What is next-generation learning?

In Randy Bass’s view, our understanding of learning has far outpaced our practices of teaching. This disconnect is beginning to force universities to confront their standard ways of organizing students’ educational experiences.

Pressure on the status quo is coming from two directions, Bass says. “On the one side is a growing body of data about the power of experiential learning in the co‑curriculum; and on the other side is the world of informal learning and the participatory culture of the Internet.” These pressures are moving us into a “post-course era” in which we assume that the most significant learning takes place in self-contained courses.

In this context, Bass asks, how do universities need to adapt their structures and practices given that so much valuable learning is occurring outside the formal curriculum?

Randy Bass, vice-provost for Education, has been leading a visioning process at Georgetown University focused on how to design a whole-person education for the digital age. As part of this initiative, Georgetown is launching a series of curriculum experiments focused on rethinking how to deliver a high-impact education. The feeling at Georgetown is that the decisions taken in the next two to three years may set the course of the institution for the next 20-30 years.

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