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INCOMPLETE PAGE UNDER CONSTANT DEVELOPMENT

DRAFT Course Proposal

(see the previous meeting, the original proposal & current notes)

The Crisis

  1. The business model of today's universities is already beyond its 'best-before' date.
  2. Some school leavers are seeking alternative ways to prepare for employment.
  3. Worse still, governments discuss the virtues of university life by announcing likely pay differentials rather than discussing their deeper, long-term purpose.
  4. We see this situation as an opportunity for imagining new ways to invest in the future.
  5. This may mean reinventing the university as, say, a global facilitator of our survival as a species.

A Radical Pitch

  1. Dear X,
  2. Although I had only a brief glimpse of your student work I was very impressed with LIS.
  3. As you know I have been working with colleagues from different disciplines and wanted to pitch an idea.
  4. We aim to offer an experimental part-time course for 0-to-29 year olds in 2026-7 (subject to funding).
  5. It will probably be managed on Saturdays or Sundays.
  6. We wondered whether it could attract future possible applicants to one of your LIS programmes.
  7. Our approach might be quite radical.
  8. Rather than devising a fixed curriculum we will work within a framework of values, principles and methods.
  9. Students will create their own agenda and achieve specific goals within the terms of our framework.

Aims

Our programme aims to help learners:

  1. To manage career ambitions whilst reflecting upon our long-term survival as a species.
  2. To manage their curiosity across and beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
  3. To encourage independent enquiry, individual knowledge and competence.
  4. To learn by assembling, nurturing and sustaining small, co-creative teams.

Methods and Deliverables

  1. Weekly workshops will operate as a series of ‘Co-creative Workouts’ with the following deliverables:
    • 1) Feedback elicited from external experts in fields or practices that are appropriate to the individual learner.
    • 2) A bespoke portfolio suitable for applying to an apprenticeship / college / university / employment etc.
    • 3) An public exhibition of work achieved on the course.
  2. Initially it will be free of charge to learners. (voluntary repayment in any form may be welcomed in the future).
  3. Although we are not against AI in general we will discourage the use of 'smart' support technologies based on the probabilistic management of LLM data.
  4. Instead of using traditional ('expert-led) assessment of submitted work we will encourage the use of our learner-led four-fold framework of learning and evaluation (SELF).
  5. Students will learn to self-assemble their own creative (learning-action) teams that are inclusive and non-hierarchical
  6. Our initiative is motivated more by altruism and care than by remuneration.
  7. ‘Guardians’ will supervise learning teams to monitor safety and wellbeing as well as facilitating rich learning experiences.

The Framework

  1. Principles of co-creativity will be addressed with reference to concepts from other cultures (e.g. Ubuntu).
  2. We will highlight issues of shifting identities by guiding transitions from ’I’ to ‘we’ at different places and times.
  3. The self-managed teams will normally comprise 4 or 5 individuals who support one another's interests.
  4. When managed correctly these teams will operate as what we call creative quartets.
  5. Since its invention in 2004 our SELF system has helped many students to plan their professional futures in a creative, autodidactic and entrepreneurial way.
  6. In order to encourage more holistic learning we will work with least 4 levels of learning:

Reclaiming 'wisdom'

  1. We will invite learners to pursue, co-define and re-map their own concepts of collective wisdom.
  2. This is likely to mean heightening their metacognitive sense of who they are, what know, don't know and cannot know.
  3. It will reconcile emotional sensibilities (e.g. curiosity and compassion) with self-interest at the career level.
  4. It may entail drawing upon lived experiences (e.g. tacit skills of knowing, doing and making) to refine one's judgment.
  5. It will mean reflecting upon moral issues in an empathetic and altruistic way.
  6. It will embrace playfulness and humour as a way to welcome failure and to reveal unforeseen opportunities.
  7. Immersive experiments in ecological awareness or philosophical quests for 'unthinkable possibles'.

tempered by 'curiosity management'.

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