Tag: future

Career, coaching, work

Imagine Your Future Self

Laura Pasquini

The pandemic, inflation, and changes in our economy, has brought about so many challenges and changes to our lives. As work is a huge piece of that life pie, how and where it happens matters. Over the past few years, we may have been pushed into new ways of working. And much to our surprise and expectations, we’ve gone beyond what we thought we could do. Some things were in our control, and in other aspects of our work lives we might have had little to no agency. But, what would happen if we had a choice? What if we just took a beat to think about possibilities? What opportunities do you envision for your future self? What if we imagined what our future work and life looked like? 

Borrowed from one of my favorite podcasters/writers/people, Manoush Zomorodi and her ZigZag Pod, I drafted a “future self” visioning exercise for my coaching clients and teams. I want others to think about the “what ifs” and future life they want to lead — and work is a big part of that vision. 

Let’s pause today to daydream about what life looks like on the horizon. Grab a pen and paper, open a new document on your desktop or start a new note on your phone — we are going to do some quiet reflective writing. You might want to close your eyes and listen to the prompts and questions in this Future Self Visualization, to help you imagine what lies ahead. 

Future Self Visualization: Audio

Close your eyes and let’s picture yourself in the future. It’s exactly five years from now. It’s [insert MONTH] 2027. Imagine what your life is like. Picture what you WANT it to look like. We are going to walk through a typical work day. I want you to visualize what is happening,  as I walk you through the following prompts and questions: 

  • You wake up: How are you starting your day?
  • What’s the weather like?
  • What are you wearing? 
  • Today you’re getting ready to go into the office for a team summit. 
  • Where are you going? 
  • How do you commute to work? 
  • What do you do when you get there? 
  • As you grab your favorite morning beverage to answer emails before the team meeting — you look around your office space. What does it look like? What do you notice?
  • Going back to your “to do” list — What will be 1 or 2 things you prioritize today?
  • Thinking about your role and the work you do: What is your job? What actions & verbs describe what you do?
  • What’s something surprising about the work you do?
  • What impact do you make in your organization?
  • You walk into the conference room to meet your team: How do you engage with your colleagues? What are you contributing to this meeting? What is your role on the team?
  • After some collaboration, discussion, brainstorming, and planning you end the day: What did you learn? What did you accomplish? What are you most proud of? What direction are you leading on this team?
  • As you leave the office, you decide to do something you enjoy before you head home: What is that? What fun things do you have planned? What activities are you involved in? If this activity involves others, who do you meet?

Now open your eyes and take 3-5 minutes to write down a few bullet points of what you just visualized about your future self. What was interesting to you? What did you learn?

  • What was interesting to you?
  • What did you learn?
  • What did you notice about your day?
  • What are the verbs or actions you found yourself thinking about doing at work?
  • What was interesting about your day?
  • What are the projects, problems, or initiatives you are working on?
  • What work activities and tasks make you feel alive?
  • What are you proud of?

Feel free to write, doodle, job down bullet points, and capture ALL your thoughts, ideas and answers to these questions/prompts. Just write and reflect for as long as you can remember what you thought about in this visualization. Save this for later — we will talk about what you discovered in our next coaching session. See you soon!

What does your future self look like?

Want to debrief this future self exercise with me? Book a FREE coaching exploration session to learn more!

Collaboration, Higher Education, Horizon Report, K-12, Learning, report, Research

#FOECast: Ideation Week for the Future of Education

Laura Pasquini

What project should we create to grasp the future of education and technology?

This is a big, bold question that is being explored and discussed in facilitated conversations via Bryan Alexander this week for:

Future of Education & Everything Community (#FOECast) IDEATION WEEK: February 26-March 2, 2018 

For those of you who know me (or are just getting to be acquainted), I am all for a grassroots initiative to discuss and dig into problems by and for a community. The idea of this week is to encourage “ideation” in an open, accessible way to explore how we’ll investigate/understand the future of learning, education, technology, and probably more. This is an exciting endeavor instigated by Bryan (and more!) to crowdsource where the Horizon report might go — or even expand into areas it did not reach. The goal (or dream) is: “to create something bold and new, a project drawing on the middle of the 21st century. This is a public and open process, through which we hope to get as broad and diverse a set of perspectives as possible.”

