Conference Input

I'm attending perhaps the most radical conference on adult education I've ever attended (AERC/CASAE), and it's been fascinating to see my work through the lens of academics. I've come to understand that theoretical frameworks are the launch pad (or sounding board) for most people's work, and not grassroots activity. Interesting. As a result, I'm going to attempt to briefly "foreground" the theoretical frameworks that inform my work in program planning:

1) Complexity theory: all ingredients in the program planning process are interlinked and inextricable, and a combination of positive and negative feedback loops (this worked; that didn't) moves the process forward.

2) Chaos theory: order emerges out of the chaos of not-knowing, but may become "chaotic" again if there is a significant shift in thinking, a significant change in the progam planning "ingredients" (new people, funding changes, etc). Order is achieved slowly are carefully, not hastily or based on assumptions.

3) Emergence theory: chaos is self-organizing, so that if we allow enough time and space (and don't need to see order too quickly), a pattern will emerge and strong/weak ties between different tasks or people can be identified, so that strong ties can be pursued.

4) Community development: learning and development is a social process carried out by members of a particular "community". As such, true change can only be initiated by and carried out at the grassroots. However, external people, ideas or resources can influence or affect how this change happens. Dissenting, antagonistic voices become damaging, and so it's important to have a good handle on various voices within the community throughout the program planning process.

5) Learning in Context: Because individuals are part of the collective (which in turn shapes the individual), one must remain aware of the context in which the program is being developed. On a corollary note ...

6) Post-modernism: we can only ever known what we have been taught or allowed to "know". We are the products of our upbringing and our experiences, and have to remain vigilant about our biases and assumptions as we work.

7) Emancipation/liberation theory: There are always people with power and people who want power and people who don't even know that they could have power. As program planners, we need to remember that all education is political.

Sheesh ... so many theories, and so little time. Let's just do the work.

Turning Points

The program planning project is now well underway. The initial stage of research into demographics, labour market trends, post-secondary environments, and different kinds of joint programming is completed. I don't even remember all I've read, but I made extensive notes and will no doubt go back into them many times as I move through the different stages of the project.

Because of timelines, I also had to meet with marketing staff from both institutions to get a sense of their timelines and the tools (budget) available to them, because clearly visibility and "splash" are going to be important in this venture. That means though that we need to choose programs that can create a splash, and if we want to launch by fall, we need to choose programs with target audiences that we can reach over the summer. Programs that would appeal primarily to graduated high school students, for example, would be very tough to market over the summer, because school's out! There are however some EAL learners in daytime programs that can be reached, so we may need to choose programs that would appeal to that target group.

As a result, this project is already an example of how program planning simply cannot be linear, or even circular. While the first stage of research needed to be completed upfront, I've started marketing timelines and budgeting, but the identification of stakeholders has only partially happened. My sense of program planning as being an emergent process is more and more evident to me. Rather more like a catalytic reaction, one arising element can lead to any number of possible "next steps", which then contribute to what's known and what's needed, setting off a number of other catalytic reactions that require additional work. This exponential increase of elements that need investigating, completing and monitoring explains to me the sense of overwhelm that often happens at this early stage of program planning. So much is unknown, so much needs to be done, and yet nothing can move ahead without some preliminary decisions ... even if there isn't enough information yet.

For example, it's clear who the key (and powerful) drivers within the two institutions are, and thankfully their intentions are visionary and exciting. I can expect that innovation is desired and, in fact, expected. However, the stakeholders out in the community are less clear to me, and things are already moving so quickly that I'm not sure when I'll be able to consult with them. I think there will be unusual learner groups, industry partners and community agencies that I need to meet with. I may need to slow things down at some point to catch up on this piece.

In short, I only "know" what some of the internal stakeholders know, believe and want, and I need to start making decisions to get marketing rolling, but I don't have a budget approved, and I won't know until marketing comes up with a draft promotional strategy whether or not I can actually choose the courses I've chosen to help them get the marketing strategy started!

The familiarization with internal stakeholders has been going well though, and so I have some confidence that I'm on track, even if I have to tweak a few things. Interestingly enough, it's the people that are making some program ideas more viable than others. Technically, a number of connections can be made between programming in the two institutions. However, some people are more territorial about their programs, while others are itching to innovate, collaborate and build better programming.

