Stories

Tag: New Learning

  • What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    What is The Geneva Learning Foundation’s Impact Accelerator?

    Imagine a social worker in Ukraine supporting children affected by the humanitarian crisis. Thousands of kilometers away, a radiation specialist in Japan is trying to find effective ways to communicate with local communities. In Nigeria, a health worker is tackling how to increase immunization coverage in their remote village. These professionals face very different challenges in very different places. Yet when they joined their first “Impact Accelerator”, something remarkable happened. They all found a way forward. They all made real progress. They all discovered they are not alone.

    The Impact Accelerator is a simple, practical method developed by The Geneva Learning Foundation that helps professionals turn intent into action, results, and outcomes. It has worked equally well in every country where it has been tried. It has helped people – whatever their knowledge domain or context – strengthen action and accelerate progress to improve health outcomes. Each time, in each place, whatever the challenge, it has produced the same powerful results.

    The social worker joins other professionals facing similar challenges. The radiation specialist connects with safety experts dealing with comparable concerns. The health worker collaborates with others working to improve immunization. Each group shares a common purpose.

    What makes the Impact Accelerator different?

    Most training programs teach you something and then send you away. You return to your workplace full of ideas but face the same obstacles. You have new knowledge but struggle to apply it. (Some people call this “knowledge transfer” but it is not only about knowledge. Others call this the “applicability problem”.) You feel alone with your challenges.

    The Impact Accelerator works differently. It stays with you as you implement change. It connects you with others facing similar challenges. It helps you take small, concrete steps each week toward your bigger goal.

    Each Impact Accelerator brings together professionals working on the same type of challenge. Social workers who support children join with others who do the same – but the group may also include teachers and psychologists they do not usually work with. Safety specialists connect with safety specialists, but also people in other job roles. It is their shared purpose that makes this diversity productive:  every discussion, every shared experience, every piece of advice directly applies to their work.

    Think of it like learning to ride a bicycle. Traditional training is like someone explaining how bicycles work. The Impact Accelerator is like having someone run alongside you, keeping you steady as you pedal, cheering when you succeed, and helping you get back on when you fall. Everyone learns to ride, together. And everyone is going somewhere.

    How does the Impact Accelerator work?

    The Impact Accelerator follows a simple weekly rhythm that fits into daily work. It is learning-based work and work-based learning.

    Monday: Set your goal

    Every Monday, you decide on one specific action you will complete by Friday. Not a vague hope or a grand plan. One concrete thing you can actually do.

    For example:

    • “I will create a safe space activity for five children showing signs of trauma.”
    • “I will develop a visual guide for the new radiation monitoring procedures.”
    • “I will meet with three community leaders to discuss vaccine concerns.”

    You share this goal with others in the Accelerator. This creates accountability. You know that on Friday, your peers will ask how it turned out.

    Wednesday: Check in with peers

    Midweek, you connect with others in your group who face the same type of challenges. You share what is working, what is difficult, and what you are learning.

    This is where magic happens. Someone else tried something that failed. Now you know to try differently. Another person found a creative solution. Now you can adapt it for your situation. You realize you are part of something bigger than yourself.

    Friday: Report and reflect

    On Friday, you report on your progress. Did you achieve your goal? What happened when you tried? What did you learn?

    This is not about judging success or failure. Sometimes the most valuable learning comes from things that did not work as expected. The important thing is that you took action, you reflected on what happened, and you are ready to try again next week.

    Monday again: Build on what you learned

    The next Monday, you set a new goal. But now you are not starting from zero. You have the experience from last week. You have ideas from your peers. You have momentum.

    Week by week, action by action, you make progress toward your larger goal.

    The power of structured support in the Impact Accelerator

    The Impact Accelerator provides several types of support to help you succeed.

    Peer learning networks

    You join a community of professionals who understand your challenges because they face similar ones. 

    Each Impact Accelerator brings together people working on the same type of challenge. This shared purpose means that every suggestion, every idea, every lesson learned is likely to be relevant to your work. The learning comes not from distant experts but from people doing the same work you do. Their solutions are practical and tested in real conditions like yours.

    Guided structure

    While you choose your own goals and actions, the Accelerator provides a framework that keeps you moving forward. The weekly rhythm creates momentum. The reporting requirements ensure reflection. The peer connections prevent isolation.

