Sunday 23 April 2017

Futures Literacy: Games

Games @Futures_Sandbox
Futures Literacy, 21 November 2016.
Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University
Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The Futures Sandbox is an initiative for transformative action learning and youth development.  Developed by Dr. Nur Anisah Abdullah and John A Sweeney (PhDc) in an effort to advance futures thinking, the Sandbox aims to develop critical and reflective modes of awareness and inquiry.  The Futures Sandbox is a collaborative and open platform for workshops, seminars, and hands-on projects to educate and inspire youth toward imagining and creating a more preferred future.

The first 3.5-hour session of Futures Sandbox was attended by 15 participants consisting of eight undergraduate and two postgraduate students of a local university in Dubai, and the remaining five were working professionals.  Three games were played in sequence as an introduction to Futures Studies: (a)Metaphors of the Future; (b)Time Machine; and (c)Where do you stand- The Polak Game.

Game 1: Metaphors for the Future consists of a set of four concepts: (i) a ride on the train; (ii) kayaking down a river; (iii) sailing in the sea; and (iv) rolling the dice adapted from Kauffman’s Ways of Thinking of the Future (1976, p64-65).  The Metaphors for the Future was brought into the Sandbox as the first activity, designed to help students think about how they visualize and articulate what they felt about their future.  This design was felt useful as metaphors unite reason and imagination depicting rationality of our ordinary entailment and inferences (Lakoff, 2010).  Though there were no extrinsic prizes at the end of the game, students were rewarded by a sense of having ‘thingified’ (Papert, 1996) the imaginings of the future.   Their chosen concepts from the metaphors explicitly described their sub-conscious images of what lies ahead.  Fifty percent of the participants felt that their future was a ride on the train; i.e. the future is fixed, pre-determined with pre-defined routes.  The future exists ahead of us although we can only see each part as we come to it.  We are locked in our seats, and nothing we may know or do will change the course that is laid out for us;  20%  felt that the future is a river- it’s a rough ride with lots of bumps ahead, little control over where they were going but they were going somewhere ; another 20% felt that the future is a great ocean- there are many possible destinations, and many different paths to each destination.  We can have some kind of control over where to go and how they want to there; and for the remaining 10% the future is a roll of the dice.  The future is entirely random.  Things happen because they happen, and things could have taken a different direction, producing a different future each time with minimum to no control on the part of us being human.  A realization of existing images of the future that people held and formed provides insights into man’s sub-consciousness  of the future: optimism or pessimism;  ‘once man became conscious of creating images of the future, he became a participant in the process of creating this future’ (Polak,1973; p6); and that the future is not “what must be”, the future is possibly  “what ought to be” (ibid; p29). 

Game 2: Time Machine.  The Time Machine was created to help students visualize the possibility of creating desired futures.  The Time Machine helps students time travel back to 1995 with visuals of what Dubai used to be and what Dubai is today.  The younger generations tend to take things for granted as what they have now was what they were used to having without realizing how the world we exist in were designed and shaped over time.  The visuals on the rapid-progressive developments of Dubai as one of the most dynamic world economies were testaments that the future of a society can be created and designed.  This game helped to set the scene for introduction of Futures Studies and the role Futures Studies play in facilitating the imaginings of the future.  Participants were divided into two groups of people living in the year (i) 1995, and (ii) 2016.   The group that travelled back to 1995 were asked to discuss and prepare questions of what they want very much to know about the future; and for those living in 2016 were to think about what were the crucial events they might want to tell the people in 1995 to better prepare for the future.  This experiment allowed students learn to appreciate that future events that were seemingly impossible but can happen and become a reality.  The game helps students anticipate change.

Game 3: Where Do You Stand: The Polak Game was created based on Polak’s thesis (1973) that man forms and holds images of ourselves and others, of our own group and of other groups; and that public images of the future can be changed and re-constructed for a preferred-larger social and cultural processes.  Any attempts in shaping those change, the images that already exist in the minds of the society must be examined to better understand the extent of possible influence on decisions; and if these influences were deemed less desirable, what needs to be done to re-direct them? (p14-15, 1973).

