The session on 31 March marked the end of the scan phase, which was the first phase of vision building. The focus phase has now commenced. In what is referred to as the focus phase, new ideas are tested, new prototypes are built, and existing models are dismantled and remodelled. The purpose of this phase is to ‘build’ a collaborative vision of Online Education.
The focus phase commenced on Friday 17 June with a creative brainstorm session. For the brainstorm session, the space on the ground floor of the Polak building was transformed into a creative environment (see photos here).
Using Farshida Zafar’s future perspective as a point of departure, colleagues got to work on building a physical three-dimensional model of Online Education 2020. While building the 3D model, the following elements were taken into consideration:
- What are the most important target groups / stakeholders / actors within the physical model?
- How do they interact with each other?
- How have you modelled the content of the education and what were the most important choices in this step?
- How have you chosen to model the chosen learning styles and learning paths and what were the most important choices here?
- Which barriers were surmounted?
After approximately 45 minutes, the various groups presented the online education models they had built to each other. From the different presentations, the following conclusions could be made: defining the target groups is in itself a difficult task; the various target groups have different needs, and education offered in the future needs to be enhanced with online education to be able to serve all target groups. After building the 3D models, colleagues were asked to fill in three templates based on the theme of ‘choice’. The first template was about ‘the content of education: what are the choices?’. The second template was about ‘learning paths and learning styles: what are the choices’?, and the third template was about breaking through barriers, with the question appropriately stated as ‘what are the barriers that have to be surmounted?’. After filling in these templates, the group was asked to formulate three concrete steps needed to enter the last phase of the vision action plan. Activities for this last phase (called the ‘act’ phase) include visiting the faculties over the course of the summer and including them in the future scenario. The meetings with the faculties will serve to plot a joint course that takes into consideration their wishes and ambitions.
The vision action plan will be concluded with a conference in October. It is important that lecturers - innovators - are present at this conference. Interested parties can initially register by sending an email to zafar@law.eur.nl.