    This structure is like the banks of a river. The water (your energy and creativity) flows freely, but the banks keep it moving in a productive direction.

    Expert guidance when needed

    Sometimes you need specific technical input or help with a particular challenge. The Accelerator provides “guides on the side” – experts who offer targeted support without taking over your process. They help you think through problems and connect you with resources, but you remain in charge of your own change effort.

    What participants achieve

    Across different countries and different challenges, Impact Accelerator participants report similar outcomes.

    Increased confidence

    “Before, I knew what should be done but felt overwhelmed about how to start. Now I take one step at a time and see real progress.” This confidence comes from successfully completing weekly actions and seeing their impact.

    Tangible progress

    Participants do not just learn about change; they create it. A vaccination program reaches new communities. Safety procedures actually get implemented. Children receive support when they need it. The changes may start small, but they are real and they grow.

    Expanded networks

    “I used to feel like I was the only one facing these problems. Now I have colleagues across my country who understand and support me.” These networks last beyond the Accelerator, providing ongoing support and collaboration.

    Enhanced problem-solving

    Through weekly practice and peer exchange, participants develop stronger skills for analyzing challenges and developing solutions. They learn to break big problems into manageable actions and to adapt based on results.

    Resilience in facing obstacles

    Every change effort faces barriers. The Accelerator helps participants expect these obstacles and work through them with peer support rather than giving up when things get difficult.

    How can the same methodology work everywhere?

    The Impact Accelerator has succeeded across vastly different contexts – from supporting children in Ukrainian cities to enhancing radiation safety in Japanese facilities to improving immunization in Nigerian villages. Each Accelerator focuses on one specific challenge area, bringing together professionals who share that common purpose. Why does the same approach work for such different challenges?

    The answer lies in focusing on universal elements of successful change:

    • Breaking big goals into weekly actions;
    • Learning from peers who understand your specific context and challenges;
    • Reflecting on what works and what does not;
    • Building momentum through consistent progress; and
    • Creating accountability through a community united by shared purpose.

    Each group focuses on their specific challenge and context, but the process of creating change remains remarkably similar.

    A typical participant journey in the Impact Accelerator

    Let us follow Yuliia, a social worker in Ukraine helping children affected by the humanitarian crisis.

    Week 1: Getting started

    Yuliia joins the Impact Accelerator after developing her action plan. Her big goal: establish effective psychological support for 50 displaced children in her community center within three months.

    On Monday, she sets her first weekly goal: “During daily activities, I will observe and document how 10 children are affected.”

    By Friday, she has detailed observations. She notices that loud noises sometimes cause reactions in most children, and several withdraw completely during group activities. This gives her concrete starting points.

    Week 2: Building on learning

    Based on her observations, Yuliia sets a new goal: “I will create a quiet corner with calming materials and test it with three children who are withdrawn.”

    During the Wednesday check-in, another social worker shares how she uses art therapy for non-verbal expression with traumatized children. A colleague working in a different city describes success with sensory materials. Yuliia incorporates both ideas into her quiet corner.

    The quiet corner proves successful – two of the three children spend time there and begin to engage with the materials. One child draws for the first time since arriving at the center.

    Week 3: Creative solutions

    Yuliia’s new goal: “I will develop a simple ‘feelings chart’ with visual cues and introduce it during morning circle time.”

    Her peers from Ukraine and all over Europe – all working with children – help refine the idea. A psychologist from another region shares that abstract emotions are hard for traumatized children to identify. She suggests using colors and weather symbols instead of facial expressions. Another colleague recommends making the chart interactive rather than static.

    The feelings chart becomes a breakthrough tool. Children who never spoke about their emotions begin pointing to images. Yuliia’s colleagues can better understand and respond to children’s needs.

    Week 4: Scaling what works

    Energized by success, Yuliia aims higher: “I will train two other staff members to use the quiet corner and feelings chart, and create a simple guide for these tools.”

    By now, Yuliia has concrete evidence that these approaches work. She documents specific examples of children’s progress. Her guide is so practical that the center director wants to share it with other locations.

    The ripple effect

    Yuliia’s tools spread throughout the network of centers supporting displaced children. Through the Accelerator network, colleagues adapt her approaches for different age groups and settings. Soon, hundreds of children across Ukraine benefit from these simple but effective interventions.

