Urgent Optimism: How to Turn Foresight into Action
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Course Content
About Course
What You will learn
- Describe your preferred future
- Create artifacts from the future
- Build an action roadmap to change the future
- Organize a community to change the future
Course Curriculum / Content
Week 1: Preferred Futures
1.1 Survey about the future!
1.2 Welcome to this Course! Meet your professor, Jane McGonigal(video)
01:381.3 Urgent Optimism Skills Brief (Your
1.4 Introduce yourself!
Week 1: Introduction to Preferred Futures
1.5 What’s a preferred future?(video)
09:341.6 Tips on Preferred Futures(video)
04:471.7 Working Backwards from a Preferred Future(video)
06:221.8 Hello from the year 2050: An example of a preferred future
1.9 What’s your preferred future?
Week 1: Headlines from the Future
1.10 Good news from the future!(video)
04:181.11 News of the Future
1.12 TOOL: Headline the Future
1.13 Write a headline from the future!
Week 2: What’s an Image of the Future?
2.1 What’s an image of the future?(video)
10:092.2 Images of the Future (excerpt)
2.3 OPTIONAL: 7 Images of the Future from 1947
2.4 Images of the Future
Week 2: Today’s Images of the Future
2.5 Today’s Images of the Future(video)
06:502.6 A Golden Age for Dystopian Fiction
2.7 Measuring and Influencing Optimism About the Future(video)
05:462.8 +1 a Future Scenario for Yourself(video)
Week 2: More Examples of Images of the Future
2.9 3 Images of the Future, Year 2027(video)
04:092.10 What’s your reaction to these images of the year 2027?
2.11 OPTIONAL: Six Short Stories From the Future
Week 3: What are Artifacts from the Future?
3.1 What are artifacts from the future?(video)
07:403.2 More Examples of Artifacts from the Future(video)
04:153.3 Artifacts from the Future
Week 3: Tips for Making Artifacts
3.4 Tips for Thinking of Artifacts(video)
05:033.5 DEMO: How I Made These Artifacts!(video)
09:033.6 How to Make Artifacts from the Future
Week 3: Make Your Own Artifact
3.7 Make an Artifact from the Future
3.8 Made an artifact? Share it here!
Week 4: Introduction to Action Roadmaps
4.1 Introduction to Action Roadmaps(video)
01:224.2 How to Build an Action Roadmap (Part 1)(video)
03:544.3 How to Build an Action Roadmap (Part 2)(video)
08:24
Week 4: Build YOUR Action Roadmap
4.4 TOOL: Build an Action Roadmap
4.5 Build your Action Roadmap
Week 4: Climate Action Roadmap
4.6 Climate Action Map
4.7 Climate Action and YOU
Week 4: How to Help Groups and Communities Change the Future
4.8 Mini-Masterclass: Group and Community Futures (Part 1)(video)
12:564.9 Mini-Masterclass: Group and Community Futures (Part 2)(video)
04:274.10 SCENARIO: Sudan 2030(video)
04:024.11 OPTIONAL: Kenya Youth Scenarios in 2030
4.12 OPTIONAL: UNDP Foresight Manual: Empowered Futures for the 2030 Agenda
4.13 What community would you bring together to future?
Week 5: Pledge to Make the Future
5.1 Take the Pledge to Make the Future(video)
03:095.2 Pledge to Make the Future
5.3 How will you pledge to make the future?
Week 5: Congratulations! You’re ready to make the future!
5.4 What’s your biggest “a ha” moment from this course?
5.5 Congratulations on finishing the course!(video)
01:52
Student Ratings & Reviews
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
When you get better at thinking about the future, you get better at changing the future.
This course will help you take all of the foresight skills you’ve developed so far and apply them to making real positive change in your life, in your work, and in the world around you. You’ll learn how to create and share “preferred futures”, which are highly persuasive, compelling visions of the changes you want to make real. You’ll use your preferred future to identify obstacles, recruit allies, collect resources, and plan action to make your vision real. You’ll also practice making “artifacts” from the future, which are creative representations of how everyday life might be different in the future. Artifacts can inspire others to join you in your quest to make a preferred future real. Leading futurists from the Institute for the Future will share with you their favorite future artifacts – and walk you through the entire creative process it took to make them. Every action we take today changes the future. This course will help you identify and take the actions that make the BIGGEST, most strategic impacts on the most urgent challenges you and society face. Many thanks to the Enlight Foundation and the Enlight Collaborative, which provided a grant to support the creation of this course.
Student Ratings & Reviews
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