Scenario Planning
Further Resources
We have an infoKit on Scenario Planning available as part of our 'Tools and Techniques' range.
Scenarios are stories of alternative futures and are an excellent method of helping you decide what type of spaces you require for the many different types of teaching and learning activities that take place within your institution, and to meet the needs of your learners and staff. You need to use your imagination here otherwise your new spaces will look and operate just like your old spaces - 'Some people think that the future is just like the past - but bent a little!' Peter Day37. It is impossible to predict the future, but based upon what we know today, scenarios can help paint plausible possibilities for the future.
The diagram below is based upon the Edinburgh Scenarios - four global perspectives that could inform the future of e-learning which were developed by an international panel. You can use these scenarios to inform the learning space scenarios for your institution.
The JISC CETIS support site gives guidance on developing scenarios in Unified Modelling Language. In learning space design, we can use scenarios to describe teaching and learning situations. One important aspect that is carried over to their use here is that the story is told from different viewpoints.
The scenario description is usually only a few paragraphs with the stakeholders clearly identified. Diagrams are frequently included to aid the understanding by a third party. The scenario is further developed giving more detail for each stakeholder perspective. We have provided a worked example for a project with group and individual components.
To be most effective we need to use the scenario planning approach to question our basic assumptions about what constitutes a learning space. Futurelab looks at some alternative visions for schools in its publication 'What if ...re-imagining learning spaces' and comes up with four scenarios:
- No physical school at all. Learners are based at home, learning online from each other and from experts who can be based anywhere in the world. Major investment in buildings is unnecessary and tutors monitor and support vast numbers of learners, each of whom could be following a highly personalised curriculum.
- The 'dissolved' secondary school operates like a university, with faculty centres spread across the town, each concentrating on a specific area of expertise such as engineering, media or science. This model is a shared resource for the whole community, with learners being of any age, and offers the potential for greater flexibility and a strong emphasis on lifelong learning.
- The 'extended' school is so all-embracing that it is the community. Life is spent on campus and learning can take place wherever and whenever it is needed, rather than following a traditional timetable. It offers almost infinite flexibility but in the extreme could create a 'smothering totality'.
- The 'fortress' school. Here, security is all, and learners are 'protected' from society behind high walls, watched by security cameras and focusing at all times on the business of formal learning until they are ready to be re-introduced to the dangers of society. Inside the school, however, learners have few distractions and are able to engage closely with learning.
For each scenario, examples exist that exemplify at least some part of the philosophy. These scenarios exemplify the diversity of potential educational futures - they offer different educational visions (individualised, community-based, vocational), diverse uses of digital technologies (connection, surveillance, delivery), diverse learning practices (situated, collaborative, behavioural). None of them are necessarily 'right' but they offer conceptual tools for exploring how to 'reinvent' schooling to meet the needs, desires and aspirations of diverse communities.
What kinds of 'What if ...' questions may be pertinent to the kinds of learners and communities you work with?