    The evidence of impact

    The true test of any approach is whether it creates lasting change. Impact Accelerator participants consistently report:

    • Specific improvements in their work that they can measure and document;
    • Sustained changes that continue after the Accelerator ends;
    • Solutions that others adopt and spread;
    • Professional growth that enhances all their future work; and
    • Networks that provide ongoing support and learning.

    These outcomes appear whether participants work on mental health support in Ukraine, radiation safety in Japan, or immunization in Nigeria. The challenges differ, but the pattern of success remains consistent.

    How we prove the Accelerator makes a difference

    In global health, the biggest challenge is proving that your intervention actually caused the improvements you see. This is called “attribution.” How do we know that better health outcomes happened because of the Impact Accelerator and not for other reasons?

    The Geneva Learning Foundation solves this challenge through a three-step process that connects the dots between learning, action, and results.

    Step 1: Measuring where we start

    Before participants begin taking action, they document their baseline – the current situation they want to improve. For example:

    • A social worker records how many children show severe trauma symptoms.
    • A radiation specialist documents current safety incident rates.
    • A health worker notes the vaccination coverage in their area.

    These starting numbers give us a clear picture of where improvement begins.

    Step 2: Tracking progress and actions

    Every week, participants complete “acceleration reports” that capture two things:

    • The specific actions they took; and
    • Any changes they observe in their measurements.

    This creates a detailed record connecting what participants do to what happens as a result. Week by week, the picture becomes clearer.

    Step 3: Proving the connection

    Here is where the Impact Accelerator becomes special. When participants see improvements, they must answer a crucial question: “How much of this change happened because of what you learned and did through the Accelerator?”

    But they cannot just claim credit. They must prove it to their peers by showing:

    • Exactly which actions led to which results;
    • Why the changes would not have happened without their intervention; and
    • Evidence that their specific approach made the difference.

    This peer review process is powerful. Your colleagues understand your context. They know what is realistic. They can spot when claims are too bold or when someone is being too modest. They ask tough questions that help clarify what really caused the improvements.

    After the first-ever Accelerator in 2019, we compared the implementation progress after six months between those who joined this final stage and a control group that also developed action plans, but did not join.

    Why this method works

    This approach solves several problems that make attribution difficult:

    1. Traditional studies often cannot capture the complexity of real-world change. The Impact Accelerator’s method shows not just that change happened, but how and why it happened.
    2. Self-reporting can be unreliable when people work alone. But when you must convince peers who understand your work, the reports become more accurate and honest.
    3. Numbers alone do not tell the whole story. By combining measurements with detailed descriptions of actions and peer validation, we get a complete picture of how change happens.

    The invitation to act

    Around the world, professionals like you are transforming their work through the Impact Accelerator. They start with the same doubts you might have: “Can I really create change? Will this work in my context? Do I have time for this?”

    Week by week, action by action, they discover the answer is yes. Yes, they can create change. Yes, it works in their context. Yes, they can find time because the Accelerator fits into their real work rather than adding to it.

    The Impact Accelerator does not promise overnight transformation. It offers something better: a proven process for creating real, sustainable change through your own efforts, supported by peers who understand your journey.

    If you work in a field where you seek to make a difference, the Impact Accelerator can help you move from good intentions to meaningful impact. The same process can work for you.

    The question is not whether the Impact Accelerator can help you create change. The question is: What change do you want to create?

    Your journey can begin Monday.

    Image: The Geneva Learning Foundation Collection © 2025

  • The future of learning that could have been

    The future of learning that could have been

    In June 2017, the Institute’s president, together with its Chief Learning Officer (CLO), convened an all-hands-on-deck meeting to announce the Institute’s commitment to strengthening its learning culture of innovation and change through an innovative, evidence-based internal learning strategy. Staff were invited to nominate and then elect representatives to the Learning & Development Committee (LDC), mandated with the challenge of ingraining learning “karma in the walls and halls” as key to delivering on its promise to prepare a new generation for the coming humanitarian challenges.

