[OSList] On the future of universities

[Alan Stewart]

Dear All

Further to my posts of 26 Aug and 18 Sep 2013 on this in relation to the
item of Jen Mein about ’Cultivating Change in the Academy’ I wish to
express my appreciation to Bob Stilger, Rosa Zubizarreta and others for
their thoughtful offline responses.

And to acknowledge the note of Jodi Sandford which I found particularly
uplifting:

Jodi Sandfort sandf002 at umn.edu
via<http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=1311182&ctx=mail>
 multimindsolutions.com  28 Aug



[image: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif]


    to Alan, Jen, AoH

"[image: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/images/cleardot.gif]All -  We are
so happy to be part of this international community to share our eBook.
There is much that A of H can and is adding to higher education at this
critical time in its development.

We hope the ebook can help others "make the case" and inspire more of us to
harvest our practice stories in public ways with each other!"

For what you said Jodi resonates strongly in considering a tension arising
from view that MOOC and other online
offerings<http://truth-out.org/news/item/18120-massive-open-online-courses-and-beyond-the-revolution-to-come>are
‘the way of the future’ for universities. Or is the ‘real revolution’
participation in the dance of conversation http://www.artofhosting.org
<http://t.co/pSCP7MwmmC>by all sectors of higher education
institutions such as what is now
evolving at the University of Minnesota as outlined in ‘Cultivating Change
in the Academy<https://cultivatingchange.wp.d.umn.edu/hostingconversations/>
.’
*A propos* the latter I have recently been invited by a person who had
experienced successful OST events which I had facilitated to introduce the
potential value of this approach to elicit ‘all voices being heard’ in
developing a research proposal by a university department.

‘Pre-work’ conversing is now under way. In the course of this the
university sponsor – who was not acquainted with OST - mentioned that there
were eight other sections in this university which had indicated interest
in the nature of the enterprise and had not ever yet engaged
collaboratively.

In the light of developments at UMN I have in mind to also bring processes
underpinning ‘Cultivating Change in the Academy’ to the attention of this
university as described so comprehensively and wholesomely  in the
accompanying e-book. <http://e-book.>
http://conservancy.umn.edu/handle/155523

Does anyone here have experience of taking such an initiative? Or know of
stories of this happening?
Looking forward

Go well

Alan



Alan Stewart, PhD
Facilitator of conversations that matter and participatory fun
Based in Adelaide and operating throughout Austral-Asia
tel: +618 82127168
mob: +61(0)413848680
em: alan at multimindsolutions.com and alanmstewart at gmail.com (personal)
web: www.multimindsolutions.com (being updated now that I have recently
returned from living for 6 years in Hong Kong)
blog: http://conversare.net
 <http://www.takeoutcomedy.com/site/comedians/alan-stewart/>

See my new e-book Time to converse - at the heart of human warmth
<http://amzn.to/18dxS2P>
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