Dreaming about open

I have always been an active dreamer, frequently dreaming solutions or ideas related to projects I am working on. I have been known to dream system designs, entire term papers,  and even architectural plans. While these ideas often seem brilliant when I am first awake, by light of day, they often seem less so.

Lately, I have been immersed in a project on Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU), an online learning environment for motivated adult learners with an emphasis on openness, peer learning, and community. To that list of core values, I would add self-personlization.

Last night, I dreamed about this:

Open Business School

Tag line: Because your learning shouldn’t be constrained to what they think is important

or Because you know best what you need to learn

The idea is a business school on P2pU for entrepreneurs, in particular for those for whom it doesn’t make sense to go to traditional business school (arguably most entrepreneurs). The curriculum would include a variety of courses in traditional business areas, such as marketing, finance, management, etc. but with a strong slant toward open learning.

To me, that means:

• Lots of learner choices (in terms of courses, focus areas, projects, etc.)
• Very hands-on
• Less content and more scaffolding and resources to choose from to guide one’s own learning

Done right, this is profoundly different from how most schools operate.

So then, after waking up, I thought, hey, what about this same idea for a school of education? Many in ed reform have bemoaned the short comings of traditional pre-service education and in-service professional development. Importantly, it doesn’t model the values of the new participatory model of education that we hope teachers will follow. A new P2PU Open School of Education could change all that. (I’m going to write more about this in a future post.)

It’s now about six hours after I woke up from dreaming this idea, and it still seems pretty good to me. Perhaps it is not a very big idea, but for me,  it is a new way of grokking “open” that is exciting.