Where Do You Stand- presents as a two-dimensional matrix: (i) the degree of happiness/misery, and (ii) the cause of happiness/misery- people versus system creating four quadrants, namely ‘happy-system’; ‘happy-people’; ‘sad-people’ and ‘sad-system’  The game allows participants explicitly articulate the existing images they have of the world we live in; and their perceptions of how others viewed the world.  As the first step in the game, participants were asked to take their position by standing on a line across the room representing the continuum of being happy to being sad.  Another line is drawn perpendicular to the degree of happiness representing the cause of happiness/misery: ‘people’ on one end and ‘system’ on another.  Participants were asked to moved themselves into quadrants representing their worldviews.  Within each quadrant, participants were asked to describe themselves to the others. This was followed by asking participants their opinions about the others who were standing in quadrants different from theirs.  The common reflection was that they were surprised that others would perceive them differently from what they thought they had portrayed themselves to be.  The game allows for an experiment (Kolb, et al., 2000) of being in a specific state and a lense into understanding oneself and others.  For example, participants who stood in the “happy-people” quadrant were seen by others as ‘utopists’.  Polak (1973) suggests that “the minds of men were prepared for discoveries and different views of the world” (p99).  This ability is crucial for one to realize that people do have different and diverse worldviews due to various reasons, and that differences and diversity of images of the world must be examined in anticipating how decisions might be and could be influenced as we work in moulding and shaping preferred futures. 

When asked ‘what worked well at the Sandbox’, generally participants reflected positive learning experience from the games. 

The words of one participant “... an exploration into the future no longer seem impossible or as un-do-able.  The session gave me some kind of framework to think about the future-  thinking (process) is more do-able now.”  

A reflection from a master student “...open up my views on things.  If we can foresee what the future might be and could be, we can think of what needs doing now and be ready of what is to come.  We can create the picture of how wish our future look like and start working or doing stuff now.”

Participants were asked in a post workshop survey: Did the workshop help them in any way their planning for the future or their view of the future?    Amongst the various mentions of how they have learned a lot, a response from a mature working professional participant worth quoting:
“.. I’m encouraged to think about what lies ahead and this is changing my thoughts about what I do now and my plans.

These reflective questions were important as students often fail to connect what they have learned with their personal lives, they consciously make time to take stock of learning experience.

The Sandbox can be a space for transformative learning; and Futures games can be excellent tools for experimenting imaginings of the future,  in providing sets of different lenses for the seeing things in new ways, and in facilitating thinking process.  These games took participants through a journey of exploration in preparation and in anticipating what was in stall for the world we live in and that we can possibly create a different narrative and shift the routes of lives to a preferred future.

References

Kauffman, Drapper. (1976) Teaching the Future: A Guide to Future-Oriented Education. ETC Publications.

Kolb, D.A., Boyatzis, R.E., and Mainemelis, C. (2000) Experiential Learning Theory: Previous research and new directions.  In R.J. Sternberg and L.F. Zhang (Eds), Perspectives on cognitive, learning and thinking styles.  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Lakoff, George, and Johnsen, Mark (2003) Metaphors we live by.  The University of Chicago Press, London.

Polak, Fred (1973) The Image of the Future.  Translated and abridged by Elise Boulding.  Elsevier Scientific Publishing, Amsterdam.

Seymour, Papert (1996) An Exploration in the Space of Mathematics Educations, International Journal of Computers for Mathematical Learning, Vol 1(1), pp 95-123.

                                   
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Sunday 26 February 2017

Futures of Education in the UAE

EXPLORING THE FUTURES OF EDUCATION IN THE UAE
Date:  9 April 2017, Sunday
Time 5-9 pm
Venue: Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University Dubai

WHY SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT OUR FUTURE?
On Sept 28, 2016 HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the launch of an integrated strategy to forecast UAE nation's future, aiming to anticipate challenges & seize opportunities. 

SO what do you know about our future?
Can we anticipate what is about to come and be prepared? 

We live in interesting times.  Interesting because the changes we face are so great and complex.  Our society is changing very rapidly, and the increasingly interconnected nature of our society and the entire planet makes it much harder to cope.  It is impossible to predict what it will be like in 50 years; we only know for certain that it will be very different from today.  We have to consider seriously the implications of rapid social change and revise the substance of education accordingly. 

Education ought to provide individuals with advanced information about what lies ahead so that we adapt better rather than being subjected to psychological disorientation “future shock”.  Education ought to inculcate the habit of looking ahead and the skill to anticipate effectively.

THE WORKSHOP
We recognize that youth should be actively engaged in shaping education towards contributing to wider social systems.  This workshop explores future education:

What does the future of learning mean to students? 
How do our learners view the social systems they live in, how can we now do something to shape a more desired future?

