Learning 101

All right, class, pay attention! Today's lesson is all about learning -- the single most important tool for people, teams, and companies that want to get fast and stay fast in the new economy. Today, we're going to learn how learning is changing,how you can promote learning, and how you can become a better learner.

And we're going to have some important guest teachers: 16 of the most experienced leaders in the fields of higher education, organizational learning, corporate education, and Web-based learning. So open your notebook (or your notebook computer), and get ready to take notes. When it's all over, there will be a quiz -- in your workplace!

Bill Wiggenhorn

Senior VP of training and education
Motorola Inc.
President
Motorola University
Schaumburg, Illinois

Despite the recent explosion of educational and training alliances in learning, it's not a given that they will all work. Managing those partnerships, especially the global ones, demands a complex set of skills. For one thing, many alliances aren't the kind that you would typically expect to find.

For example, how do you get a group that includes Columbia, Kellogg, and MIT not only to form content alliances with technical providers but also to work with venture capitalists who can provide distribution and administrative channels? Other examples include the Cisco Networking Academies, in which students get hands-on skills training while they attend high school or college. And of course there's Motorola University's telecommunications academies, which, in alliance with educational providers in Hyderabad, India and Johannesburg, South Africa, combine skills-based training with academic training.

The biggest challenge that all of these alliances face is managing the interaction between the content expert, the packaging expert, and the distributor. It requires an administrative system that can work worldwide for both students and managers. The point is to find a team that can bring together a variety of disciplines and to aim that team toward a common goal.

Bill Wiggenhorn (bill.wiggenhorn@motorola.com) has presided over Motorola University since it was founded in 1981. As Motorola's global education-service provider, MU designs and delivers a wide range of products and services to Motorola, as well as to the company's suppliers and customers. Since 1990, MU has partnered with universities around the world: Recently, it established the Motorola University College of Telecommunications at the Indian Institute of Information Technology, in Hyderabad, India.

Leon Botstein

President
Bard College
Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

In the Internet era, when facts are literally at one's fingertips, marshaling information is no longer enough to constitute learning. Professors aren't as impressed by a student who presents a slew of facts in a paper as they might have been when those facts represented long hours spent in a library reference room. Today, it's what you make of those facts that's impressive.

And that's why, contrary to what today's focus on high technology might imply, the humanities are more relevant than ever. Subjects like philosophy, history, and literature teach you how to interpret information and how to argue a point of view. That kind of sophisticated learning is a requirement for innovation and for entrepreneurship. Not only the written arts but also music and the visual arts will become increasingly important. Music, for example, teaches valuable lessons about time and space. Similarly, visual thinking is critical to using computers and to manipulating images across multiple dimensions.

If we really want a society that can "think different" -- a goal that the high-tech world seems to applaud -- then technology will not be the death knell of the humanities. Instead, humanities education will attract more attention. Original ideas come from reassembling knowledge in new ways. But you need to have that knowledge in your mind before you can reassemble it.

Leon Botstein (president@bard.edu) has been president of Bard College for the past 25 years. He also served as music director, conductor, and guest conductor in symphony orchestras worldwide. His books include Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture (Doubleday, 1997). Bard College is a private liberal-arts college that offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.