The Learning in the World approach to strategy is two-pronged:
1. Learning Worlds Strategy
A set of tools designed to assist educational institutions and organisations to rethink and transform their approach to learning and teaching using technologies. These tools are structured around a six-stage ‘solution discovery’ life-cycle that ultimately forms an evidence-based foundation for deriving a thorough understanding of how best to improve the entire student educational experience for now and in the future. The Learning Worlds Strategy comprises two interdependent sub-components:
- Learning Strategies and Technology Implementation Manual, which is an easy-to-use six-step guide that enables Faculties, Schools, and the Institution as a whole to create tailored educational technology policy, plans, and implementation strategies. The manual details the steps and supporting documentation required to adopt and align the Resilient Futures and the Educational Technologies Evaluation Frameworks to the faculties’, schools’, and institution’s unique needs, preferences, and resources from which to:
- enable and support the development and application of educational technology plans and strategies to day-to-day learning and teaching practices
- establish a future where an integrated educational technology-enabled curriculum, learning, and teaching enhancement and support programme is incorporated as a fundamental component of long term goals and visions
- foster continued, collaborative policy development and sharing of educational technology research, implementation, and evaluation results across the institution (benchmarking).
- The Learning Technologies Evaluation Framework, which is initiated through a three-stage (primary) evaluation of Vendor, Technical/Business, and Pedagogical factors using tailored and thematically grouped criteria and survey questions, which together determine the educational value, usability, and suitability of an educational technology for addressing students’ learning and lecturers’ teaching needs.
On completion of the three primary stages, a second, three-layered sub-cycle is implemented to evaluate the educational effectiveness of a technology in terms of the depth of student comprehension and measurable improvements to the learning and teaching processes. This sub-cycle aims to facilitate a culture of evidence-based excellence at the school, faculty, and institutional levels to improve technology supported L&T practices. The criteria applied to this sub-cycle apply to the:
- educational value and usefulness of an educational technology
- learning and teaching effectiveness of an educational technology
- learning and teaching effectiveness of learning environments that use educational technologies.
By undertaking the six steps detailed in the Learning Strategies and Technology Implementation manual, educational organisations can be assisted to develop a highly comprehensive strategy for implementing online learning technologies that will directly meet their unique online L&T needs. This is where the Learning Technologies Evaluation Framework comes into play – it ensures that the most suitable technology is identified to satisfy each and every L&T need.
The key specifiers that assist in the identification and effective implementation of learning technologies into educational contexts are termed Organisational Enablers, which in turn are informed by Organisational Indicators. Both the Organisational Enablers and Organisational Indicators align directly with the Learning in the World Organisational Strategy.
2. The Learning World Organisation Strategy
Education is a global playing field that increasingly is becoming dominated by internationally renowned players and new entrants able to offer innovative approaches, programmes, and technologies to a worldly and highly technology savvy student audience.
To survive and thrive in such an environment, conventional institutions must rethink how they plan, what they plan, and formulate an innovative strategy that allows them to develop products and services that are competitive in a global education market. To this end, Learning in the World applies the Resilient Futures Framework (RFF).
The RFF is a strategy framework designed specifically for generating opportunity within complex change and is ideal for education institutions to develop strategy for the immediate and emergent conditions they face. The RFF is currently being applied by medium and large corporations and civic organisations and is a key element of Learning in the World’s Construction Kit.
The combination of a new learning philosophy, robust strategy, and the tools to build the most appropriate teaching-learning solution that can be applied to the conditions in which the learner lives and the educational institution operates, is what Learning in the World is about.
Learning in the World 