    In July, the Institute performed its first benchmark of learning culture and performance. This demonstrated that staff learning is key to mission, financial, and knowledge performance (ie, to delivering results). This benchmark was followed by a learning practice audit in August that woke both managers and staff to their existing strengths and the amazing ways in which they were already continually learning at the point of work.

    By the end of 2017, in response to this evidence, DFID and other donors agreed that 5% of budgets be used to support internal learning. In 2018, the LDC’s first elected chair, supported by senior management, staff, and managers, began investing in learning events that recognised and reward on-the-job innovative ideas, problem-solving and significant break-throughs. Staff rapidly learned to rely on these new approaches rather than costly, formal training.

    Invited to participate in these learning events, partners expressed growing interest in adopting this methodology to their own contexts, significantly raising the profile of the Institute as an innovator and sector leader for learning.

    Staff capabilities grew rapidly and engagement soared in 2018, as managers worked with their teams to define one development objective as part of their performance objectives. Each member of staff added to their personal learning dashboards the activities (both formal and informal) that reflected the diversity and productivity of their learning practices. People inspired each other to go further, sharing and collaborating in new ways. Staff were encouraged to take on stretch assignments, with the assurance that they would no longer be penalised for failure.

    By 2019, retention remained impressively above the sector average, as managers adopted the practice of “stay interviews” to mitigate turnover, working within a strong HR system that recognised the need for clear career progression pathways that reward positive behaviours and leadership for learning.

    Given the strength of HR and learning systems, this rapid growth in capabilities and leadership was visible to all, shared internally and externally, and directly benefitted the Institute’s partners. High-performing teams were recognised and rewarded during memorable all-staff learning events. External partners asked to join these events, as many of the innovative practices and outcomes were directly relevant to them.

    Starting in 2018, new staff reported feeling positively transformed by their induction into the Institute. Formal onboarding was limited to essential information found in the new shelf of crowd-sourced, curated resources for staff learning. Instead, new people were quickly assigned a guide – both a peer and a mentor – from another team or centre. They were invited not just to consume content about the Institute, but to feed back on what they need to function effectively.

    By the end of 2019, the LDC repeated its learning culture and performance measurement. The results highlighted a dramatic improvement in performance correlated with the growing strengths of its learning culture.

    By 2020, the Institute was recognised by its donors and partners as a model for how to organise and strengthen staff learning to drive performance. Institute branches worldwide reported a growing number of requests from partners – humanitarian organisations but also firms from technology and other industries – who, in the past, may have been reluctant consumers of its learning products. They began to request that the Institute advise them on how to adapt this new internal learning strategy to their own context. Conversely, demand for high-cost, low volume formal training (both digital and face-to-face) diminished as partners begin to recognise that the most significant methods to improve preparedness and response for humanitarian crises are to be found in the day-to-day activities of their staff, volunteers, and the communities they serve.

    Image: Painting at Trigonos (25 January 2017). Personal collection.

  • New learning for radiation emergency medical preparedness and assistance

    New learning for radiation emergency medical preparedness and assistance

    My presentation for the Geneva Learning Foundation at the 15th meeting of the WHO Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network (REMPAN), World Health Organization, Geneva – 3-5 July 2017.

    The 15th meeting of the WHO Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network (REMPAN) Geneva 3–5 July 2017
    The 15th meeting of the WHO Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Assistance Network (REMPAN) Geneva 3–5 July 2017

    Featured image: Participants of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation’s (RERF) Seventh Epidemiological Training Workshop for Biologists. The objective of the RERF is to conduct research and studies for peaceful purposes on medical effects of radiation and associated diseases in humans, with a view to contributing to maintenance of the health and welfare of the atomic bomb (A-bomb) survivors and to enhancement of the health of all humankind.

  • Insomnia against the grain – and putting Bloom to bed

    Insomnia against the grain – and putting Bloom to bed

    Summer 2016, Day 1. “So, that puts to bed Bloom’s Taxonomy… that reliable workhorse,” sighed C. “What do we use in its place?”

    “We don’t”, answered the Walrus. “There is no successor to neatly replace Bloom’s. It’s still there – and can still be useful. It’s about changing the way we think and do the design of learning. Just look at how we are building our course in real time.”  And we are. Observing the accelerating flow of applications for the #DigitalScholar course is more than a spectator sport. It is turning me into an insomniac. It is about feeling who is out there in the interwebs, somehow ending up with a course announcement from a brand-new (read: obscure) foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. Reading motivation statements, trying to figure out how they connect to boxes ticked… It is on that shifting knowledge landscape of what is shared, across time and space, that we are sculpting the experience we hope amazing, starting on the fourth of July.