 

JOIN the LIVE Online Sessions to CONTRIBUTE!

During the online, synchronous meetings, these will be the four questions/prompts to guide the conversation:

  1. What needs did the Horizon report meet?

  2. What forecasting methods should we consider?

  3. What shape should a new effort take?

  4. What scope should this cover?

If you are not able to make a time/meeting, please feel free to participate in this organic and growing discussion. You can comment by tweeting and follow the #FOECast hashtag. Add your comments and responses to this open Google doc that continues to grow and be annotated (love it?).  Join and contribute to the ongoing Slack channel (find the direct URL here: https://beyondthehorizongroup.slack.com/). Additionally, you can post your own thoughts/ideas to the four questions (above) on your own blog, video, or other digital media of your choice. I have no doubt the community of futurists, instigators, designers, and then some would welcome all contributions … well, maybe not smoke signals (yet).

I expressed my sentiments about the NMC Horizon Report and the value it offered in the doc:

1) What needs did the Horizon Report meet?

I think the horizon report helps to bring together multiple stakeholders have contributed to the different entities in education come together (K-12, higher ed, and libraries) and the professional organizations/affiliations of practitioners and researchers. The horizon reports offered information, knowledge sharing, exemplars/examples, and practical experiences collected in one hub. Related to that, we started to bridge into other geographic areas and branch into the needs of industry. This cross-section of representation started to pollinate ideas and encourage people to move beyond a role or institutional focus into what is possible for the future of education. Does the horizon report need to be exclusive to technology? Should we be focused on the education landscape as a whole? This could be the changes in demographics for learners, educators, practitioners, and organizational trends/needs.

I’m stilling chewing on these questions… and thinking out loud (out blog?). I hope to join the conversations and be part of this collaborative discussion and threads on the interwebs. If you too care about the future of learning and have a thought of two — do join in. This is important and we need ideas from all around the education/learning table. What do you think about the future of learning, education, and technology?

 

An UPDATE on March 4, 2018:

After participating in a couple of conversations, watching the online discourse, and critical contributions in the shared doc/slack spaces, I thought I should finish up my own contributions to all that is shared and where this #FOEcast conversation might go. Here are my responses to the last 3 questions posed for the week:

2) What forecasting methods should we consider?

I am not sure about forecasting methods; however, I am not sure we do a decent job actually aggregating the data, research, and current practices in a comprehensive manner. There are a number interesting and creative pedagogical practices that rarely get reviewed or researched. Additionally, there is rarely many findings or research implications that are shared well with practitioners for teaching/learning/training. I would be more interesting in considering how we bring these information sources we currently have to understand the broader landscape. Perhaps this involves bringing different entities, stakeholders, organizations, etc. together to process and review learning practices in a few different pockets and industries. With criticisms of integrity withing the educational technology research and critiques of past NMC briefs, I am not sure how the past reports were developed always expressed the trends of teaching/learning/training around the globe. Who gets included or excluded with a Delphi panel? Why is there a focus on technologies and tools, rather than solving problems? How can future trend reporting truly reach and cover a broad spectrum of how learning and development is evolving with “innovative” or forward thinking pedagogical practice? Those would be the questions I would want answered for predictions and pathways forward for research methods to develop a new report.

3) What shape should a new effort take?

Perhaps going from the original Delphi model of “ask the expert” + community to curate a report of the “state of learning” (or training or development — per Stephen Downes above) to tease out the original PDF report and present it in multiple ways that interests and engages multiple audiences (e.g. educators, researchers, designers, admin, training, L&D, etc.). A digital showcase of applications beyond a webinar or webcast could include bit-sized examples of testing and experimenting with learning design, a technology in application for learning, or other via a podcast+show notes, video demonstration, testing exemplar of a concept, team blog of experimentation in progress, or a “behind the curtains” look for how to apply pedagogical practices. There is no shortage of how to share knowledge that allows it to cross into different industries, learning/educational areas, and could engage multiple professionals (not just K-12, higher ed, workplace learning, library, etc.) — this could be shared with those who are willing to test/try/experiment in learning. Perhaps focusing on the issues, concepts, and problems will help bring a broader audience and interest to the findings in these future of learning reports AND help us to connect the nodes between professions, practitioners, and a variety of industries. Let’s start encouraging play in other professional sandboxes!

