Educational Innovation

Today, we had the first seminar in an important process. We aim at developing a new shared educational practice. Until now, the 4 locations in the program for social education have maintained their own profile, traditions and educational paradigms. Of course all the work in the programs is based on a shared curriculum, and on guidelines for internship and guidelines for exam. However, the analysis of the educational practice shows that the differences cannot easily be explained or grounded in sound educational argumentation. Furthermore, we have an urgent need to work cross locations, to strengthen research and educational quality. We can only do so if we can describe, document and present our educational practice in a coherent way based on a strong theoretical foundation and a shared practical educational approach.

I try to use the model below to design the process – in its entire flow. Today, we worked in the constructing phase. I had made a pre-prototype of a study-plan – presented in the way it is supposed to be presented to all our students – when they start the new semester.  And I got so much input and so many new, constructive and creative comments which I have to add to the study-plan before we can go into the next Lab-exercise: discussing the pre-prototype with all the lectures. Today, I had only invited 30 persons and 20 persons participated. In the next period, all lectures will be invited to participate in asynchronous and synchronous discussions. It is a very import phase where I have to maintain an open mind.

As part of my presentation today, I had made 4 interviews with important stakeholders: two students, a leader from an organizations for leaders of the institutions for impaired adult citizens and a researcher. In two of the interviews, I also made a short video presenting the highlights of the interview. In the next couple of days, I will try to convert one of the videos from powerpoint into YouTube and put it on my blog.

Several things surprised me today

1) At one hand, there was a great resistance to the concept of innovation. On the other hand, there also was a part of the lectures and managers highly dedicated to the concept of innovation.

2) There is a rather strong vision of the democratical processes in the educational practice in the program cross locations. However, some of the lectures seemed to disagree in involving the students in this innovative process.
3) A concern that educational quality will be reduced if we change our practice and work systematically cross locations.