    In fact, we’ve already started. Slack, Facebook, and Twitter accounts are all set up to connect participants to each other even before they connect with the course and the #DigitalScholar team. Never mind that some folks might struggle with Slack, may legitimately feel overwhelmed, frustrated, or annoyed by so many different platforms before the course has even started, and that using Facebook for anything related to work could well be anathema… Yet getting used to the multiplicity of tools, purposes, and intent is part and parcel of what we need to learn.

    This course doesn’t even have a name. Instead, it is about becoming a #DigitalScholar. That is no hipster hashtag, by the way. It is part of a taxonomy of New Learning that sees technology as not just enabling or mediating learning, but affording us a new economy of effort, the means by which we can afford to  extricate ourselves from the miasma of the learning-and-development of the Past. Becoming a #DigitalScholar is not about content. It is about metacognition (thinking about thinking) far more than about cognition. It is about figuring out what it means to be human in a Digital Age, a far more significant question than the gruesome dichotomy between real and virtual that leads to the sterile dead-end of our IRL fetish.

    In Minecraft, you do not have to sit through six-minute video lectures about the different kinds of building blocks before taking a quiz testing your ability to recall them. Mastery learning implies that there is some end point, some learning objective that you reach. You can build and measure what you build or how you got there – but isn’t what you build (and how you did it) what really matters? Can a badge – or even 1,000 discrete, specific, networked ones in the blockchain – represent what we know and experience?

    Winter 2014. Cointrin, Geneva’s airport lounge. “Just stick to what you know,” said the Roly-Poly High Priest of Learning. “Maybe you can convene a group of humanitarian folks and build an L&D network around shared needs. Start there.” A sensible enough proposal. I already knew more than a few really bright folks pushing technology for learning in various international organizations. Yet my gut hated the idea, recognizing something unsavory about that pattern. It has taken me two years to figure out why – and to build something the potential of which rests on success (or failure) in convening learning leaders from as many different quarters as we can.

    One key weakness of our humanitarian learning culture rests in our insularity. (There are also many strengths). We think we are different because of the nature of the business we are in. So we neglect meaningful connections to external systems. And yet when we engage with learning leaders outside our little corner of the Universe, the gaps between what we do and what they do can lead to a kind of ghoulish fascination for the opulence and the confidence of the corporate learning space, where CLOs erect brick-and-mortar campuses, deploy transformative leadership acceleration (not just development) programs to tackle their most wicked business problems, and lead teams with capabilities that we can only wish for. Witness the rare heads of learning and development who lavish budget to join corporate learning networks with no clear strategy of what might be transferable or how, given the differences in context and mission. Meanwhile, most of us work with shoestring budgets and struggle to lock down an appointment – never mind recognition, support, or funding – with our CEO, or, more likely, the head of HR that we report to.

    Yes, the learning I know is about saving lives (think first aid, disaster response, or emergency health) and about building a sustainable future. I’ve learned many humbling lessons about how difficult it is to apply theory and principle to chaos. The chaos of your industry may be of a different nature. But they are connected, part of the same messy world we share.  Education is privileged to be the science of sciences. It is the meta layer of the networked data society. It eats communication and knowledge management for breakfast. And I can no longer think of what I do in learning in isolation of the rest of the world. Limiting the unit of analysis to one organization, its people, or even its industry is a constraint of the past. In fact, I refuse to conceive a learning initiative that does not cross boundaries. It is a necessary condition for learning to provide a way of seeing trends developing in the world today. The incoming signals amplify the sense of what that condition might mean. That is why I am finding it hard to sleep. And so eagerly looking forward to walking on the edges for four weeks with a multitude from everywhere.

    Image: WallpapersCraft.

  • Making humanitarians

    Making humanitarians

    The industry to tackle growing humanitarian and development challenges has expanded rapidly since the mid 1990s, but not nearly as fast as the scope and scale of the problems have spiraled. Professionalization was therefore correctly identified as a major challenge of its own, with over a decade of research led by Catherine Russ and others clearing the rubble to allow the sector to make sense of what needs to be done. The bottom line diagnosis is a now-familiar litany: a shortage of people and skills, lack of quality standards, inability to scale.