4) What scope should this cover?

I think FOECast has the potential to go beyond the original Horizon Report. It could be more than a function of educational sectors or even geographic locations discussing the trends for technology + {Library, K-12 education, Higher Ed, etc.}. The new version looking at the future of education (or learning/development/training), could provide a pathway to discuss critical issues, contemplative ideas, and thoughtful pedagogical practices. Some of these trends may include technology; however, the focus could be on the issues or problems the collective wants to solve in teaching/learning/development. I would hope these reports (or open ideation events or whatever shape this takes) continues to involve an integrated community of practice to engage, question, think critically, contribute, and challenge one another to do better work (teaching, researching, designing, etc.). What are the questions we should be asking? What are the practices we could be testing or piloting? What are the nuances for teaching/learning?

I am a big fan of how Kay Oddone shared this diagram below and reflected how connected learning principles emerged out of the FOEcast week of brainstorming/ideation:

Project_FOECast_through_the_lens_of_Connected_Learning

I agree with this, and further push this idea to embrace how connected learning often drives professionals to contribute to a networked community of practice. The FOEcast week reminded me how an organic group of people can support and contribute to moving an idea forward. The community is vested in a common purpose and many want to not just talk, but also contribute to how we can shape our future practices, with regards to formal and informal learning. With formal education institutions (K-12, higher education, etc.) and professional associations/organizations there seems to be a tension of how to balance innovative ideas and approach future-oriented projects due to structural barriers or workforce constraints. This process allows for more freedom and willingness to connect the nodes to share knowledge and involve those who might be interested in a problem/issue or topic. What is great about this designed experience is the potential to move this conversation (and future actions) beyond a particular professional role/title/function, across institutional/organizational boundaries, and involve others who have not contributed their voice yet. This is critical, as sharing at the intersections of what we do in learning/training/development will help to truly advance our pedagogical practices.

There was so much thoughtful discussion and critical thinking shared on the live chats, hashtag and open Google doc (go see for yourself). Thanks for instigating this needed conversation, Bryan, and to all the contributors — it has been a real delight to read your ideas and hear your thoughts in this open dialogue.  I hope this process of thinking, talking, and doing something for the future of everything continues. I’m interested… count me in! This might be the wrap up blog post for the #FOEcast week, Final push: Create!, however; this conversation and community contribution seems to be just the beginning: https://www.foecast.net/

AcAdv, nacada

What’s On the Horizon for Academic Advising?

Laura Pasquini

Last week, I shared my thoughts about what academic advising might look in the future in higher education with an advising group.

Based on Lowenstein’s (2013) “Vision, Not a Prediction” description in his Academic Advising Approaches chapter, I shared my ideas of how the field of academic advising COULD contribute to evolution of post-secondary education. Lowenstein shares a number of insights and examples about how advising as a profession can move forward, so my talk focussed on HOW (specifically with examples) where faculty and professional advisors can enhance student development in terms of:

  1. Interaction with students to  contribute and encourage learning outside their curriculum.
  2. Influence to changes and developments on their own campuses.
  3. Integration into the broader focus and purpose of academia.

Much of this session discussed how higher education institutions and administrators would be the only ones to lead advising changes, unless the advising profession asked the following questions themselves:

  • What is the role of advising or the advisor in post-secondary education?
  • What will advising look like in 5, 10, or 20 years?
  • What do YOU want the profession of advising to look like?
  • What sort of advising “profession” do YOU want to participate in?
  • How can YOU contribute to the change and develops occurring in higher ed, specifically with regards to how advising is organized?

In thinking about my own responses to the above prompts, I know that advisors can be at the forefront of institutional and organizational change. A number of advisors I interact with and know are very forward thinking, innovative problem-solvers who want to contribute to research, teaching, or service initiatives for the profession. It is this type of critical thinking and resilience of this generation of advisors, that we need to step up to debate practices, contribute ideas, and become active participants in how the role of advising at our institutions.  Does this mean increased advising training and development, enhance qualifications, or greater expectations for advisors? Perhaps. I think the advising community of practice can decide that, and should before some one else in the post-secondary sector decides to take this challenge on without consulting advisors altogether.

