Simulation Skills: This is Your Brain on the Future
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Course Content
About Course
What You will learn
- This Specialization will introduce you to the practice of futures thinking, as developed and applied for the past 50 years by the Institute for the Future, a Silicon-Valley-based research and learning group founded in 1968.
- You’ll master essential foresight techniques. You’ll meet leading professional futurists. And you’ll choose one or more future topics you want to investigate with your new foresight skills. The Futures Thinking specialization is for anyone who wants to spot opportunities for innovation and invention faster.
- You can gain the skills and confidence to help YOU become someone who makes the future, instead of letting the future happen to you. You'll develop a more future-oriented mindset to make positive changes in your own life, as you start to see new possibilities more clearly and craft the personal future you want.
- This specialization is based on the “How to Think Like a Futurist” workshops taught by Jane McGonigal, PhD for Stanford University Continuing Studies. By taking this specialization, you'll have access to key lessons and tools from the Institute for the Future’s professional “Foresight Training” certification program.
Course Curriculum / Content
Week 1: Introduction to Mental Simulation
1.1 Welcome to the course-survey about the future!
1.2 Welcome to the course! Meet your professor Jane McGonigal(video)
02:481.3 Introduce yourself!
1.4 Simulation Skills Brief: Your
1.5 What is Mental Simulation?
1.6 What can’t be different in the future?(video)
10:121.7 What CAN’T be different in the future?
Week 1: Three Simulation Techniques (How to Unstick Your Mind)
1.8 Technique #1: Predict the Past(video)
03:591.9 Technique #2: Remember the Future(video)
06:511.10 Technique #3: Hard Empathy(video)
06:231.11 Future-Proof Your Brain
1.12 Unstick your Mind
Week 1: Neurological Pathways of Simulation
1.13 Neurological Pathways of Simulation(video)
09:341.14 Neurological Pathways of Simulation
1.15 How to Fill in the Blanks of Your Brain
1.16 “Specificity training” practice
Week 2: First-Person Futures
2.1 Your Future Self is a Stranger(video)
09:032.2 Why Your Future Self is a Stranger
2.3 Why the brain thinks differently about your future self
Week 2: How to Use First-Person Futures
2.4 Thinking in Facts versus Thinking in First Person(video)
06:362.5 Let’s try some first person futures!(video)
06:092.6 First-Person Future: Blockchain voting
Week 2: What will YOU do with the Internet of Things?
2.7 Welcome to the Internet of Things
2.8 Internet of Things
Week 2: First-Person Creativity
2.9 First Person Creativity(video)
07:152.10 First Person Creativity: The Brick Challenge
2.11 The Superstruct Game(video)
10:482.12 Superstruct Scenario
2.13 Updates to this Lesson! (Added July 2022)
2.14 2022 Update! Did the simulation you just learned about accurately predict the real pandemic?(video)
15:252.15 Excerpt from Jane McGonigal’s IMAGINABLE: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things That Seem Impossible Today
2.16 First-Person Future: Extreme Heat Wave
Week 3: Alternative Futures
3.1 100 Ways Anything Could Be Different(video)
06:243.2 SCENARIO: The Future of Marriage(video)
04:293.3 The Future of Marriage Project (How We Did It)
3.4 Future of Marriage
Week 3: The Alternative Futures Tool
3.5 Introduction to Alternative Futures(video)
07:263.6 How to Envision Alternative Future (Part 1)(video)
05:253.7 How to Envision Alternative Futures (Part 2)(video)
14:153.8 TOOL: Envision Alternative Futures
3.9 Envision Alternative Futures
Week 3: Alternative Futures for Caregiving
3.10 Alternative Futures for Caregiving in 2031(video)
09:223.11 Future of Caregiving in 2031
3.12 Future of Caregiving
Week 4: Advanced Simulation Topics
4.1 Introduction to Advanced Simulation Topics(video)
00:464.2 The Simtainer(video)
07:364.3 Future of Video Simulation
4.4 Future of Touch Simulation (Haptics)
4.5 New Kinds of Simulation
Week 4: Simulating Better Worlds with Afrofuturism
4.6 What is Afrofuturism?(video)
03:374.7 Black to the Future (Afrofuturism)
4.8 Afrofuturism
Week 4: Full Body Simulation
4.9 Experiential Futures Show and Tell
4.10 Full Body Simulation Part 1(video)
12:454.11 Full Body Simulation Part 2(video)
07:434.12 Future of Newport, Year 2061
4.13 Where would you create a full-body experience of the future?
Week 4: Congratulations! You’re Ready to Simulate the Future
4.14 What’s your biggest “a ha” moment from this course?
4.15 Congratulations on finishing this course!(video)
01:11
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Requirements
- Require a decent Internet Speed
- Instructions are in English
- Self Paced study curriculum
- Can be Displayed on Mobile
Target Audience
- Startup Founders
- Executives
- Students
- Anyone Curious About the Future
Material Includes
- Shareable Certificates
- Self-Paced Learning Option
- Course Videos & Readings
- Practice Quizzes
Description
Do you want to learn how to simulate the future more creatively and more effectively? This course is for you.
Humans are the only living creatures with the ability to think about and make plans for the long- term future. Even so, our brains don’t always make it easy. Over the past decade, scientists have discovered a number of neurological “road blocks” to effective futures thinking. These glitches in the brain make it harder for us to accurately predict how we’ll feel and what we’re likely to do, when a particular future arrives. They lead us to make faulty assumptions about which futures are likely or unlikely to happen. And they convince us we have less power to shape and influence the future than we actually do – leaving us stuck in the present. In this course, you’ll learn how to overcome these obstacles so you can think about the future more strategically and creatively. You’ll practice simulation techniques for “unsticking” the mind when it comes to seeing what’s possible in the future and accepting how things could be different. You’ll also learn how to lead others through “first-person future” simulations, which have been shown in scientific studies to improve strategy and increase motivation and hope for the future. Along the way, leading futurists from the Institute from the Future will share some of their most challenging forecasts to help you stretch your imagination and improve your simulation skills. This course will ensure that you can put all of your new forecasting skills to the best possible use, by helping you nudge your brain toward more effective ways of simulating and preparing for the future. Many thanks to the Enlight Foundation and the Enlight Collaborative, which provided a grant to support the creation of this course.
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