    Despite the growth of traditional university programs to credential specialized knowledge of these challenges and how to tackle them, young people armed with multiple masters find that they really start learning upon entering their first NGO. They face a dearth of entry-level positions (sometimes spending years as “interns” or other forms of under-recognized labor) and discover professional networks closed to them because legitimacy is based on shared experience, not formal qualifications.

    Certified professional development run by universities fail because these institutions are ill-equipped to deliver sub-degree qualifications, and rely on methods that seldom provide experience. This problem is not specific to humanitarians, but may be more acute because of the nature of the work and the knowledge involved.

    Meanwhile, specialized organizations that provide training, like REDR in the UK or Bioforce in France, have become increasingly good at developing competency-based certification for behavior that matches real-world needs. Their business model works best at small scale and high cost. They have also succeeded in establishing that the credential of value is one that is defined by and agreed upon by practitioners. However, their efforts remain mired in a legacy of transmissive training and a tradition of “workshop culture” that are difficult to overcome. Also, by the time a competency framework is described, new contexts and needs that dictate new behaviors have predictably emerged but cannot be captured by the rigidity of framework.

    A few organizations are trying to organize the online delivery of click-through information modules. Unfortunately, this approach has yet – to put it politely – to show measurable positive performance outcomes. And, admittedly, it is going to be tough to prove that three hours of clicking through bullet points followed by an information recall quiz corresponds to what 21st century humanitarians need to deliver. (Having said that, it is probably no worse than sitting in a workshop with a ‘trainer’ doing the clicking, whether in terms of learning efficacy or sheer pleasure).

    Save The Children’s Humanitarian Leadership Academy stands out in a number of ways in the current landscape. Their analysis is grounded in the rock-solid research by Russ and others, and they have assembled a ferociously professional team that combines all of the right job functions, encompassing both folks from the sector and those who are new to it. The project is rightly ambitious, given the scope and scale of the challenges faced, and they have succeeded in securing a large chunk of their funding needs from the UK government. They aim to serve not just Save’s training needs, but to become the connector for a broad set of organizations working together, trying to convert decades of preaching about capacity building in developing countries into practice. Last but not least, they are trying to think strategically about their use of digital technology for learning.

    Has the time come, as a defrocked high priest of corporate learning recently suggested, for a “Pan Humanitarian College of Conscience”? Could it be as simple as bringing everyone together to share content, resources, and determine quality and credentialing standards together? I don’t think so, mostly because the existing content, resources, and approaches are not getting the job done. We need to do new things in new ways, not an educational “We are the world”.

    Truly disruptive humanitarian education leverages the affordances of educational technology to offer continual learning experiences that foster sense-making and network formation linking young and old humanitarians in global practices, strengthening existing professional networks because collaboration and team work are how you complete the mission. Such experiences could focus on precisely what is unsaid and untaught in formal curricula, and considered unattainable by training. Even formal courses that are about acquiring foundational knowledge can have learners co-constructing knowledge together. These peers then find themselves part of a knowledge community where, as alumni, they are now in a position to provide support – and benefit from the new learnings of others in a virtuous cycle. This paradigm shift occurs when how we learn is aligned to how we work: collaboration, team work and leadership are premised on peer-to-peer relationships, across the diversity of contexts and people that humanitarians find themselves in.

    Such an approach fosters critical thinking and practice around specific areas of work but – and perhaps more importantly – around cross-cuting ways of thinking and doing. Yes, you could build courses that tap into knowledge communities around climate change, logistics, or market-based approaches. Focus on an area of work, zero in on its wicked problems, and drive learning efforts where they are most needed, producing knowledge that is directly applicable to work. Going further, new ways of learning foster new forms of leadership and innovation in the face of a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, through courses that teach and deepen realist evaluation or tap into experiences from outside the sector – linking resilience and sustainability – to help new ways of thinking and doing emerge.