 

Reference

Lowenstein, M. (2013). Chapter 14: Envisioning the future. In J. K. Drake, P. Jordan, & M. A. Miller (Eds.), Academic advising approaches: Strategies that   teach students to make the most of college. (pp. 243-258). San Francisco,   CA: Jossey-Bass.

 

 

EdTech, Higher Education, Social Media, StudentAffairs

#SXSWedu Panel: Social Media in Higher Ed – Where Are We Going? #smHE

Laura Pasquini

Are you attending the SXSW Edu (#SXSWedu) conference in Austin this week? Why not drop into our panel just after the opening of #SXSWedu? Join our session on Monday, March 4th from 1:30-2:30 pm in the Austin Convention Center Room #15. Here is the skinny on our panel:

Panel: Social Media in Higher Ed – Where Are We Going?

Social Media Propoganda

Image c/o Justonescarf

100% of Colleges and Universities are now adopting “social media” tools to engage students. While strategies and tactics vary per institution there has been little analysis into the effectiveness of these networks both from the student and institutional perspective. Social Media Managers have been hired, consultants have been giving “best practices” on how to use “free tools” but is all this network chasing really getting us anywhere? In this panel we’ll showcase examples of good and bad social media implementation, and use these as a framework to discuss what a meaningful social media strategy and guidance looks like.

Intended Audience: Higher Education; Student Affairs; Academic Affairs; Faculty; Ed Tech Start Ups

Join the dialogue with Tanya (@tjoosten), Brandon (@bcroke), Brad (@bradpopilolek), and myself (@laurapasquini) as we chat about these three central questions proposed by our panel:


1. What does a failed social media strategy look like? How do we know social media failed OR was successful? Do we need social media strategy, guidance, or policy on our campus?

2. What does a successful social media strategy look like? What are three pillars every social media initiative should have? What works really well with using social media? What initiatives have you seen?

3. What role should institutions play in engaging students with social media? How should institutions engage  social media? Why should we use social media? How can the different players on campus (faculty, administrators, students, developers, industry, & start ups) work together and collaborate for purposeful social media use?

If you have a question and you want to chime in during the session (near or far), I’ll be tracking the conversation with the hashtag #smHE to collect your questions, thoughts, and contributions before and during our panel session. What questions do you have about social media in higher education? Let me know.

UPDATED: Slide Deck & #smHE Tweets Collected. Enjoy. 

#SXSWed Panel: Social Media in Higher Ed – Where Are We Going?#smHE (with images, tweets) · laurapasquini · Storify or http://bit.ly/Z422Pw

Book Review, Higher Education, K-12, Open Education, PLN

10 Principles for the Future of Learning

Laura Pasquini

While working on some late night treadmill mileage, I decided to catch up on documents and books I have been collecting on my Kindle. Last week I read The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, which was a precursor to The Future of Thinking: Learning Institutions in a Digital Age book published by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Although this material is a bit dated, I think that some of the pedagogy still applies for educational development.

Image c/o Martin Hawksey (and his musings on this text as well). 

In the first collaborative project, the authors share ten principles to support the future of learning. Davidson and Goldberg (2009) presented these pillars of institutional pedagogy to help institutions rethink learning and meet the challenges that lie ahead for both K-12 and higher education:

  1. Self-Learning – discovering and exploring online possibilities
  2. Horizontal Structures – how learning institutions enable learning; from learning that to learning how; from content to process
  3. From Presumed Authority to Collective Credibility – shifting issues of authority to issues of credibility; understand how to make wise choices
  4. A De-Centered Pedagogy – adopt a more inductive, collective learning that takes advantage of our era and digital resources
  5. Networked Learning – socially networked collaborative learning stressing cooperation, interactivity, mutuality and social engagement
  6. Open Source Education – seeks to share openly and freely in the creation of culture and learning; provides a more collective model of interchange
  7. Learning as Connectivity and Interactivity – digital connection and interaction to produce sustainable, scaffolding ensembles
  8. Lifelong Learning – there is no finality to learning; learning is part of society and culture
  9. Learning Institutions as Mobilizing Networks – networks enable flexibility, interactivity, and outcome; new institutional organizations reliability and innovation
  10. Flexible Scalability and Simulation – new technologies allow for collaboration beyond distance or scale for productive interactions that warrant educational merit

Reference: Davidson, C.N. & Goldberg, D.T. (2009). The future of learning institutions in a digital age. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.