Think Global, Act Local
One of the things I love most about Ubiquity is our map point logo. It summarizes for me a core aspect of Ubiquity’s design. On the one hand we have a global community of engaged learners, taking courses, interacting with each other, and earning points, badges and credentials on our online platform. On the other hand we are implementing Impact projects on the ground in your local communities and organizations. Some of our students find other Ubiquity students living locally to work on an Impact project with. Others have a team who aren’t learning at Ubiquity (yet!) but who are part of the change project they are working on.
We encourage students to meet up with each other locally. Ultimately nothing can replace the human to human in-person connection. You can get together and agree to take a certain course at the same time, so you can discuss it with each other, help each other understand it, and work on your assignments together (at Ubiquity we encourage collaboration on all assignments). You could even bring a group together to work on a whole degree program.
As Ubiquity scales, we see many business opportunities opening up for our students. Imagine for example offering to host local peer-to-peer workshops around the different courses to help people translate their learning to their local context. Maybe you even invite in a local expert on the topic. Students could also start to create social clubs for Ubiquity students in their areas. And why not even sports teams? The first global university sports community with teams all over the world – imagine how good our global team could be, bringing together the best players from our whole student body? The Ubiquity World Cup – here we come!
Another opportunity that is presenting itself is for groups who run courses or trainings in-person on location to partner with Ubiquity. We can award points for those in-person learning experiences (assuming our quality criteria are met) and students can use those towards their Ubiquity credential. If there’s a course you want to take locally, you can always check with us if you can get Ubiquity points for it – the answer is quite likely to be “yes.” You then have the benefit of an in-person local learning community combined with your global changemaker family.
This is the vision I see in my mind’s eye. Ubiquity “campuses” all over the world where local learning events provide points for Ubiquity credentials, all connected up and empowered to change the world through our online global platform. That way we honor the importance of human connection to each other, place and culture while unleashing the power of connectedness that our technology has given us. Bring it on!