    Last but not least, this new humanitarian learning needs to include not just future professionals but also volunteers. As the Red Cross Red Cross Movement has taught us , volunteers are far more than part-time humanitarians. They are embedded in their communities and learn to use the cultural and tacit knowledge from belonging to empower themselves, their families, neighbors, and every member of the community – whatever their status, in a fully inclusive way. Making sense of what happens in your community in this century, more so than ever before, requires that you establish a fluid two-way connection to global knowledge.

    While these are admittedly lofty objectives, the science of learning combined with educational technology are poised to make this more than just wishful thinking. Scaling up is currently center stage in both education (thank you, MOOCs) and humanitarian realms. There have been a small but significant number of well-researched, successful, small-scale pilots to foster new forms of humanitarian learning. The learners who participated in such experiments got it – even if some managers and decision makers did not. The missing link remains the network of learning leaders willing and able to think and fund the foundations for such an endeavor, and then to start building its scaffolding. And, who knows, such a group might find that Pan Humanitarian College of Conscience is a good fit to name what we might make together.

    Photo: Young man at a vocational education and training center, Marrakesh, Morocco. © Dana Smillie / World Bank

  • Maybe old learning isn’t so bad, after all?

    When I first saw Professor Cope’s photos of a 1983 elementary school classroom, I scoffed. It was so obvious that the “communications and knowledge architecture” was one-way, focused on rote learning and rewarding good behavior which involved staying safely “inside the box”. How easy to critique, deconstructing all of the ways in which this particular “banking” form of education was unlikely to intentionally “deposit” anything that might actually be useful to the future lives of these school children. How awful, I thought, and how at odds with everything I try to put into practice with respect to my own professional role. Today’s MOOCs and flipped classrooms, with their objectives of making active knowledge-making ubiquitous, make 1983 look like the Dark Ages of education.

    And yet. And yet this classroom very closely resembles the ones in which I grew up, with 5th grade in 1980 as a reference point. And I was one of the kids for whom it was an enjoyable experience. I thrived in that environment. I wanted to sponge up the facts and figures, and was proud to raise my hand, hoping the teacher would pick me. Group work simply wasn’t as much fun or rewarding as the individual recognition and praise from the teacher. It’s only when I jog my 42-year-old brain to recall what made me enjoy school so much that I realize it was the interaction, the creativity, and the serendipity. But the scaffolding was sturdy and reassuring precisely because it was so rigid and didactic.

    The same with university. In my professional life, I proclaim my belief that the time for “post-campus education” has arrived. Speaking to a group of young interns, I explained recently that they could expect that their life-long learning had only just begun, and that by abandoning the oh-so-twentieth-century sequence in which you complete your degree and then go to work, they could more actively shape their future careers.

    And yet. I was a first-generation college student, going to a university in the U.S. when both my parents never made it past elementary school. My father was put into an orphanage. My mother was denied the education she strived for when her school was closed by the French colonial forces when the Algerian Revolution started. The university campus was for me the site of life-changing experiences.

    Today I am also the father of three boys. Nassim, my six-year-old, learned reading, writing and arithmetic this year. When it comes to his education, my approach is far-removed from cutting-edge education. I make him read and re-read texts, do and redo addition and subtraction exercises, drilling it in and checking constantly to see if it’s sunk in yet. Rewards are limited or non-existent with me. Sometimes he resists, complaining about the repetition or that it’s “too hard”. But he also seems to genuinely enjoy completing the exercises. I do this because I’m concerned that his public school teacher is going to be too “slack”, because he goes to school in a poor neighborhood in Paris where many of the kids face tough life circumstances, have parents who do not know how to read and write, and are considered by many (including teachers) to be destined for vocational training leading straight to unemployment. Especially if they are of Arab or African descent.

    So, what to do with such blatant contradictions between my professed interest in “new learning” and my personal experience? I believe this contradiction can be productive, meaning that I try to mobilize it to understand why colleagues and other interlocutors express skepticism about innovation in learning, whether explicitly or implicitly. And, yes, I’m also trying to rethink how I work with my sons after school. The world is changing. If we want learning to be supportive, participatory, inspiring, motivating, flexible… it’s not (only) because that will make learning a more pleasurable experience. It is because this is how our children (or those of others, for those to whom parents have delegated mass public education) will get the chance to develop the knowledge and skills they will need to not only survive but thrive — in the online classrooms before they learn the hard way, IRL.