Another well-done post by Michael Feldstein with my favourite part being:
Start by assuming that you don’t yet understand the problem, and that educators and students know more about the problems that need solving than you do. Use your skills to help them illuminate and elucidate the problems that they are trying to solve, and then work on your solution—not to “education”, but to a specific educational problem for specific actual humans. This is not to say that you can’t have a big impact.
I may have not worked long enough in higher education to experience otherwise but these large initiatives, usually ones with great fanfare and PR output, are not the ones that matter in the long run. The ones that do – start small, start out as a nugget of an undefined idea, start as an itch that somebody decides is worth scratching. They come out as an optional platform for whatever purpose you want it to meet. Sometimes they’re just contained to a class but they bring out the many skills learners have beyond answering an exam.
What impact they do have is not that they found a solution to THE problem but they hit on an idea. The idea that something is possible even without the whole weight of an institution behind it.
David Porter sums it up nicely to me:
@riacale @brlamb @clintlalonde I’ve always found the sweet spot for practice change to be in the “just slightly ahead of our time,” space.
— David Porter (@dendroglyph) November 29, 2013
