The Value of Partnerships and Collaboration Rod Townley Dean, IT, Engineering & The Futures Institute

My Premise is twofold: 1. That there is a formidable amount of global competition in the educational arena 2. That partnerships and collaborative work are no longer just recommended, but a requisite for our very survival. From practitioner to Evangelist! Partnership & Collaboration

Need for & Advantages of collaboration Changing nature of collaboration and partnership The Collaborative Consciousness Competitive threat Partnership Pitfalls

Looking for Value Added Federal and International Grant$ Combining strengths Expertise --- Synergy --- Productivity Global view vs. local view

Additional Impetus for Partnership Driven by complexity globalization specialization mass customization Function of technological advances bioengineering geospatial technologies grid computing Competition

Collective Consciousness Crowd Sourcing – The Emerging Amateur Sakai / Moodle -- Open Source Mechanical Turk – Artificial Intelligence Wikipedia iStockphoto Second Life --22K hrs of work each day P&G cooperative R&D

Who is the Competition & What are They Doing? Corporate & Proprietary Competition Education is an enormous business--- relatively the size of health care. Linkage, Inc. estimated that corporations of all sizes will invest more than $60 million in external corporate training at a time when their higher education counterparts continue, in part, to remain steadfast with academic tradition and conventional methods to instructional program delivery.

Who is the Competition & What are They Doing? Creating massive amounts of courseware available to anyone, anywhere, anytime Creating on line 3-D worlds for students to access content -- Dynamic & Engaging

Who is the Competition & What are They Doing? WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federation of American Scientists -- which typically weighs in on matters of nuclear weaponry and government secrecy -- declared Tuesday that video games can redefine education. According to federation president Henry Kelly, what is needed is research into which features of games are most important for learning -- and how to test students on the skills they learn in games. The departments of education and labor and the National Science Foundation would lead the way under this plan. October 17, 2006

So What? Harvard vs. Microsoft? Will education become a commodity? Are we headed toward a WalMart Ph.D.? Once we have the best of the best, what about the rest?

What Can We Do? Collaborate! Collaborative game development / China Second Life Factor Learning -- Singapore Global Training Consortium

The Value of Partnerships and Collaboration Rod Townley, Ph.D. Dean, IT, Engineering & The Futures Institute Questions & Discussion

Partnership Pitfalls Entering a partnership with a selfish or competitive perspective New paradigm required Uneven bargaining power Know your partner Recognize cultural & social differences