One of the most amazing discoveries to come out of Books@Work is the power of participant life experience. Unlike a traditional classroom-based seminar, in which the professor and text have something to teach the students, the power of our model is that it fosters the unique collision of three important elements: professor expertise, text and participant experience.
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In response to an article about how CEOs can deepen their perspectives by reading philosophy, we argue that a class of “Philosopher Kings” is not enough. Executives who are serious about thinking deeply and learning from philosophical texts can broaden their outlook — and potentially their results — by including the sentries at the table.
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What if the institution of higher education itself – rather than the students who shame it to act – becomes a powerful voice for social change? We consider this question on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of university leaders at the Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in El Salvador.
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Professional development opportunities are big business. An industry trade organization reports that American corporations spent over $160 billion on workforce training and development in 2012, an average expenditure of over $1000 per employee. Yet how often do those professional development dollars flow to the school bus driver, the warehouse worker, or the shop floor employee of a food services company? Rarely.
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What really happens when employees participate in Books@Work? While participants tell us that getting to know their colleagues and sharing perspectives is the number one reason they enjoy the program, what exactly does this collective reflection have to do with work? New research suggests that not only is collective reflection relevant, it just might make your employees more productive!
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At Books@Work, we know that our participants are committed to learning and personal growth. This program exists to encourage and support individuals and communities as they engage with reading, conversation, and collaboration. Without the active engagement of our participants, Books@Work would not be possible.
We are pleased to announce the Books@Work Badge, a digital representation of that journey. Using Mozilla’s Open Badge system, the Books@Work Badge is both a testimony to participant learning as well as a credential that individuals can take with them as they move forward in their careers and communities.
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We have a societal narrative that says that busy, working people have no interest in high quality literature, or in challenging themselves to explore complex texts. This narrative permeates the current national dialogue on education as a means to get a job rather than learning to become a better learner (and a better worker). It fuels the humanities “crisis” about which we read so much. Underlying these messages is the insidious belief that the liberal arts – literature, the arts, history and culture, the natural and the social sciences – belong not to the working classes but somehow to the leisure class and the leisure class alone, as if critical thinking, communication, intellectual debate and skills of analysis, resilience and reinvention should be rationed or parceled out to a narrow few.
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As I have read these early blog posts from Books@Work, the notion of lifelong learning comes to mind. It’s a phrase that is used in so many different ways that it has lost any genuine shared meaning for those interested in learning outcomes for adults of all ages. This is particularly true for learning in the workplace, which sometimes uses lofty language about learning, but often is targeted at imparting skills that will contribute directly to the bottom line. Felix, in an earlier blog post, suggested that Books@Work has hit on an approach that serves the individual’s needs and desires for personal growth and learning AND the needs of the workplace for engaged and competent employees.
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A few years ago, my wife, Ann Kowal Smith, facilitated an education initiative in Northeast Ohio. She shared with me many an idea. One night she came home quite excited. She had observed that everybody focuses on increasing college attainment rates and on reducing high school dropout rates, but nobody thinks about the rest of the adult population – the nearly 60% of American adults who have a high school degree (and even some college) but no BA. They most likely have kids and a job and a full slate of responsibilities. That many of them may find the time and the money to go back to college is a pipe dream. By creatively engaging this group to become life-long learners and critical thinkers who grow personally and professionally, might we have an opportunity to help shape and nurture the learning environment for their children and their communities?
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In his most recent Topics letter – a periodic communication to his followers using “old world” means: print and snail mail – President Thomas V. Chema of Hiram College shared his excitement about the progress of Books@Work: “Like many good ideas, this is a simple one. But it’s one I believe can grow into a national opportunity.”
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