[Music]
thank you and good afternoon
so forged from the future well a few
people have actually come up to me here
and said Peter what is forged actually
mean so to put you out of your misery
forged is water the blacksmith does when
they heat them heat the metal in the
fire and then they hammer it into shape
so I guess you might say forged from the
future in Dutch has made a fan out the
two cups something like that okay so
there I was in the doctor’s surgery with
my then fourteen-year-old son who was
showing signs of burnout after two years
in the secondary education system and
the doctor after hearing the story he
said oh yeah I see quite a few of his
type come through my surgery you see the
thing is he’s intelligent and he’s
sensitive
and it kind of hit me like a thunderbolt
I was like there’s nothing wrong with my
boy the system is sick it’s not even
preparing them for the world that’s
coming but it’s actually damaging the
kids who could make the greatest
potential solutions to the problems that
we’re facing so to cut a long story
short that’s why we now have our gora in
coulumb all Thank You chef and thank you
Hans and it’s also why I’m so passionate
about ubiquity which is the story I’m
going to share with you now this is my
favorite quote from Aristotle where your
talents meet the needs in the world
therein lies your vocation and the
reason I like this is it’s got two
pieces to it the individual with your
talents but also the state of the world
because there’s been a lot of talk about
the importance of personalized learning
and absolutely it’s critical put the
learners at the center how can they
bring their passion and purpose into the
world but if we personalize in education
that’s completely irrelevant to this
world we’re coming into that yan also
sketched then what uses that so we need
to combine the two of them and I want to
spend them
on the state of the world although I
don’t need to spend long on it thank you
very much young because he covered that
for us so here are you know all these
kind of issues now that are escalating
feeding off each other coming together
in a way that we’ve never experienced
before
as humanity and the education system
that we currently have was designed when
most of these were flatlining not even
starting to scale so we’re dealing with
a level of complexity that we’ve never
had to deal with before and if we doubt
the challenge in front of this
generation we just need to read the
recent IPCC report on climate change
when we pull our heads out of the sand
is telling us we need to wake up we have
a moral obligation to prepare this
generation for what’s coming because
they’re the ones who are gonna take the
hit and they’re the ones who are gonna
have to face these challenges head-on
and grasp the opportunities while they
can the kind of change that yan was
talking about is indeed a nonlinear leap
we’ve been through this before and the
thing about these nonlinear changes is
we can’t actually see the future we’re
moving into from the reality were in
what right now and the current system we
have is built for an old era so we
really need to be working out how are we
going to forge our education system from
the future not from the way we think it
should run now and that’s the mission
that we embarked on at ubiquity so as we
looked at how would we reinvent higher
education completely for this future
that’s coming and we started to do
research into the need for higher
education in the world we discovered to
our amazement oacd and World Bank
figures that there were literally tens
of millions of kids a year globally
coming out of secondary education
qualified for higher education but just
couldn’t get in so what about we were
able to provide a form of education that
was accessible and affordable globally
and that really equipped people to deal
with these challenges and here are three
of the things that we had to think
through how do we make sure that the
content is relevant that people are
taught stuff that’s really going on in
the world right now
that really helps them deal with these
kind of challenges this transition time
how do we make sure that learning is not
just something that happens in the
classroom but that is recognized
throughout all parts of our lives
because we all know that we learn a lot
more actually in action than we do just
sitting in the classroom and finally how
do we make sure that credentials we give
people actually have some value because
the degree as a as a currency right now
is losing its value employers are saying
well I don’t think I trust this bit of
paper anymore
it’s not really telling me this person
is equipped to deal with the reality
that we’re facing so I want to take us
through these three points in terms of
how we’ve tried to respond to this at
ubiquity first we need to obviously
engage the whole person the kind of
challenges that we’re facing at the
moment I can’t just be solved with the
head so let’s take Meno a Dutch MBA
student who’s at UVic wa t he comes in
and a third of his points he gets for
knowledge only a third with knowledge
that’s focused on understanding the
challenges of the time bringing critical
thinking to all of that so the next
third that Meno gets his points for is
self mastery is personal development
because we know that the quality of
impact you make in the world is directly
related to how you show up as a person
not necessarily how much you simply know
so many might get mindfulness training
there’s a potential body workers work on
relationships all of these kind of
things that help us show up with
integrity and authenticity in the world
and then the other third of his points
he gets through his impact project this
is the project that he designs that
could be starting up his own social
enterprise it can be working on a
community project it could be working on
a change project in the organization all
these three areas happen in parallel and
the reason that’s important because when
you step out into the world to try to do
change you bump up against yourself and
you start to realize what it is you need
to learn to be able to make a positive
difference so engage the whole person
– so Meno comes in he does look a bit
like this but he’s a bit more handsome
than that and he gets a few core courses
but then he can basically pick the
courses that he wants
to suit his own pathway so he came to me
a couple of months ago and he said
Professor Peter I just took your
transformational leadership course it’s
fantastic
I want my MBA to be in future-proof
leadership and I said sure Meno that’s
fantastic you tell me which courses you
want to bundle together to create your
MBA and future-proof leadership and you
can have it as long as you publish it so
that other students can get inspired by
the same thing so that’s what he’s doing
right now the kind of content that we
communicate to people on the one hand
you’ve got employers saying from the IBM
study CEO studies we’re in a reality of
hyper complexity we need these kind of
qualities from people and we’re not
getting them from our business schools
what we might call the soft skills at
the same time we’ve got these major
challenges that we’re facing in the
world that the UN has done a fantastic
job mapping these out with the UN
sustainable development goals and UNESCO
has produced a competence framework that
lays out what do you need to learn what
do you need to develop to be able to
deal with any of these challenges or any
of these single sustainable development
goals so our learning contest is geared
to provide people with these qualities
and to be able to engage with these kind
of issues the most recent example that
we have of this is working out in Asia
so as a prototype in Sri Lanka the story
that we’re getting out of Asia is
there’s been all this tech education but
the employers are saying we need the
soft skills now we need people who can
communicate who can collaborate who the
human aspects because we’ll teach them
the tech stuff it’s all moving so fast
so dylaney for example a 17 year old
student she comes in she’s doing a tech
training and then she goes into a
classroom environment where the teachers
are working with ubiquitous online
content the students have access to the
online platform but they’re getting
taught through these interactive
exercises in the classroom how to
develop these kind of competency so in
this situation we’re working more with a
blended environment and finally
particularly when we’re online as we’ve
seen from the MOOCs the massive open
online courses retention is a real issue
so for us there are two
oceans – that one is use the technology
to the best of the possibilities use the
gamification opportunities that are
there so students for every single thing
they achieve at ubiquity they get points
the points continue to stack up for
every competency they develop they get a
badge a competency based badge that they
can put out on LinkedIn and then
employers can look at that all that’s
all great but ultimately what makes the
difference is also the human touch so
when people take a course online they do
it in groups of eight with a course
facilitator who takes them through that
journey when they are working on their
self mastery they have a self mastery
mentor who works with them their whole
time at ubiquity to guide them on their
own personalized personal development
pathway and when they work on their
impact project they have an impact coach
who’s a Lean Startup social on
Enterprise Specialist project management
those kind of things so combining the
best of the technology with the best of
high-touch and human interaction is that
is absolutely critical to the success of
this kind of model so it that’s
education in the more kind of formal
classroom environment but what’s really
key also is that we integrate learning
and we recognize learning in other parts
of our lives so let’s take Federico a
marketing guy who works with Isaac Isaac
some of you might know is the biggest
student-run organization in the world
over forty thousand students run this
organization in more than 120 countries
they deliver exchanges intercultural
learning leadership development
experiences for students all over the
world and those students they can stay
in AIESEC doing this job for between one
to seven years and they all say to me I
learn a lot more AIESEC than I do in the
classroom at the University but they get
no recognition for it
so what we’ve done is found a way using
classic prior learning assessment or
recognition of prior learning
technologies to be able to give those
people credits points competency-based
badges for the competencies that they
develop and show on the job when they’re
working with AIESEC and those badges
they can put out and share career kind
of competency portfolio which is what
employers are asking
for now and they can stack them up you
need to think in terms of stackable
credentials that you stack up towards a
professional diploma or ultimately
potentially towards an MBA with a
combination of courses so how we enable
people to get recognition for the
learning that they do when they’re
actually engaged in the world combined
with the classroom learning that we see
as really being the future and then the
last point is so how do we make sure
that they get credentials that are
recognized because as I said the degree
is losing its currency employers want to
know what can they do we need to know at
the moment given the challenges that
we’re facing what are the skills
competencies qualities that people can
have so we’re working with a
competency-based badging system that’s
tied into a database of fifty four
thousand competencies developed by
industry sectors all over the world tied
in to three hundred and thirty
professions and all the related diplomas
and the industries agree these are the
kinds of evidence we need for somebody
to be able to say yes I’ve got that
competence so that means when somebody
puts their Ubiquiti badge on LinkedIn
and they click on it they can click all
the way through to the specific evidence
that somebody actually produce for that
and that way these credentials these
micro credentials actually have real
value to employers to the person
themselves to potential investors and to
partners they may want to work with so
my belief is my hope is that this kind
of education that we’re creating now
that were prototyping now with ubiquity
in many countries around the world is
going to enable my children is going to
enable your children and hopefully
millions of people around the world
ultimately to be able to make a living
making a difference because that’s what
the world needs now bring it on [Applause]
thank you and good afternoon
so forged from the future well a few
people have actually come up to me here
and said Peter what is forged actually
mean so to put you out of your misery
forged is water the blacksmith does when
they heat them heat the metal in the
fire and then they hammer it into shape
so I guess you might say forged from the
future in Dutch has made a fan out the
two cups something like that okay so
there I was in the doctor’s surgery with
my then fourteen-year-old son who was
showing signs of burnout after two years
in the secondary education system and
the doctor after hearing the story he
said oh yeah I see quite a few of his
type come through my surgery you see the
thing is he’s intelligent and he’s
sensitive
and it kind of hit me like a thunderbolt
I was like there’s nothing wrong with my
boy the system is sick it’s not even
preparing them for the world that’s
coming but it’s actually damaging the
kids who could make the greatest
potential solutions to the problems that
we’re facing so to cut a long story
short that’s why we now have our gora in
coulumb all Thank You chef and thank you
Hans and it’s also why I’m so passionate
about ubiquity which is the story I’m
going to share with you now this is my
favorite quote from Aristotle where your
talents meet the needs in the world
therein lies your vocation and the
reason I like this is it’s got two
pieces to it the individual with your
talents but also the state of the world
because there’s been a lot of talk about
the importance of personalized learning
and absolutely it’s critical put the
learners at the center how can they
bring their passion and purpose into the
world but if we personalize in education
that’s completely irrelevant to this
world we’re coming into that yan also
sketched then what uses that so we need
to combine the two of them and I want to
spend them
on the state of the world although I
don’t need to spend long on it thank you
very much young because he covered that
for us so here are you know all these
kind of issues now that are escalating
feeding off each other coming together
in a way that we’ve never experienced
before
as humanity and the education system
that we currently have was designed when
most of these were flatlining not even
starting to scale so we’re dealing with
a level of complexity that we’ve never
had to deal with before and if we doubt
the challenge in front of this
generation we just need to read the
recent IPCC report on climate change
when we pull our heads out of the sand
is telling us we need to wake up we have
a moral obligation to prepare this
generation for what’s coming because
they’re the ones who are gonna take the
hit and they’re the ones who are gonna
have to face these challenges head-on
and grasp the opportunities while they
can the kind of change that yan was
talking about is indeed a nonlinear leap
we’ve been through this before and the
thing about these nonlinear changes is
we can’t actually see the future we’re
moving into from the reality were in
what right now and the current system we
have is built for an old era so we
really need to be working out how are we
going to forge our education system from
the future not from the way we think it
should run now and that’s the mission
that we embarked on at ubiquity so as we
looked at how would we reinvent higher
education completely for this future
that’s coming and we started to do
research into the need for higher
education in the world we discovered to
our amazement oacd and World Bank
figures that there were literally tens
of millions of kids a year globally
coming out of secondary education
qualified for higher education but just
couldn’t get in so what about we were
able to provide a form of education that
was accessible and affordable globally
and that really equipped people to deal
with these challenges and here are three
of the things that we had to think
through how do we make sure that the
content is relevant that people are
taught stuff that’s really going on in
the world right now
that really helps them deal with these
kind of challenges this transition time
how do we make sure that learning is not
just something that happens in the
classroom but that is recognized
throughout all parts of our lives
because we all know that we learn a lot
more actually in action than we do just
sitting in the classroom and finally how
do we make sure that credentials we give
people actually have some value because
the degree as a as a currency right now
is losing its value employers are saying
well I don’t think I trust this bit of
paper anymore
it’s not really telling me this person
is equipped to deal with the reality
that we’re facing so I want to take us
through these three points in terms of
how we’ve tried to respond to this at
ubiquity first we need to obviously
engage the whole person the kind of
challenges that we’re facing at the
moment I can’t just be solved with the
head so let’s take Meno a Dutch MBA
student who’s at UVic wa t he comes in
and a third of his points he gets for
knowledge only a third with knowledge
that’s focused on understanding the
challenges of the time bringing critical
thinking to all of that so the next
third that Meno gets his points for is
self mastery is personal development
because we know that the quality of
impact you make in the world is directly
related to how you show up as a person
not necessarily how much you simply know
so many might get mindfulness training
there’s a potential body workers work on
relationships all of these kind of
things that help us show up with
integrity and authenticity in the world
and then the other third of his points
he gets through his impact project this
is the project that he designs that
could be starting up his own social
enterprise it can be working on a
community project it could be working on
a change project in the organization all
these three areas happen in parallel and
the reason that’s important because when
you step out into the world to try to do
change you bump up against yourself and
you start to realize what it is you need
to learn to be able to make a positive
difference so engage the whole person
– so Meno comes in he does look a bit
like this but he’s a bit more handsome
than that and he gets a few core courses
but then he can basically pick the
courses that he wants
to suit his own pathway so he came to me
a couple of months ago and he said
Professor Peter I just took your
transformational leadership course it’s
fantastic
I want my MBA to be in future-proof
leadership and I said sure Meno that’s
fantastic you tell me which courses you
want to bundle together to create your
MBA and future-proof leadership and you
can have it as long as you publish it so
that other students can get inspired by
the same thing so that’s what he’s doing
right now the kind of content that we
communicate to people on the one hand
you’ve got employers saying from the IBM
study CEO studies we’re in a reality of
hyper complexity we need these kind of
qualities from people and we’re not
getting them from our business schools
what we might call the soft skills at
the same time we’ve got these major
challenges that we’re facing in the
world that the UN has done a fantastic
job mapping these out with the UN
sustainable development goals and UNESCO
has produced a competence framework that
lays out what do you need to learn what
do you need to develop to be able to
deal with any of these challenges or any
of these single sustainable development
goals so our learning contest is geared
to provide people with these qualities
and to be able to engage with these kind
of issues the most recent example that
we have of this is working out in Asia
so as a prototype in Sri Lanka the story
that we’re getting out of Asia is
there’s been all this tech education but
the employers are saying we need the
soft skills now we need people who can
communicate who can collaborate who the
human aspects because we’ll teach them
the tech stuff it’s all moving so fast
so dylaney for example a 17 year old
student she comes in she’s doing a tech
training and then she goes into a
classroom environment where the teachers
are working with ubiquitous online
content the students have access to the
online platform but they’re getting
taught through these interactive
exercises in the classroom how to
develop these kind of competency so in
this situation we’re working more with a
blended environment and finally
particularly when we’re online as we’ve
seen from the MOOCs the massive open
online courses retention is a real issue
so for us there are two
oceans – that one is use the technology
to the best of the possibilities use the
gamification opportunities that are
there so students for every single thing
they achieve at ubiquity they get points
the points continue to stack up for
every competency they develop they get a
badge a competency based badge that they
can put out on LinkedIn and then
employers can look at that all that’s
all great but ultimately what makes the
difference is also the human touch so
when people take a course online they do
it in groups of eight with a course
facilitator who takes them through that
journey when they are working on their
self mastery they have a self mastery
mentor who works with them their whole
time at ubiquity to guide them on their
own personalized personal development
pathway and when they work on their
impact project they have an impact coach
who’s a Lean Startup social on
Enterprise Specialist project management
those kind of things so combining the
best of the technology with the best of
high-touch and human interaction is that
is absolutely critical to the success of
this kind of model so it that’s
education in the more kind of formal
classroom environment but what’s really
key also is that we integrate learning
and we recognize learning in other parts
of our lives so let’s take Federico a
marketing guy who works with Isaac Isaac
some of you might know is the biggest
student-run organization in the world
over forty thousand students run this
organization in more than 120 countries
they deliver exchanges intercultural
learning leadership development
experiences for students all over the
world and those students they can stay
in AIESEC doing this job for between one
to seven years and they all say to me I
learn a lot more AIESEC than I do in the
classroom at the University but they get
no recognition for it
so what we’ve done is found a way using
classic prior learning assessment or
recognition of prior learning
technologies to be able to give those
people credits points competency-based
badges for the competencies that they
develop and show on the job when they’re
working with AIESEC and those badges
they can put out and share career kind
of competency portfolio which is what
employers are asking
for now and they can stack them up you
need to think in terms of stackable
credentials that you stack up towards a
professional diploma or ultimately
potentially towards an MBA with a
combination of courses so how we enable
people to get recognition for the
learning that they do when they’re
actually engaged in the world combined
with the classroom learning that we see
as really being the future and then the
last point is so how do we make sure
that they get credentials that are
recognized because as I said the degree
is losing its currency employers want to
know what can they do we need to know at
the moment given the challenges that
we’re facing what are the skills
competencies qualities that people can
have so we’re working with a
competency-based badging system that’s
tied into a database of fifty four
thousand competencies developed by
industry sectors all over the world tied
in to three hundred and thirty
professions and all the related diplomas
and the industries agree these are the
kinds of evidence we need for somebody
to be able to say yes I’ve got that
competence so that means when somebody
puts their Ubiquiti badge on LinkedIn
and they click on it they can click all
the way through to the specific evidence
that somebody actually produce for that
and that way these credentials these
micro credentials actually have real
value to employers to the person
themselves to potential investors and to
partners they may want to work with so
my belief is my hope is that this kind
of education that we’re creating now
that were prototyping now with ubiquity
in many countries around the world is
going to enable my children is going to
enable your children and hopefully
millions of people around the world
ultimately to be able to make a living
making a difference because that’s what
the world needs now bring it on [Applause]
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