During the last couple of years I have experienced that new sorts of educations is gaining in status. For example, if I was to hire a manager or a project manager for an internet company today, I would be at least as happy hiring someone who has studied at Kaospiloterna in Denmark as at a classic business school like Stockholm School of Economics or the Business School at the University of Stockholm that I attended myself. And if I was to hire a developer I would be at least as happy with someone who had studied at Hyper Island as at The Royal Institute of Technology.
I have met students from Hyper Island and Kaospiloterna on several occasions during the last years and I am impressed by these schools. I do not know exactly how the old schools above have developed since me and my friends went to them in the nineties but let me tell you what I think the new ones do great:
- Action learning. First you experience, then you talk about your experiences. That’s how learning happens naturally, outside schools, and it is how these schools work as well. Students are given real tasks and assignments, often with real clients as well, and they get an authentic experience as a starting point for their learning.
- Reflection. When you start with action, you get great material for reflection and dialogue. Creating a common understanding of what they experience and having a dialogue about how they can act in the future in similar situations is effective learning.
- Interest in students. The students get to have great influence of the projects carried out during the courses. These schools act as if they are interested in the people that attend them. They know that a great way to awake interest is by showing interest.
- Getting to know yourself. Understanding yourself better, how you work with others and what you need to thrive is a big part of at least Kaospiloterna. I know that both of these schools do things that traditionally has been done in leadership training but not in business schools. Knowing yourself is critical for contributing to high performing groups, and most of what we do, we do in groups.
- Process knowledge. By this I refer to the competence of understanding and managing groups of people, and how they evolve over time. At least Chaos pilots works with learning how to create high performing groups and how to act as a leader. Someone might argue that business schools have a lot of project work. I agree, but in my school we did not reflect about these projects in a professional manner, and we were given neither the tools nor the training to develop process knowledge.
- Experience & contacts. By working with real stuff during education, students are actually gaining worklife experience during their studies, as well as starting to build a professional network.
A fresh example of what these schools achieve with their ways of working is Cloudania, the “nation” the students at the interactive art director class of 2010 at Hyper Island created together. See the video or even better, visit the site.
First of all Christer – are you sponsered by the Schools you are mentioning? Your blog gives them a lot of PR, that they acctually don´t need
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What is the definition of “real stuff” in education? I do believe that a lot of the traditional literature, with examples, give students a lot to discuss and move on from.
But I do agree that the school need more “cases” from a professional point of view, so that students may learn from them. But it can not always be possible to act professional the first time you get a case – there is alwys a first time. Get my point?
Love, Maria
Hello Maria! I am not sponsored by these schools or associated with them in any way. By “real stuff” I am thinking of an experience gained together with classmates, preferably involving a real client. As far as cases goes, the risk to lack the authenticity and actuality i love in “real stuff”. The process in the team, if nothing else, takes on another form when you have a real client, compared to a case. Regarding the proffessionality, I agree that you can not get everything right the first time but that is a question of setting the right expectation to clients. cheers
Hi there, I have studied at the Kaospilots, held talks at Hyperisland and have a member in my Advisory board from KTH. What all three schools, in variating degrees contribute is practical learning alongside with theory, maybe the first two more than the last one. It is a way of learning that allows student to learn all academia but also get the practical “muscle memory learning” from doing real projects. After three years of the Kaospilots, i understood the theories, yet could master the techniques of process(that people spend years learning), as we had been working with ideadevelopment and made our mistakes in school, as “I hit the market” with three years of practial work in my luggage. Working with real customers (organisations and comercial companies) is #win per definition, and a way of the future. I totally agree with Christer, when I can staff my web-startup with people, i will do it from theese places, as they cherish the strong idea holders, valuebased leaders, whitty businessdevelopers and techie wise bright minds of tomorrow.
Heidi, thanks for your comment. We were at the same (un)conference last summer, Reboot, http://www.reboot.dk/page/4329/en. At this event everyone could chose to hold speach or a session. You were one of few Swedes, or perhaps the only one that did so. As you did, I thought to myself, it is so typical for a Kaospilot to cease this opportunity…
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