Apr 9
Tom Wambeke has published a blog post on the ITC-ILO staff blog in which he refers to the scenario planning workshop that was done in Berlin. He has uncovered some good extra resources about scenario thinking and planning as a methodology. Well worth taking a look.
Tom Wambeke shared Mapping Major Changes to Education and Training in 2025 with us:
The overall objective of the study is to contribute to the development of imaginative visions and scenarios of the future of learning in order to support priority setting for education, training and skilling policies.
12 clusters for the future of learning (© European Communities, 2010)
Thanks Tom!
During the workshop today, there was a question about Shell’s learning strategy.
Willem Manders wrote a piece on Shell’s Learning strategy for a CC-licensed ebook from the Masie Center. It is titled: Learning Strategy at Shell: 2 Parts, 3 Pathways & 3 Horizons. You can download it here.
Learning Strategies
Although this is not directly related to the scenario work, some people might find it interesting reading.
In 2009 KnowledgeWorks worked with the Institute for the Future to identify major drivers of change for the way that learning and schooling work. They published a beautiful PDF with the results and summarised them here.
2020 Forecast by KnowledgeWorks
They identified the following six drivers:
Nov 29
Shell did its first scenario exercise in 1972. It has published a guide that shows how they use scenarios to guide their thinking. You can download the guide here or see it in its context on the Shell website.
Below some quotes from the publication:
Exploring the assumptions we currently hold—individually and collectively — about the future can equip us to act more effectively in the present.
Scenario building encourages the involvement of a wide range of views, rather than seeking a single answer, so it is a process designed to accommodate multiple values and opinions. It allows people to explore their ideas about the future context without feeling threatened by the need to fix an immediate decision.
The aim of building scenarios is not to try to create consensus, but to recognise and actively involve different points of view.
Those embarking on a scenario-building process must be prepared to redraw, or at least thoroughly review, their mental maps of the world, questioning their assumptions and challenging comfortable perceptions. However willing individuals are to follow this route, it can leave people feeling untethered and insecure.
Scenarios are intended to describe a context. They are not meant to instruct their users on how to respond to different circumstances, but to provide sufficient information for the recipients to imagine being in a particular future, and to think about how they might behave in it.
Scenarios allow [people] to keep different possibilities in mind without being overtaken by the overwhelming nature of uncertainty
When we share scenarios with others, we often learn a great deal from others’ responses. In most instances, feedback from audiences helps us to understand how others see the world: What do they find unrealistic? What is missing? What is not explained or seen as incorrect? What important questions are left unanswered?
Learning Scenarios 