Some time ago I started working on the differences between Universities
and Learning Organisations. I started with a list of those differences and
then began working on each of those differences.
It isn't an in-depth work (that wasn't my intention) but I thought it
might be useful for some. Besides, I would love to hear your opinion.
The list of differences can be found at
http://www.kmol.online.pt/especial/univlo/index_e.html. Each line of the
table will soon be clickable. For the moment only the two with an * are
available.
Here is a short text about the trust aspect, one of the big differences
between Universities and LOs.
"One of the main characteristics of a learning organisation is the
information sharing between all members of staff. For this to happen there
must be trust, sharing spirit, and collaboration spirit.
This is another version of the egg and chicken problem. What came first?:
the trust or the information sharing environment? On one side it is
necessary to trust people before sharing with them. On the other side,
sharing gives proof of a trustworthy person. Besides, sharing environments
improve individuals' self-confidence. None of these aspects comes alone
and all seem to prove the importance of trust: both trust on each other
and confidence on one self.
Learning organisations promote trust between individuals. In order to do
that, they value their ideas, treat people equally, create public
discussion areas, show each person's importance, reward collective work,
etc..
However, a set of thoughts and behaviours is so embedded on the academic
culture that they prevent the creation of trust:
- the teacher knows more than the student: the student doesn't feel free
to externalise his ideas and doesn't dare to challenge the teacher. What
does he know? Besides, and if the student decides to break this
conventional barriers, what will the teacher think of herself having a
student questioning her knowledge? This is, obviously, something that
inhibits self-confidence;
- the teacher has more power than the student: the student goes to the
university to get a degree and has to be assessed. The teacher is
responsible for this. It is better not to contradict the teacher not to be
penalised on the assessment;
- students have to be better than their peers: traditionally
organisations prefer graduates with better grades (although this is slowly
changing). Getting a goodjob is the goal of every student. The market is
tough. The number of graduates is high. The competition rises. Students
know they have to get good grades and, preferably, better than their
peers'. This, together with the natural human competitiveness, hinders
collaboration and trust;
- teachers want to be better than their peers: teachers are not assessed
but want to be better than their colleagues for reasons that go from pure
competitiveness to get more financing to their projects. Meanwhile, they
forget that trusting each other they could create synergies able to take
them higher.
A cultural change is needed. It is necessary to rethink the evaluation
system and show the marketplace that a graduate cannot be labelled just by
his grades. This would be a very important step towards trust on academic
environments."
Make sure you send me your feedback.
Best regards,
Ana Neves
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portal KMOL
Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning
URL: http://www.kmol.online.pt
E-mail: editor@kmol.online.pt
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--Portal KMOL <editor@kmol.online.pt>
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