Two program areas have emerged as highly dynamic and existing, for a variety of reasons. The remainder will be put on the back burner in terms of fuller development of certificate, diploma and/or degree programs. This puts the courses/programs to be offered into three tiers: stand-alone courses that help address wait list issues at one or the other institution; supporter courses that help students in some programs gain something extra, and full-on co-developed programs with a variety of correlated community-based initiatives. The latter of these are, of course, the ones that interest me the most. :)

Next we'll leave big picture planning behind, get the details of a marketing strategy underway, and begin to focus in on the two "splash" programs.

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.

New Initiative in Program Planning

As program planning goes, a lot of the work is done on a smaller scale, developing workshops and courses to meet specific needs of particular populations, often in workplaces or community-based organizations. I'm going to be planning a much larger set of programs over the ten months however, and so I'm going to be implementing a "soup to nuts" program planning process. I'm curious what my working process will be, because I want to see if my theories about emergent program planning will be confirmed.

I'm going to try to determine what the stages and transformations are within the larger planning process, and I want to keep an eye on which things take precedence at which stage.

FIRST STAGE - The Wide Open Field

This first stage is of course the easiest stage, because the "ingredients" are limited. At the same time, the open-endedness of having so few ingredients could feel quite overwhelming if I didn't completely trust that I would soon find out which direction to head across the field, and that order would come to the chaos. It is exhilarating, because so much seems possible, but also a bit daunting, because there are gopher holes all over the field, and I hope to avoid most of them.

So far, I have a very vague sense of my overall task (develop new joint programs between two institutions to cement an educational partnership and bring in new student populations), I have an equally vague sense of who I'll be working with, but I don't yet know the stakeholders or what they really want out of this or what they will call "success".

I'm going to spend about 50 hours doing general research. I've started with a broad environmental scan: Manitoban demographics, Canadian demographic trends, baby boomer and echo boomers (the target student population), labour market trends in Manitoba, active employment sectors, Aboriginal demographics, immigrant statistics and demographics. So far, I've checked into existing, comparable diploma and certificate programs in Canada, Germany (too high level), France (not much help), New Zealand. I've found a variety of research reports on trends in Canada's post-secondary world. I've started one binder to hold general research, and another to hold program ideas from other colleges around the world.

I'm getting a sense of how different programs are structured, as well as finding out something about full-time vs part-time, entrance requirements, program flexibility, and academic support components. I haven't found anything wildly exciting yet, and feel like it's too early to be able to see anything clearly yet. It's tiring, because there's a lot to take in. I remember this from when I started writing the online EAL teacher certification program. It felt a bit like trying to count the grasses in a field, one blade at a time. There's just not enough information yet to have anything 'gel'.

Next week is the first meeting with both sets of stakeholders - in one room. I hope to be firmly enough landed in the world of post-secondary joint programming that I can ask questions that quickly get at the heart of the matter. I need to know the "secret" hopes and dreams for these programs. I need to know how each stakeholder views "success". I need to get up to speed and into their brains in one one-hour meeting. Then the search will broaden out, I suspect, and I'll enter a new phase of data-gathering.

The Turning Point

For the last few weeks, I have felt discouraged, believing that power wins over what's right when it comes to education. As an adult educator in the adult public education system, I have seen it as my responsibility to create/run/oversee programming that is as good as I can make it, because we're affecting the Manitoban population ... not just individual lives, but society and economy. (If you're not sure what I mean, imagine taking away adult education, and imagine what we're left with in the categories of society and economy.)

However, as happens so often, there are stakeholders who have a great investment in keeping things as they are for reasons of image, power, control, money. They're not driven by great programming that leads to positive change. Change is frightening, but also carries the risk of a loss.

But the aim of all education is change, change in knowledge, skills or attitudes, and so how can we not be prepared to constantly respond to changes?

For those who prefer the status quo, change agents are therefore equally frightening. These people (program planner who dare to risk challenge, question, change) represent a potential loss of power, prestige, money, etc. And in some cases, it must feel like they must be managed and gotten "under control" again, so that the perceived loss doesn't occur. There is no ability to see loss and gain as flipsides of the same coin.

It's up to the program planner then to decide whether the end-product of being "controlled" will still be acceptable to the ultimate audience and goal, the learner and transformative change. Perhaps there is a useful midway point between status quo and change, a resting place that allows all affected by change to catch their breaths and reduce their collective anxieties. If yes, then being controlled and potentially limited for a time may be acceptable. If not, then - at its most extreme - it may become necessary to pack up ones tools of the trade and bid a project and stakeholder group a fond adieu.

