Designing new enabling environments can be framed as designing a University++

Universities have historically been effective examples of an Enabling environment (along some axes, and with some significant limitations):

• The best ones are centered around professors’ research, rather than instruction (Powerful enabling environments usually arise as a byproduct of projects pursuing their own intrinsically meaningful purposes; Powerful enabling environments focus on expert use)
• Students at the best universities actually advance their field, rather than just learning facts. (Enabling environments focus on doing what’s enabled)
• Universities use rituals, culture, structured timelines, titles, and physical space to (weakly) create an Enacted experience, demonstrating Enacted experiences can bootstrap active participation in enabling environments.

Contemporary enabling environments like Y Combinator have already replaced elements of the university. It’s interesting to consider designing novel enabling environments with this purpose specifically in mind; e.g.:

• to expand the amount of original research participants (including expert participants) can do
• to do a better job than the university at connecting to meaning (Transcendental narrative; Enabling environments’ activities directly serve an intrinsically meaningful purpose)
• to more effectively bootstrap novices into doing (Novices in enabling environments often can’t do what’s enabled)
• to scale more effectively (Enacted experiences have incredible potential as a mass medium)

MOOCs were a failed attempt in this direction. A related useful framing, then, is “What do MOOCs really want to be?”

See also The Primer++ is embedded in a field, bootstrapping participation through enacted experience

References

https://github.com/mnielsen/tpft/blob/master/big_picture.md