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First, when people talk about capacity building, it ironically seems to be about larger organizations that have some of what one of my colleagues calls “Prerequisite Capacity,” t

Second, I’m glad the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion in capacity building is starting to be recognized and talked about. However, there is still a long way to go.

Third, I am astounded by our sector’s ability to overthink and overcomplicate things while ignoring the obvious.

With Gen Ys and even more so with their younger colleagues, the Plurals, socialization occurs through digital devices and platforms, i.e. social media, texting, etc.   Nearly since birth, they have had the freedom to socialize with the world with a few clicks from a wireless device.  They do not like to “talk” on the telephone, even when in the same proximity as the people they are “talking” to. Plurals are said to be the most social group of people in history, yet they socialize almost entirely via digital devices. Younger generations have had control of and access to the world nearly since birth through the Internet. They live in a very autonomous world—a world where they have had a “voice” to the world nearly since birth.  As a result, they like freedom of expression and autonomy.   Instant gratification is a must! They want everything “now” and to move fast.

regimented education system with one that fosters skills like teamwork, communication and exploration.

Today, the average paper has four times as many authors as it did then and the work being done is far more interdisciplinary and done at greater distances than in the past.

but it's imperative to be able to ascribe meaning from data.

The problem, of course, is that those students represent the precise group MOOCs are meant to serve. “MOOCs were supposed to be the device that would bring higher education to the masses,” Jonathan Rees noted. “However, the masses at San Jose State don’t appear to be ready for the commodified, impersonal higher education that MOOCs offer.” Thrun’s cavalier disregard for the SJSU students reveals his true vision of the target audience for MOOCs: students from the posh suburbs, with 10 tablets apiece and no challenges whatsoever—that is, the exact people who already have access to expensive higher education. It is more than galling that Thrun blames students for the failure of a medium that was invented to serve them, instead of blaming the medium that, in the storied history of the “correspondence” course (“TV/VCR repair”!), has never worked. For him, MOOCs don’t fail to educate the less privileged because the massive online model is itself a poor tool. No, apparently students fail MOOCs because those students have the gall to be poor, so let’s give up on them and move on to the corporate world, where we don’t have to be accountable to the hoi polloi anymore, or even have to look at them, because gross.

SG_Debug && SG_Debug.pagedebug && window.console && console.log && console.log('[' + (new Date()-SG_Debug.initialTime)/1000 + ']' + ' Bottom of header.jsp'); SlateEducationGetting schooled.Nov. 19 2013 11:43 AM The King of MOOCs Abdicates the Throne 7.3k 1.2k 101 Sebastian Thrun and Udacity’s “pivot” toward corporate training. By Rebecca Schuman &nbsp; Sebastian Thrun speaks during the Digital Life Design conference on Jan. 23, 2012, in Munich. Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images requirejs(["jquery"], function($) { if ($(window).width() < 640) { $(".slate_image figure").width("100%"); } }); Sebastian Thrun, godfather of the massive open online course, has quietly spread a plastic tarp on the floor, nudged his most famous educational invention into the center, and is about to pull the trigger. Thrun—former Stanford superprofessor, Silicon Valley demigod, and now CEO of online-course purveyor Udacity—just admitted to Fast Company’s openly smitten Max Chafkin that his company’s courses are often a “lousy product.” Rebecca Schuman Rebecca Schuman is an education columnist for Slate. Follow This is quite a “pivot” from the Sebastian Thrun, who less than two years ago crowed to Wired that the unstemmable tide of free online education would leave a mere 10 purveyors of higher learning in its wake, one of which would be Udacity. However, on the heels of the embarrassing failure of a loudly hyped partnership with San Jose State University, the “lousiness” of the product seems to have become apparent. The failures of massive online education come as no shock to those of us who actually educate students by being in the same room wit

nd why the answer is not the MOOC, but the tiny, for-credit, in-person seminar that has neither a sexy acronym nor a potential for huge corporate partnerships.

Skype to talk on a regular basis with my close Internet Time Alliance colleagues (Jay Cross, Charles Jennings, Harold Jarche and Clark Quinn) and I mainly use Twitter to connect with my extended set of colleagues around the world. This is the way I find out what they are up to, ask them questions, share ideas and brainstorm with them. (This is my equivalent of going to meetings and having coffee breaks or watercooler conversations, etc.)

t is true, that in some organizations it will require (organisational and individual) mindset changes to appreciate&nbsp;that workplace learning today is more than just training. In particular, managers will need to recognize the value of this form of continuous learning, and that they will need to provide time to do it, and indeed measure its success in&nbsp;other ways than through training attendance or online course completion.

One of the devastating weaknesses of university learning, of the store of knowledge and opinion that has been handed down through academic training, has been its almost total erasure of women’s experience and thought from the curriculum… What you can learn [in college] is how men have perceived and organized their experience, their history, their ideas of social relationships, good and evil, sickness and health, etc. When you read or hear about “great issues,” “major texts,” “the mainstream of Western thought,” you are hearing about what men, above all white men, in their male subjectivity, have decided is important. And yet Rich is careful to counter any misperception that taking

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. It means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions