U.Lab: Seven Principles for Revolutionizing Higher Ed

At MoveMakers we strive to employ a wide variety of methods and tools, including Theory U, the Art of Hosting, Design Thinking, as well as didactical storytelling, visual facilitation and other co-creative practices. The programme is grounded in newest findings of constructivist didactics, adult education (learning and development of people 18 years and older) and the neuroscience of learning. It fosters an entrepreneurial spirit by promoting learner-centeredness, participatory methodologies and peer learning.

In the newsletters to come we will share further highlights of current approaches and experiments regarding bold methods and tools.

Theory U proposes that the quality of the results that we create in any kind of social system is a function of the quality of awareness, attention, or consciousness that the participants in the system operate from (see: https://www.presencing.com/theoryu). From the theory we draw the importance of bringing together heart, hand and head in learning. It also inspired us to design the MoveMakers labs as a U-shaped journey, supporting us in finding the inner place from which we take action.

Before our own journey starts, we are happy to share another recent experiment with you. The U.Lab, a new type of social entrepreneurship MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), took place this winter for the first time and blends a MOOC with a social technology of co-sensing and co-creating emerging futures. Otto Scharmer, founder of the U.Lab: “The U.Lab is a small first step into this new global territory. We don’t know how big the opportunity is to reimagine education by engaging the global social field more intentionally. But it does feel like a significant beginning.”

With 28,000 registered participants from 190 countries the U.Lab is almost overwhelming in size. Even more far-reaching though, are the insights already arising from the experiment: The Seven Principles for Revolutionizing Higher Ed aim to spark inspiration in “the driver” (the learner). With Scharmer we share the view, that this spark is the missing aspect of higher education as it exists today, and that “we can activate it by helping learners to tap into their deeper sources of knowing: Who am I? What am I here for? What future do I want to co-create moving forward?”

We highly recommend you to have a look at the full article at Huffington Post.