I've hit that crossroads now, and have decided to take the road less travelled, the one of standing up and insisting on much better treatment for students. Emergent program planning? What "emerged" was a complete impasse, and not one that I was prepared to pass through by compromising quality of services to adult learners. It is indeed an interesting turning point.

Politics and Power

Ah, but there have been some hard lessons about power and program planning lately. In fact, I've reached a complete impasse because of a particular set of power dynamics and they've now set me back by more than 2 years.

In short, a change in leadership occurred on a particular project a year or so ago and, as a result, the last year has been an endless effort to get forward movement on something that had been previously approved. Immediate supervisor is now afraid and powerless. Two layers above that are micro-managing to attempt to get control, but they're not knowledgeable and so things are faltering. Ie. three layers of the hierarchy are now completely bogged down in ineffective processes, and all the support from other places in the province, at the middle levels of the organization, and at the grassroots are doing no good.

In terms of program planning, the transformational aspect of the project has become scary, and the institution is pushing back against change. However, the change is not optional, as at some point the institutional mandate runs counter to the effect of NOT changing. More clearly stated, if we don't change, we won't be doing our job anymore.

Solutions? One choice is to wait until the problem can no longer be hidden, ie. to wait until it's so big that it becomes a logistical nightmare that requires a complete tear-down-and-start-again. That's always damaging, because it inevitably leads to blaming and shaming as everyone tries to get out from under what they've known and not acted on. It requires being in charge of a plan crash, watching it and allowing it to happen. Another choice is to keep pushing for change, but the person pushing inevitably gets ostracized and incredibly worn down. Unwanted change is hard on everyone. What to do if staying the same is not an option either? This is the "program planner as activist" stream. Another choice is to take a lot of time to slowly, painfully make one tiny, inadequate but palatable change at a time instead of just rolling up the sleeves and getting 'er done. This is a bit like hoping to outrun a freight train. And a final choice is to walk away from an impossible task.

Emergent Program Planning "Model"

My response to Kevin, who questioned why program planning was presented as a "thing":

No, I don't think program planning is a real "thing", although there needs to be a way to concretize the ideas in the beginning in order to get some sense of all the things it could be, before developing it into new things. Like seeing hundreds of pictures of "tables" in order to understand what the word "table" may refer to. Then go ahead and build a five-legged one, for all it matters!

My ideal (I've been working on this idea for a while, see my blog from a year ago or so) would be to have "emergent program planning" ... a completely organic and yet somewhat, sorta-kinda structured process, not product, that allows for emergent learning. I'm influenced by the theories of chaos and order, by Jane Jacobs and her related ideas of city planning, by anthills and Pi. More than anything, I'm influenced by social networking and the principles of connectivism. Here, I think, are the kernels of what program planing could and should be. If only we had the software to support it. So far, programs are still planned in a linear fashion, instead of in an emergent fashion that allows people to forage and wander through ideas and applications.

In my mind, program planning should be a process that allows for various 'ingredients' in a planning situation to emerge and disappear over time. If I had to make a model of the idea, it would be a 3-D, ever-morphing, cloud-like mass that changes colour and shape, and grows and diminishes, as the planning processes carries on.

In the beginning, the cloud would be thin and wispy, because very little is known about the stakeholders, the context or the need. As discussions and research continue, more solid "ingredients" would get added to the cloud. Some ingredients would stay, whereas others would drop off as they're found to be irrelevant. In time, a central glob would form out of the primordial chaos. These would be the things shared and agreed upon, and believed to be "true" by the key stakeholders.

These would then be expanded by the gelling work of setting some kind of initial objectives, starting to talk about money and timeframe, looking at resources, etc. The mass starts to take a shape. At this point, progress tends to happen quickly. Either the resources come together and everyone is in some kind of agreement, or things gets stuck and begin to fray and fall apart.

The program runs in the cloudy shape for the first piloting, and then adjustments are made. A little cloud is plucked from here or there, a little more padding is added in places, and then the cloud is sent out once more to do its work. Through the piloting, some things begin to get more solid and perhaps even rigid ("This is the way we do things here"), and in time the whole cloud may in fact turn into a rather solid and dusty glob, if no one is watching to make sure that the surface remains permeable and flexible.

The thing is that this model of the process of planning a program reflects the model of a program itself, and in fact, it describes to me how learning works. depending on whether or not we seek out new information and attempt to stay fresh, our learning (our curriculum, our lessons, our materials) may become rigid and dusty.

Instead, we would be best to allow things to shift and change, and to allow new needs and responses to emerge.