After my speech on this topic at Toastmasters area contest, I was thinking in terms of how to take this concept or vision to the next level. COL is the thread that can weave many learning concepts together. COL is the underlying stream that flows across terrains of all kinds supporting each and every type of life. COL is the air that we have been breathing for centuries and will breath in future in spite of how the world around changes.
If so, how can we embrace this COL? How about embracing in the simplest form? How about recognizing a course or a degree that is designed on the basis of COL concepts? How about a COL approved course in learning and education to start with?
A COL approved course will embed ABCD quadrants of COL. The course contents will be structured to promote a healthier dose of research (A-quadrant – acquire and apply), hands-on or workshop set up (D-quadrant – do and discover), collaboration platform of any kind (C-quadrant – connect and collaborate) and any type self-measurement tools (B-quadrant – benchmark and begin).
Most of the courses in science will readily qualify because of the nature of research and laboratory set ups that inherently come along with such types of courses. A projet to follow-up on connecting the students to do the lab work and designing a self-assessment tools to help them measure the findings against the expected and a facility to help them to explain the deviations from the expected will complete the COL approval process.
We can extend this COL approval process to include COL approved schools, universities, organizations and even the government at both state and federal levels. As long as the processes that are followed comply to COL ABCD quadrant requirements.
It is as simple as that. However, these institutions need a lot of support to help them design their processes to become COL approved. Once the concept is understood, it is not difficult to analyze the current processes to find the gap and re-orient or restructure the processes to enable COL approval.