There are two passages from literature which, taken together, illuminate my current understanding of the ground on which we stand today when anticipating the New Universe of Learning. First comes Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, urging Sebastian to murder his sleeping father, saying “what’s past is prologue” and suggesting that great things lie ahead if the deed is done. While we have nothing as foul … Continue reading Dancing With Time

This blog series, A New Universe of Learning: Personalized Learning in the Digital Age, is about the future of lifelong learning. It describes the coming of a time when, for the first time, the consequences of personal, experiential, and formal learning, powered by digitalization, will be harnessed to provide a collective impact for adult learners that is far greater than what any of them have … Continue reading What’s It All About, Peter?

About 14 months ago, I found my future beckoning in a way that pulled me away from professional pre-occupations towards active consideration of my own “next steps” as a person and a professional in this field that I have loved for over 45 years. So I took a little time off from writing and spent a lot more time thinking about what might lie ahead. … Continue reading Transition, Change, and New Horizons

The first and most difficult question for a person who has decided to investigate new career and learning options is “where do I begin?” And the simple answer is that there is no single path to success in terms of a sequence of events. The critical element to understand is that the decisions you make are part of your unique learning cycle. Every time we, … Continue reading Getting Qualified for Work (Part 2): Beginning Your Sense-Making Journey

Just as the Wizard was exposed in the final scenes of the Wizard of Oz, colleges’ claims to “prepare you for the career of your choice” have proven to be equally dubious in the last few years. Much of what passes for career counseling involves testing for particular behavioral traits and recommending training or academic programs based on the available certificates and degrees. All of … Continue reading Getting Qualified for Work (Part I)

As I look across the emerging playing field for post-secondary and lifelong learning, the gap I see between traditional institutional structures and practices and the capacity to serve people differently and better has never been greater. When mobile devices, the internet, and big data intersect, our ability to coach, advise, support, and assess learners becomes an anytime, anyplace activity, limited only by self-imposed boundaries. Old … Continue reading Learning and Earning: Vision of a Toolbox for the 21st Century

Sometimes there are special moments when you are very proud of where you work and the people you work with. This was such a week for me. After more than six years of work, from conceptualization to development to implementation, Kaplan University has unveiled its three-way approach to competency assessment. This revised approach gives each learner evidence of their achievement in course outcomes, general education … Continue reading Breakthrough Changes at Kaplan University

Several years after I resigned the presidency of California State University, Monterey Bay to serve as ADG-Education at UNESCO, a former colleague said to me, “If it wasn’t for you, this place wouldn’t be here.” For a while, I bathed in the glory of that sentiment. But, at heart, I knew how inaccurate, though well-intentioned, it was. To be sure, I had led and held … Continue reading The Team is Everything

In their provocative new publication “Rich Schools, Poor Students: Tapping Large University Endowments to Improve Student Outcomes,” Jorge Klor de Alva and Mark Schneider painstakingly document yet another of the ways that the overall higher education investment in America favors the well-to-do – both institutions and students alike. By combining the property tax benefits as well as the inviolate status of large endowments, Klor de … Continue reading “Belling the Cat” of Investments in Higher Education

It is supremely satisfying to see great work recognized by a respected third party. This week, that happened to the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) when the global Open Education Consortium (OEC) awarded us a 2015 Open Education Award for Excellence and named us as an “Outstanding Site” for open education resources. By recognizing our website, OEC is calling attention to the “whole” of … Continue reading OC@KU Wins 2015 Open Education Award for Excellence!