural machinery that is needed for remembering the past. These findings have led to the concept of the prospective brain; an idea that a crucial function of the brain is to use stored information to imagine, simulate and predict possible future events.” D. L. Schacter, D. R. Addis, R. L. Buckner (2007) Remembering the past to imagine the future: the prospective brain, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Vol.8, 657 (2007)

“Neuroimaging studies reveal that both the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobes are strongly activated by prospection. Interestingly, these regions are part of the “default network” that is active when people are not specifically engaged in other tasks, which suggests that when the mind is not busy perceiving the present it tends to simulate the future. The critical role played by frontal regions suggests that few if any other animals are able to simulate future events, and even our closest relatives in the animal kingdom may be “stuck in time”.”

Gilbert, D. T., &Wilson, T. D. (2007). Prospection: experiencing the future. Science, 317, 1351–4.

Learning Futures Model

The “Learning Futures” model structures the pro-active application of analytical and creative skills and tools for generating ideas about the future of individuals, educational institutions or practices. As a result a shared understanding emerges of what may happen in the future of teaching and learning, and a clear, shared commitment to creating a preferred future.

Hindsight

This component encourages participants to use past information and experiences in order to reduce uncertainty regarding future decisions and actions. The knowledge stored in organisational memory helps participants to understand linkages of causality and chronology, to look behind the occurrence of specific events and look for patterns and structures that underpin their occurrence.

Insight

The Insight component takes the form of an analysis of a broad range of issues internal to HEIs as well as an environmental scan of the present, including global, political, economic, technological, environmental and social trends. It identifies a wide range of individuals, organisations and factors which can have an effect on or be influenced by the future under consideration. Taken-for-granted assumptions are uncovered and participants discuss values and rationalities beyond their present day-to-day context.

Foresight

The foresight component emphasises the importance of not attempting to predict, but analysing a range of possible futures. It focuses on comprehending the variety of possible future situations for learning and teaching by interweaving the layers of information uncovered in the Insight and Hindsight components, including forces that shape the future, scenarios, future opportunities, and potential trend changes.

Workshops• The four components were translated into workshop activities

aimed at encouraging creativity, collaboration and learning. Participants engage in group exercises that include each component of the model - Hindsight, Insight, Foresight and Oversight. Participants use the internet as a resource for information on relevant issues, learn to use technologies for collaboration and learning such as wikis, Google Maps, Google Docs, word cloud applications, blogs, Second Life, Twitter, etc. The activities are guided by the facilitator to ensure that participants learn to use these tools in ways which will be relevant to their work and studies outside of the workshop and to emphasise the expectation that the scenarios will result in creative output.

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Implications for students employability

“To succeed in a chaotic environment, graduates will need to be intellectually resilient, cross-culturally and scientifically literate, technologically adept, ethically anchored, and fully prepared for a future of continuous and cross-disciplinary learning” (The National Leadership Council for Liberal Education and America's Promise, 2007, P.15)

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Employability skills CALF workshops can develop

Knowledge and skills necessary for developing successful strategies and future scenarios, target-setting and planning for future employment. Improved skills for independent and group problem-solving and decision-making. Improved self-presentation and communication skills. Improved skills for multi-tasking, time-management and prioritising.

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Employability skills CALF workshops can develop

Improved skills for identifying and validating sources of information. Improved networking and team-working skills. Improved skills for communicating ideas effectively, using a variety of media in diverse settings, making effective presentations, including impromptu presentations.

Learning Futures Methods

• They help understanding a situation.

• Engaging in Learning Futures thinking enhances creativity.

• They are process/activity focussed.

• They are built on perceptions and opinions. 02/12/2009 18Salmon & Romenska

• A characteristic, aptitude or process that attempts to widen the boundaries of perception by:– assessing the implications of present actions, decisions

etc.– detecting and avoiding problems before they occur

(early warning indicators).– considering the present implications of possible future

events (proactive strategy formulation).– envisioning aspects of desired futures (normative

scenarios).

Learning Futures 1

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Learning Futures

• Process of connecting together various driving forces, trends, and conditioning factors so as to envisage alternative futures.

