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"A Passion for Creative Transformation The Transformative Leadership MA is a uniquely innovative distance-learning program that integrates extensive practical skills with deep self-reflection and an emphasis on creative action in the world. The program prepares students to embody leadership and mobilize their creativity in many different ways, whether in organizations, social movements, or a range of activities requiring personal initiative and dedication to making a difference. Transformative Leadership offers a creative incubator for new forms of leadership in a rapidly changing world. New forms of leadership are needed in all dimensions of life, not just in boardrooms and governments. Transformative Leadership explores leadership along four dimensions: new ways of being, relating, knowing, and doing, all requiring new perspectives, skills, and personal practices. Transformative leadership holds that as we change the world we also change ourselves, and as we change ourselves we also change the world. The transdisciplinary curriculum develops students' abilities to reflect on their mission in life, apply leading edge research, develop new sets of skills, and creatively act in the world. Faculty and students create a rich and supportive online learning community that provides a context where students can create their own approach to leadership, based on their personal values, capacities, and mission in life. This innovative program culminates in a Capstone Action Project that demonstrates leadership in the world and allows students to apply their learning and test their theories and assumptions about leadership in real time. The lessons learned from this project are often stepping stones for new initiatives and life paths for our graduates. The program also offers a unique set of electives, including a set of courses specifically designed to address issues related to LGBTQ leadership and policy."

Task/Problem-Centered - Students learn more when the instruction is centered on relevant real-world tasks or problems, including a series of tasks or problems that progress from simple to complex. Activation - Students learn more when they are directed to recall prior knowledge, to recall a structure for organizing that knowledge, or are given a structure for organizing new knowledge. This activation can also include a foundational learning experience upon which new learning can be based. Demonstration - Students learn more when new knowledge is demonstrated to them in the context of real-world tasks or problems. The knowledge that is demonstrated is both informational and skill-based. Demonstration is enhanced when it adheres to research-based principles of e-learning. Application - Students learn more when they perform real-world tasks or solve real-world problems and receive feedback on and appropriate guidance during that application. Integration - Students learn more when they are encouraged to integrate their new knowledge into their life through reflection, discussion, debate, and/or presentation of new knowledge.

The Toolkit is organized around the same four elements of the Certification Criteria for Linked Learning Pathways: Pathway Design: Quality pathways are designed with a structure, governance, and program of study that provides all students with opportunities for both postsecondary and career success. Engaged Learning: In supportive learning communities, students meet technical and academic standards and college entrance requirements through real-world applications, integrated project-/problem-based instruction, authentic assessments, and work-based learning. System Support: District policies and practices provide leadership, support, and resources to establish and sustain quality pathways. Evaluation and Accountability: A systemic evaluation process documents the pathway's impact on high school achievement and postsecondary success and drives the pathway's continuous improvement plans.

The goals of engagement and insight are well worth students keeping in mind. Linking them to grades, however, sends the very traditional message of the educational system, which works against students developing the kind of self-directed, avid learning that the instructor wants. My advice is to de-emphasize grades even if they have to be given at the end of the course.

"online discussion platform that improves student curiosity, communication skills, and critical thinking. Packback delivers an easy-to-use and engaging discussion experience for students and professors, with powerful support from automated moderation, sorting, and scoring algorithms."

"Before each class session, David Levy leads his students in a few minutes of meditation."

Good technology choices start with a firm understanding of the skills that you want your students to master.

This organization based in Arlington, MA, has launched a National Institute for Student-Centered Education.

Meaning-making, in all its various aspects, is not only a prime motivating force in human life but also in teaching and learning. We search for personal meanings in our life experiences, which enables us to develop inner capabilities to become self-empowered, self-determining authors of our own life stories. In short, meaning-making expands human consciousness and MCE-MCL extends this explorative and explanatory domain. As students become engaged in a diverse set of personally and socially meaningful activities, they learn to assess what they learned with responsibility to self, to others, and to the local and world communities. Thus, MCE-MCL is holistic, dialogic, and experiential in nature, collaborative and transformative in process and purpose.

What does this say about online learning platforms and courses? (Do they ever come with red, yellow and green lights that administrators see when they sign contracts for $$millions without knowing the educational effects of the online systems?) Note other skeptical views expressed in the comments section.

"Thrun seems to have 'discovered' that open-access, distance-education students struggle to complete," wrote Martin Weller, a professor of educational technology at the Open University, in Britain. "I don't want to sound churlish here, but hey, the OU has known this for 40 years."

"For all of us, learning was an innate part of life. It was something we just did, that was as natural to us as breathing. If not for this innate desire to learn and with it the ability to do so, we would never learn to walk, or speak or interact with others. But at some point learning stops being something we do and becomes more like something that happens to us. Our initial self-drive to learn is replaced by learning as a part of our life that is highly regulated, controlled, monitored and externalised. "

""I think most faculty regard grades as a nuisance," he says. But if professors didn't give them, "students probably wouldn't work as much and wouldn't do homework and wouldn't study for exams," he argues."

a set of the key things any person needs to learn: How to predict consequences How to read [effectively] (how to see under the surface to what each piece is doing; and to distinguish the 4 types: description, argument, explanation, definition) How to distinguish truth from fiction How to empathize How to be creative How to communicate clearly [i.e. how to write effectively; how to use the 4 types] How to learn How to stay healthy How to value yourself How to live meaningfully