Inside Higher Ed has featured the Futures Initiative and Cathy Davidson’s vision for the work that will be done by our group within CUNY. The article, “Big Idea, Tall Order” by Colleen Flaherty, speaks to the spirit of the Futures Initiative.

Going forward, [Davidson] hopes that the Futures Initiative will be able to explore and model a variety of big ideas about teaching and learning.

One of those ideas is that technology alone is not a panacea for what ails higher education. Educators needs to think “with, through and about” 21st-century interactive and connective technologies, just as educational reformers did during the Industrial age, Davidson said. But “this is not a top-down imposition of technology or massive online courses.” Rather, educators must strive to create “peer-driven, interdisciplinary, interactive, project- and problem-based new modes of learning, with appropriate new modes of assessment that match our world” — and the multitude of ways it’s been changed by the internet.

Read the full article here.