• Thinking about the future is something that we all do.

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• Possible - “might” happen (future knowledge)

• Plausible – “could” happen (current knowledge)

• Probable - “likely to” happen (current trends)

• Preferable - “want to” happen (value judgements)

Types of Futures

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Looking back for looking forward…

HINDSIGHT

INSIGHT

FORESIGHT

How has learning changed in recent yearsWhat happened to learning that you expected?

What happened differently from your expectation?

What are the current trends, enablers, disruptions and barriers?

How can we use this knowledge to prepare for the next 10 years?

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Learning Futures Approach of CALF

One approach to Learning Futures is to see them as stories about how the world might look like in the future. They are descriptions in the form of a story, of possible developments that can lead from a current state of affairs to a future state.

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• Learning Futures are stories about the future that are informed, plausible and based on analysis of the interaction of a number of factors.

• They are a means to represent a future state in order to understand and plan action in the present in view of possible and desirable futures.

Learning Futures Approach of CALF 2

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Creating a Learning Future

The process of creating Learning Futures considers:

• A spark – issue of concern, question, problem. • Occurrences• Participants• Environment/setting• Outcomes• Uncertainties

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• Occurrence is something done or something happening. It is an answer to the question “What is happening? What is he/she/they doing?”

• Occurrences involve actors and stakeholders. Those who perform or cause the actions are actors. They answer to the question “Who?”

• Those, who are affected by the actions are the stakeholders. “Whom? To whom?”

Occurrences in Learning Futures

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An occurrence has a probability and an impact associated with it.

Probability can range from 0 (not happening) to 1 (certainty) and means likelihood that

something will happen.

Impact is the effect – extent of change, brought about by something happening. It

usually has a subject – that which is affected, upon which an occurrence has an impact.

For example, a meteor hitting the planet is an occurrence with low probability but high impact. So was the crush of

the financial markets or the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Occurrences in Learning Futures

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When building a Learning Future, you can generate

alternatives by considering the probability and the

impact of the events you have included.

Think of low probability - high impact events and how

to prepare for them.

Occurrences in Learning Futures

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Put participants in your storyParticipants can be:

• Individuals/organisations affected by an Issue.

•Individuals/organisations who make something happen.

They have relative degrees of power and interest inbringing change.

Consider groups with high power/low interest and viceversa.

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• Dilemma – choice between equal options.

• Paradox – sequence of actions/statements, that leads to a contradiction:Example:Don't go near the water until you've learned to swim

• Trade-off – situation where loosing something means gaining something.

Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Trade-offs

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Consistency in Learning Futures• Inconsistent: Actions or motivations or impacts are

inconsistent and if one occurs the other cannot.

• Hindering: Actions or motivations or impacts are obstructing each otehr, but its not impossible that they occur at the same time.

• Supporting: The occurrence of one supports the occurrence of the other.

• Inducing: The occurrence of one induces the occurrences of the other.

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Tool N2www.wordle.net

Tool 3 Paint

1. Click “Start” in the bottom left corner of your screen, go to All Programs, then Accessories and select Paint.

2. After you have created a Wordle that you like, open it in a separate window, maximise it and click Alt+PrtScr (PrtScr is in the top row of keys in your keyboard). This will copy everything that you see on your screen – the Wordle.

3. Go back to Paint and click Ctrl+V or Paste from the menu. This will paste the image of the Wordle. Save it as a jpeg file.

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"Create a future" Google-opoly

1. A competitive game, set up in Google Maps

2. The participants are divided into groups and given locations on a Google Map prepared in advance.

3. At each location on the map the participants have to solve a challenge which would give them an answer to one of the questions above, in this way gradually constructing a scenario narrative.

4. The workshops conclude with presentations by each group of participants of their scenarios and a discussion.

5. Participants discuss the application of digital and web technologies and possible ways in which they could change the future of learning and are encouraged to think about the likelihood of future scenarios.

Tool 4 Mindmeisterhttp://www.mindmeister.com/

Mindmeister is a free collaborative online mind-mapping tool.