CANIS Learning Systems

Canis Learning Systems exists to explore conversations about new instructional strategies.

In an age when knowledge is expanding exponentially, our current instructional models are hopelessly outdated. The educational systems and approaches that have worked for generations have been made obsolete by the Internet and instantaneous communication.

Yet the fundamental approach to education remains unchanged. We have yet to see effective reform of organized education, and most likely never will.

Organized education is tied at bedrock to classrooms (real or virtual), linear curriculum models (learn this first, then learn that), expertism (the teacher knows all) and, worst, control. In an era marked by time and space independence, specialization, and innovation, our models of “school” are structurally flawed.

The effort to “reform” education is noble but doomed. Reforming our model of education around better versions of “school” is like trying to create faster passenger trains as a jet airliner flies overhead. Make the train as fast as you like, it will never be a jet.

Among the greatest challenges of our time: Creating the metaphorical jet that radically transforms the entire nature of education. That requires a new sort of conversation, a conversation about new instructional strategies.

We have staked out several areas in which to hold this conversation. Please feel free to add your own:

Accelerating Learning
We simply have to develop systems that help people learn faster. Especially in areas of science and technology, the explosion of new knowledge overwhelms our creaky instructional design and delivery processes.

Instructional design is based on the flawed premise that learners must be “taught.” Or, in some cases, that learners might “discover” knowledge if nudged in the right directions.

Accelerating learning requires that we remove basic assumptions in the instructional model. We work on solutions that move those assumptions.

Specialization

Along with acceleration, the Learning Age is a sweeping Age of Specialization. (Copywriter Bob Bly has famously said “We are a society of specialists.”)

Educators widely disdain this notion, sniffing that an “educated person” must study widely and see the “broader picture.” While we are all in favor of strategic thinking, the forces of human nature push specialization further and further into the pipeline.

It is the natural order of things: division of labor and returns to productivity demand it. We must invent ways to help people create and exploit highly specialized niches within their broader fields and professions.

Reshaping Formal Education

Formal education is no longer about learning. It is about credentials and conformity. At the level of higher education, it is about perseverance and surviving the system.

For the near future, formal education will continue to be important. We do believe, long term, more and more students will drop out, and for good reason. For the time being, formal diplomas and degrees remain relevant indicators of accomplishment (if totally useless as indicators of knowledge).

Therefore, we should find ways to help people finish their educations in the least amount of time, and at the least possible cost. We relish the opportunity to work on these solutions.

Welcome to the conversation about new instructional strategies.