Gov 3.0 and The GovLab Academy – Providing Opportunities for All Kinds of Learners

At the GovLab at NYU, we’re about to begin an exciting new venture in teaching and learning for people who are committed to finding solutions to public problems. Our Gov 3.0 program, which GovLab director Beth Noveck described in a recent post, will launch on January 29, 2014 at 5:00PM EST.

We were thrilled to receive over 200 applications to Gov 3.0 from people around the world including the US, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Japan, Afghanistan, United Kingdom, Australia, Kenya, New Zealand, and Turkey. We are inspired and humbled by the ideas we heard from community leaders, public officials, students and citizens. Applicants to Gov 3.0 are thinking big: They’ve signed up to take on projects like improving citizen engagement, helping the formerly incarcerated re-integrate into society, improving access to quality education with digital tools, and developing new approaches to environmental sustainability through urban farming.

Having served as a Reynolds Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship at NYU and worked with Ashoka, a global network of social entrepreneurs, to identify changemakers around the world, I know first hand the value of project based, mentored learning for effecting change. The problem is that too few program focus on creating policy entrepreneurs, not just social entrepreneurs, who also know how to leverage the power of institutions and tools of law and policy combined with technology to bring about systems change.

The 14-week mentoring and learning program that will endeavor to help them do all this is unique in many ways. It’s designed to be taught both in person and online in real time. It draws on the expertise of students in a skill-sharing approach that treats everyone as a potential mentor to others. And while it is designed as a sequential curriculum, it also organizes information and exercises in a way that allows maximum flexibility for students who want to learn in their own way, at their own pace, about the subjects that are most important to them.

Bundled and Unbundled Content

The full Gov 3.0 program will be offered in-person to graduate students across NYU and to a community of  select online learners who want to learn how to apply evolving technology to design and implement effective solutions to public interest challenges. The program “bundles” knowledge in a way organized by expert instructors to jumpstart learning in current approaches to smarter governance. Learners will also gain access to network of mentors with subject matter expertise to coach them; develop presentation, innovation and prototyping skills by building their own projects; and connect with a community of peers dedicated to solving public problem.
The Gov 3.0 program syllabus pulls together materials directly from www.thegovlabacademy.org, our online platform that offers an “unbundled”, free multi-disciplinary platform with topics, modules and instructors on innovation in governance for independent learners to study at their own pace. The GovLab Academy currently has two themes – Data and Its Uses For Governance and Solving Public Problems with Crowdsourcing. Each theme is further broken down into subtopics such as open data, big data and crowdsourcing expertise. Each subtopic is complete with reading lists, podcasts, videos, activities, and tools designed to help learners think creatively and concretely about the issues they care about most.

To build more content areas in the future, we actively collaborate with “Channel Partners”, who have deep subject matter expertise. Channel partners provide:

·      A theme title and several topics that fit within the topic

·      Curated sets of readings, videos, infographics, toolkits and podcasts for each topic area

·      Ideas for short courses and other learning activities

·      Mentorship to learners

Forthcoming modules with our channel partners include modules on social and behavioral insights, performance management for governance, open contracting and human centered design.

Here are five concrete ways to stay involved and build your own Gov 3.0 journey:

1. Utilize the resources on the unbundled online platform as an a la carte learner and learn at your own pace. The platform is designed for self-driven learners who want to explore topics at their own pace.

2. Download and listen to the recording of the Gov 3.0 program. We’ll be uploading the recorded  content for public access as we move along in the program.

3. Develop a reading group and use the syllabus to guide your learning. We’ll be sharing discussion questions and tweeting ideas openly at #gov30.

4. Help contribute other resources to the GovLab Wiki.

5. Become a channel partner and help curate a learning module on your / your organizations’ subject areas of expertise. Submit your ideas here.

Also, tell us what you need and what you’re interested in learning by submitting this quick survey.
Coming Soon
Gov 3.0 is one part of a larger initiative of The GovLab Academy to learn, test and refine ways we can train the next generation of public problem solvers. Our team at The GovLab Academy is dedicated to developing new approaches and innovations to train the next generation of game changers with the skillsets and mindset to solve public problems We’re interested in researching and developing models for innovative approaches to peer-to-peer training, collaborative problem solving and mentored learning.

In June 2014, The GovLab Academy will introduce The GovLab Academy Fellowship, an application-based opportunity to support graduates of the Gov 3.0 program to carry their ideas through to completion.The GovLab Academy Fellowship is an opportunity for those whose project proposals in the Gov 3.0. Program show exceptional promise for implementation. The purpose is to build a network of civic-minded people who are passionate about using their skills and new technologies and teaching one another to create measurably positive impacts in communities.

We want your feedback!
As we build out The GovLab Academy, we are eager to hear from you and what you’re interested in learning! Please share your feedback with me here or email me directly at [email protected].  As the The GovLab Academy program coordinator, I am eager to learn know what you think and how we can help. Let us know what additional resources you’d like to see and what you would like to learn in the future. And stay tuned for more updates on our blog!