3 25 2010 EduRadicals Roger Schank
3 25 2010 EduRadicals Roger Schank
3 25 2010 EduRadicals Roger Schank
Roger Schank
Chairman, Socratic Arts Corp
Chairman, Engines for Education
Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University
Once upon a time there was
great kingdom that was under
constant threat from dragons…
The Dragons Were Fierce
The
Dragons
were a
threat to
children
The King asked scholars from
the best universities to form a
curriculum committee to
design a curriculum to train
dragon slayers
The committee consisted of…
arts faculty from Columbia
science faculty from Princeton
business faculty from Stanford
medical faculty from Johns Hopkins
law faculty from Harvard
engineering faculty from MIT
humanities faculty from Yale
They all had some important
questions to contribute
Arts: what do we know about how we have traditionally
depicted dragons?
Science: what do we know about its habitat and mating rituals?
Business: Is there a sustainable business in dragon hunting?
Medical: What is the physiology of the dragon?
Law: Do dragons have rights? Might there be lawsuits?
Engineering: Will we need to build roads and bridges or
design new weapons?
Humanities: How is dragonese related to other known
languages?
The New Curriculum
MCDB 060a, Topics in Reproductive Biology of Dragons
ENGL 342b, Mythology and Community in Eighteenth-Century Dragon\
Literature.
ENAS 445a, Environmental Risk Assessment
ENAS 194b, Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations with Applications.
HIST 234b, Epidemics and Society in the West caused by Dragons since 1600.
PHYS 461b, Relativity, Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Dragons.
PHIL 427b, Vagueness and the Sorites Paradox.
PSYC 149b, Dragon Communication and Human Language.
PSYC 302b, How the Dragon’s Brain Works.
Second Year
Dragon Rights Dragons and
Workshop Globalization
Intro to Negotiations Cost Benefit Analysis of
Business Ethics and Slaying Dragons
Corporate
Responsibility in Mathematical Modeling
Dragon Hunting and Its Application in
Contagious: How Financing Dragon
Dragon-Related Expeditions
Products, Ideas and Urban Public Policy and
Behaviors Can Catch Private Economic
On Development
Two Years Later:
there were 25 new
graduates (most with honors)
--John Adams
Plato
According to my view, any one
who would be good at anything
must practice that thing from his
youth upwards, for example, he
who is to be a good builder,
should play at building children's
houses; he who is to be a good
husbandman, at tilling the
ground; and those who have the
care of their education should
provide them when young with
mimic tools.
It’s been like this for a while now
Health Sciences
Computer Programming
Business
Communications
4 of 100 (I hope)
Online experiential
web-mentored MBA at
LaSalle BES (Barcelona)
Purpose:
To provide a more practical education than a traditional
MBA, teaching skills really used in business
Geared toward those aiming to work:
In a family business
In an entry level job in a large corporation
As an entrepreneur
Courses (Stories) in LaSalle
MBA-Alternative Program
Students learn how to MODEL two business processes in order to solve business
problems. The processes are financial analysis and financial planning. They do this
in a STEP-BY-STEP process, in order to create a conscious model in their
minds. Within the model they need to deal with CAUSATION by examining
how different past decisions are causing current financial problems. Putting the
causes together and looking at the complex interrelationships between causes and
effects enable them to DIAGNOSE the current situation, which they must
DESCRIBE in an understandable way for a non-financial expert. Then,
considering what the company plans to do in the future and using the financial
planning process they PREDICT the financial consequences of the plan. Finally
they correct the PLAN to have the right outcomes and PREDICT what they
think would be a good final solution to the problem. They practice
TEAMWORK and must INFLUENCE OTHERS and NEGOTIATE with
team members.
They also practice how to use tools such as excel sheets and learn the STEP-By
STEP processes contained in them.
Going Online
Providing an experience
Enabling failure
A discussion of that experience.
Helping students gradually acquire a case base
Progressing to more complex cases, and more
nuanced and sophisticated discussions
“Instead of creating
dragon scholars
shouldn’t we focus
on producing
dragon slayers?”