The workshop facilitated by Dr. Nur Anisah Abdullah, starts off with introducing futures studies and the need to think about our future.  We explore emerging trends and issues - setting the context for how learning is about to change.  We facilitate group discussions on shaping possible scenarios for learning. 

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
Would you play an active role in shaping our future? 
The workshop encourages the participation of:


·      Students
·      Educators
·      Youth council members
·      Policy makers
·      Administrative leaders of educational institutions
·      Foresight Consultants



Tuesday 27 December 2016

Why Futures Studies: An Essential Read for Futures Sandbox

The following sections were compiled from various sources in providing to some extent a sneak peak into Futures Studies; a quick read to set the scene for Futures Sandbox.

The Futures Sandbox is an initiative for transformative action learning and youth development.  Developed by Dr Nur Anisah Abdullah and John A Sweeney(PhDc) in an effort to advance futures thinking, the Sandbox aims to develop critical and reflective modes of awareness and inquiry.  The Futures Sandbox is a collaborative and open platform for workshops, seminars, and hands-on projects to educate and inspire youth toward imagining and creating a more preferred future.




**********************************************

When I say part of my academic and research work evolves around futures studies, I get quite interesting responses which include: 

 “Oh…do you use a crystal ball?" ...."you play with tarot card?"
..."Fortune telling? Palm reading?"

Before we get any further… in the context of Futures Studies - the future is fundamentally plural - i.e. futures; rather than a single “THE future”. There are possibly many alternative futures, depending on how we imagine them to our preference and how we plan actions today in shaping those preferred futures. 

Futures studies is often misunderstood to be some kind of predictive science that strives to foretell with reasonable accuracy of what THE future WILL BE. The future states of society is too complex to be precisely predetermined. BUT we can anticipate things to come. And this is where Futures Studies play its role. Researchers in this field, usually referred to as Futurists, have developed, tested and applied theories and methods useful in helping us anticipate and imagine the future more usefully and to shape it (our futures) to our preferences. 


Why Futures Studies
by Eleonora Barberi Masini
1993, Grey Seal London.

On Sept 28, 2016 HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced the launch of an integrated strategy to forecast UAE nation's future, aiming to anticipate challenges & seize opportunities. 

It is timely that higher education in the UAE takes the lead in advancing Futures Studies as part of a broader youth development objective.

Futures Studies respond to a need that is especially felt in our time of great rapid and interrelated change ( McHale, 1969). The faster the pace of change, the further forward we have to look. If McHale felt change was rapid and interrelated in 1969... what has it been for us in the last year or 5 years? 

We saw how a quickly the spread of a virus such as Ebola outbreak in 2014 that almost crippled West Africa within 6 months. Or how Pokemon Go has become a favorite pastime for millions around the world since its released July 6, 2016!

Futures thinking and Futures Studies are a choice which each person or society has to make in the present: whether to think about the future or not; whether to think about the consequences of our actions in the future, and the impact that our view of the future might have on our present action (Godet, 1979); or whether simply to think about the present. 

Futures Studies is a way of thinking, a way of constructing our minds, a way of conceptualizing life, our everyday actions, our every decision. This way of thinking leads to the possibility of educating ourselves and others towards the future, towards the fact that the future is part of our whole life as a sort of anticipation of the future itself (Botkin, 1979).


Futures Studies ought to be an important component of education as it: 

  • helps us move beyond 'crisis management' to proactive thinking; 
  • helps us visualize the images of the future and that visualization affect our decisions in the present; 
  • helps us exerts our will and intentionality on the future; 
  • helps us realize that there are strategic consequences of our actions and decisions; 
  • helps us realize that education (which is strongly rooted in the past) requires credible futures alternatives to establish appropriate strategies and directions. 
[extracted from Educating for a Sustainable Future: Futures Education. Christopher Jones (1998, p231)] 


The Laws of the Future : What Futures Studies Is and Is Not 
The Three Laws of the Future by Jim Dator, Professor and Director, Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies.

Law I: “The future” cannot be ‘predicted’ because “the future” does not exist 

IA: Futures Studies does not, or should not, pretend to predict ‘the future’. It studies ideas about the future - the images of the future.   These images serve as basis for actions in the present.

Law IB: The future can not be predicted but 'preferred futures' can and should be envisioned, invented, implemented, continuously evaluated, revised and re-envisioned. Thus the major tasks of futures studies is to facilitate individuals and groups in formulation, implementing and re-envisioning their preferred futures. 

