The Forest and the Trees

I've now done about a week of research, crunched numbers, and dug around in reports and bulletins, and I'm starting to find little bits of clarity around what needs to happen. I wouldn't call them conclusions, because I still don't understand the key stakeholders' needs and desires, but I am starting to get a sense of the lay of the land. I know the courses from both institutions, have a sense of how they're arranged into programs, and have compared the admissions requirements for each. I've also done an interesting scan of the larger educational environment and the labour market to see which sectors are saturated and which have little market niches waiting to be filled. I've also chosen a few target populations that I might be able to work with: immigrants looking to re-establish themselves professionally, Aboriginal professionals-in-waiting, "echo boomers" and men. The last surprised me, but they're so under-represented in some corners of the post-secondary world that they almost need to be treated as an at-risk group. Strange. Not what I would have expected.

Looking at the demographics from the institutions also told me what kinds of students preferred part-time over full-time studies, which will be helpful. And, in reviewing the admissions requirements of a big range of programs, I now have some sense of how things need to be laddered if we want people to be able to move themselves through a series of increasingly-advanced professional development opportunities.

However, I'm almost feeling like I'm at the cusp of this stage, which I'm going to call "Working by Candlelight". You can only see what's closest to the light, but the rest is still dark. I'm also starting to need some order in the "chaos". I've created a binder and am starting to sort the info according to the categories that are starting to emerge. The first "emergence"! By starting to label the sections of the binder, I am in fact beginning to identify themes and issues that I'll need to address. I've also got a good list of questions that I collected while re-reading everything I've collected to date.

Those questions will lead to the next phase, which will be my meeting with the stakeholders. I'll certainly be ready for them. I have big-picture info, medium-picture info, even some small-picture info, and I have some specific questions I need them to answer. I also have some initial ideas I want to test out with them. It feels like a "Sounding Board" phase, because I'm checking my assumptions. This will confirm and/or dispel my ideas to date. It will also give me a whole new pile of information to wade through ... a pile of rather subjective info, I suspect, because each stakeholder will tell me what they think and believe.

After this, I will have one more really good chance to stand back and think like an outsider, but after that I too will begin to work from within my assumptions and collected data. After that it gets harder and harder to stay objective and fresh-perspectived without conscious effort, because we'll begin to be on a roll and we'll need to start making decisions. Through big open vistas we will need to begin to lay stepping stones. No decisions needed yet though, and the open-ness has been lovely. Anything is still possible.