The first U.Lab session was
January 14. After only five weeks, we are beginning to recognize some powerful
principles and actions that have the potential to revolutionize higher
education. Here are seven of them:
(1) Streets:
Move learning from the classroom (or computer) to the street.Creativity, entrepreneurship, and
transformational leadership cannot be learned while sitting in front of a
computer or in an old-fashioned classroom. These deeper capacities can only be
built and cultivated by engaging with the real world in profoundly different
ways. In the U.Lab, we use the edX infrastructure to teach immersion journeys
and action learning -- then invite participants to go out into their own
communities and try it themselves. One U.Lab participant reported:
I spent a few hours this
evening with two older...homeless men who are regulars in my neighborhood. Most
days, I walk by these guys thinking that I know what's what and have it right,
discounting what they might have to offer because they are the ones panhandling. I felt humbled and chagrined to realize that this wisdom has always been there
for me - but that I have not been open to it because of the packaging...
Looking into their eyes tonight, really SEEING them for the first time, seeing
in to their souls, it made me want to cry because, GOD, there was such beauty
there - as there is in all of us.
(2) Head,
Heart & Hand: Link the power of entrepreneurship with passion and
compassion. The
U.Lab uses the "iceberg model" to explain how today's environmental,
social, and spiritual-cultural challenges cannot be meaningfully addressed by
just treating their most visible symptoms. Instead, change makers need to
understand and address the deeper root issues, the sources and paradigms of
thought that give rise to them. This requires more than entrepreneurship and
creative thinking; it also requires tapping into our deeper sources of passion
and compassion. As one U.Lab participant put it,
This course is having a
profound impact on my day-to-day life. I'm significantly more aware of when my
heart is 'closed'.
(3)
Stillness: The new axis of learning & leadership requires us to connect to
our sources of self-knowledge. At the source of activating the deepest level of human
creativity are two root questions: (1) Who is my Self--What is my
highest future possibility? (2) What is my Work--What work, if
focused on, activates my deepest capacity to create? In the U.Lab, we create
learning environments, tools, and practices that help individuals and groups
explore these two root questions (more details below). As one participant
reflected:
We are creating this world
with every thought, every conversation, and every action. Not wanting to be
naïve, but this does create a lot of opportunities for starting with self.