Law IC: To be useful, futures studies needs to precede and then be linked to strategic planning and hence to administration. 
 The identification of the major alternative futures and the envisioning and creation of preferred futures then guides subsequent strategic planning activities, which in turn determine day-to-day decision-making by an organization's administrators. 

The process of alternative futures forecasting and preferred futures envisioning is continuously ongoing and changing. The purpose of any futures exercise is to create a guiding vision, not a "final solution" or a limiting blueprint. It is proper, especially in an environment of rapid technological, and hence social and environmental, change for visions of the futures change as new opportunities and problems present themselves. 


Law II: Any useful idea about the futures should appear to be ridiculous. 


IIA. Because new technologies permit new behaviors and values, challenging old beliefs and values which are based on prior technologies, much that will be characteristic of the futures is initially novel and challenging. It typically seems at first obscene, impossible, stupid, "science fiction", ridiculous. And then it becomes familiar and eventually "normal." 

IIB. Thus, what is popularly, or even professionally, considered to be "the most likely future" is often one of the least likely futures. 

IIC. If futurists expect to be useful, they should expect to be ridiculed and for their ideas initially to be rejected. Some of their ideas may deserve ridicule and rejection, but even their useful ideas about the futures may also be ridiculed. 

IID. Thus, decision-makers, and the general public, if they wish useful information about the future, should expect it to be unconventional and often shocking, offensive, and seemingly ridiculous. Futurists, however, have the additional burden of making the initially-ridiculous idea plausible and actionable by marshaling appropriate evidence and weaving alternative scenarios of its possible developments.

Law III: We shape our tools and thereaafter our tools shape us

"Technological change is the basis of social and environmental change. Understanding how this works, in specific social contexts, is the key to understanding what can be understood of the varieties of alternative futures before us, and our options and limitations for our preferred futures (Marshall McLuhan)"

The Types of Futures 
A Primer on Futures Studies, Foresight and the Use of Scenarios, in prospect, Voros, 2001.  Foresight Bulletin, No 6, December 2001, Swinburne University of Technology. 

Possible futures include all the kinds of futures we can possibly imagine - those which "might happen" - no matter how far-fetched, unlikely or "way out". Might involve knowledge which we do not yet possess or might also involve transgressions of currently-accepted physical laws or principles. 

Plausible futures: those futures which "could happen" (ie they are not excluded) according to our current knowledge (as opposed to future knowledge) of how things work. They stem from our current understanding of physical laws, processes, causation, systems of human interaction, etc. This is clearly a smaller subset of futures than the possible. 

Probable futures: futures that are "likely to happen", and stem in part from the continuance of current trends. Some probably futures are considered more likely than others; the one considered most likely is often called "business-as-usual". It is a simple linear extension of the present. However, trends are not necessarily continuous over long periods of time, and discontinuities in the trends may occur. Some trends may fade out suddenly, while new ones may emerge unexpectedly. Some people think that studying or "reading" trends is the whole game of foresight or futures work, but it is clear from this description that merely reading trends gives rise to a much smaller class of futures than the previous two. 

Preferable futures is, by contrast, concerned with what we "want to" happen; They derive from value judgements, and are more overtly subjective than the previous three classes. Because values differ so markedly between people, this class of futures is quite varied. Preferable (or preferred) futures can lie in any of the previous three classes.


Want some #Foresight muscles? 

In today’s constantly changing, interconnected, digitally disrupted, politically challenging, post-Brexit and highly uncertain world, is it a good idea to make a single strategic plan and stick to it regardless? How do you ensure that your business grows and thrives when you know that the future is uncertain at best? 

The film Back to the Future II is a great example of how you can’t predict the future. Twenty six years later we can see how many things it got right, like video calls, big flat screen televisions, wearable tech, and smart glasses. There were also many things it got wrong (faxes anyone?) or missed entirely. The biggest thing it missed was something huge: our ubiquitous smartphones. But then 1989 was the year Tim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web, so the film went out before the start of our current, always on-line world emerged. 

No one can accurately predict the future. But you can use strategic foresight - the practice of anticipatory thinking and leadership - to get an idea close enough to what is likely to happen. Developing plans in response to these different possible, probable futures will ensure that your organisation is amply agile and resilient; quickly able to adapt and succeed. 

Read more here http://linkis.com/huffingtonpost.com/ER8Zi