Interactive Scenario Building: The Future of Higher Education

1
Interactive Scenario Building The Future of
Higher Education
Sunday, July 9, 2006
2
Goal Learn Scenario Building

• Identify major issues that will be driving forces
  in the future of your institutional type
• Develop scenarios for bringing the driving forces
  to life
• Receive a report on the scenarios created by all
  participants
• Follow-up and apply what youve learned back at
  your institution

3
Agenda

• Introductions (10 minutes)
• Name, organization, position AND one expectation
  for this conference
• Select a recorder
• Driving Forces (20 minutes)
• Add to the list provided
• Select two forces
• Scenario Building (40 minutes)
• Next Steps (10 minutes)

4
Instructions and Introductions

• Introduce yourself to your group
• Name, position, and organization
• One expectation for the conference
• Find a volunteer with clear handwriting to act as
  a recorder for your group
• Find the master sheet on your table for recording
  your groups work

5
Driving Forces

• What is the future of higher education in the
  next five to seven years?
• What forces/issues that are both important and
  uncertain?
• Certain forces will be likely in all possible
  futures (declining resources)
• Uncertain forces are the ones that require
  scenarios for deeper understanding.

6
Driving Forces

• Definitions on the handout
• Review the list of driving forces provided and
  add to the list, individually and as a group
• Discuss the forces most important to institutions
  like yours
• How likely or unlikely (certain or uncertain) are
  the forces?
• Select two key forces, with an uncertain outcome,
  driving change for institutions like yours

7
Scenarios

• Sample scenarios in your handout
• Looks at the forces (uncertain) of a global
  pandemic and ubiquitous access to the Internet.
• Briefly review the sample scenarios

8
Driving Force 1 Pandemic Driving Force 2
Access to the Internet
Pandemic Happens
Scenario A
Scenario B
Limited Access
Ubiquitous Access
Scenario D
Scenario C
Pandemic Doesnt Happen
9
Scenario A

• The pandemic hits those born after 1990
  particularly hard, with deaths closer to 35 of
  the population. Colleges and universities have to
  rely on distance learning and internet access,
  which is spotty at best, to reach students. This
  greatly limits economic and social recovery and
  higher education enrollments plummet.

10
Scenario B

• Higher education institutions across the globe
  have worked to ensure that even remote places can
  access the Internet. Pandemic containment is
  effective, partly due to rapid communication, and
  only 10 of the worlds population succumbs to
  it. In addition, economic and social recovery is
  speedy because everyone has access to the
  knowledge they need. Enrollments rapidly return
  to pre-pandemic levels and then expand through
  distance learning options.

11
Scenario C

• Higher education continues its slow adoption of
  the internet as a means of distributing
  knowledge. Enrollment remains flat across much of
  the world and even drops in some places. There is
  no impetus to push the need for education.

12
Scenario D

• Ubiquitous access to the internet, instead of
  reducing the desire of people to attend college,
  increases it. The realization that pandemics can
  be eliminated or controlled most effectively
  through education, fuels a push to ensure that
  distance education is available globally.
  Credentialing via the internet gains acceptance
  and the world sees a general renaissance of ideas
  and prosperity.

13
Building Your Scenarios

• Write your groups driving forces on the blank
  scenario building worksheet
• As a group, discuss the characteristics of each
  quadrant of your matrix
• How would higher education institutions like
  yours be affected by the intersection of those
  two forces?
• Agree on 2-3 sentences for each scenario that
  describe a possible future for higher education
• Identify the one scenario that is most likely to
  occur for institutions like yours

14
Next Steps

• All scenarios will be collected
• Report on scenario building at the end of the
  conference
• Masters of materials and the report posted for
  participants after the conference
• Introduce scenario building in your home
  institution

15
Why Use Scenarios Back Home?

• We all respond to stories and the pictures they
  paint
• Emotionally
• Creatively
• Allows people to flex/expand their mental models
  and begin to consider alternative futures
• Easily integrated into strategy discussions

16
Strategy and Scenario Building

• What scenario do we think is most likely to
  occur?
• What actions should we take now?
• For which contingencies must we plan?
• Do we want to make any part of the scenario
  happen? Does it advantage us to create this
  future?

17
Strategy and Scenario Building

• Identify strategies that would steer the
  organization successfully through each of the
  possible scenarios
• What commonalities are found in the strategies
  across the scenarios?
• Reflective of core competencies/strengths?
• Weaknesses that must be addressed?

18
Aloha and Thanks