Reinventing city starts with new ways of learning

COVID-19 is amplifying a fundamental change that has occurred in cities in recent decades. For millenniums, a city’s proximity to natural resources defined its prosperity.

Today, prosperity is defined by a city’s people and depends on the capacity of a population to embrace uncertainty and adapt to new roles. Knowledge and skills must transcend industries and professions.

If there is a defining competency in 2020, it is adaptability. Adaptable people can adjust to the world today. It can be reactive, learning to live with the restrictions of a pandemic. It can also be proactive and intentional; anticipating change and responding in advance.

We imagine a city of people who view disruption as opportunity, with a population whose skills continuously evolve. We imagine a Calgary that attracts investment and talent because it is known as a city that learns its way forward.

Embracing the disruption and adapting to new opportunities is at the heart of the economic strategy, Calgary in the New Economy, that was created by the community and approved by council in 2018.

At the root of adaptation is learning. Calgary must become a city that can learn faster and better. How do we make that transformation? We start by changing the learning system.

How we choose to learn will define Calgary’s future social and economic prosperity. We are fortunate to be building from a position of strength. Alberta has one of the leading traditional education systems in the world.

Yet the ability for today’s learning system to transform to meet emerging demands is widely debated. Education is woven through society, not just in K-12 and accredited educational institutes, but also in workplaces, professional associations, business ecosystems and in the hands of individual learners. There is enormous potential to effect wider change by evolving our learning system.

To start re-envisioning our learning system and embrace the concept of lifelong learning, a broad range of community partners, facilitated by Calgary Economic Development, established the Learningcity Project to explore how a citywide learning system could redefine the future. To kick-start discussion, we developed two reports, proposing a redefinition of our learning system based on five principles:

1. Transition to an open learning system: To become a Learningcity, Calgary must transition from the traditional closed learning system — defined by isolated learning experiences from kindergarten to post-secondary to professional development — to an open, lifelong personalized learning system for continuous development.

2. Transition to purpose-based learning: Calgary needs a learning system that prioritizes empowerment and autonomy. The learner’s route through the learning system becomes a personalized climbing wall instead of a predictable ladder. To develop adaptable people, so the system itself must be adaptable.

3. Commit to universal experiential learning: An empowered learner learns through a variety of media and experiences. Today, many learning experiences are not hands-on. We recommend Calgary become the first city in North America to adopt a universal experiential learning system incorporating a minimum level of experiential learning for undergraduates.

4. Develop enabling competencies: An individual who has a strong foundation of enabling competencies (such as communication or citizenship) will be more adaptive than someone whose learning is anchored in domain-specific competencies (such as welding or cooking). We propose adopting a unified community competency model that contributes to a person’s ability to adapt.

5. Invest in community-level structural capital: An efficient, citywide open learning system requires co-ordination between many stakeholders. All partners will need to ensure processes to advance collaboration and shared learning.

Transitioning to a world-leading learning system based on these five principles won’t be easy. The community needs leadership. To move forward, we are establishing a community Learning Task Force to define a new learning model and plan within 12 months.

For a city standing on a precipice, it is time to embrace it as an opportunity and lead.

David J. Finch, associate director, Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Mount Royal University; Mary Moran, president and CEO, Calgary Economic Development; Jason Ribeiro, director of strategy, CED; Janet Lane, director, Human Capital Centre, Canada West Foundation.