Catching up to Yesterday: An argument for a practical application of creativity for inspiring change from a content-based course delivery to a 21st-century skills-based delivery

Abstract

This project is a creative vision for how college-level courses could be changed to deliver the most important skills students need in the 21st century—moving toward an essential employability skills-based delivery process while training vocational (content) skills. Technology is outpacing humans\u27 ability to adapt and adopt to it, making it increasingly difficult to keep pace with technological change. This has wide-ranging effects on each of us – productively, emotionally, and perhaps physically. Colleges are at the forefront of educating citizens about the working world to improve their productivity, incomes and their sense of intrinsic motivation. However, these same colleges are finding decreasing levels of self-motivation, increasing recidivism and attrition rates, and higher levels of anxiety, both with students and other stakeholders. While we cannot change the rate of technological change, we can change the rate at which we adapt and adopt to it, and this is the foundation of this project—to suggest a relatively simple adjustment within the classroom: We become more focused on employability skills and use content as the medium to teach these skills. I hope this project may inspire current and future faculty to reconsider their approach to teaching within the classroom and perhaps motivate some institutions to consider the process worthy of a deeper investigation into innovative course delivery