Y-Tools: Resources for Sowing Intellectual Capital

The Sower by Robert Parke Harrison

The Sower by Robert Parke Harrison

During the course of my ethnographic research I challenge myself to understand the purpose of my project beyond fulfilling the requirements for a Ph.D. Early in my fieldwork, a prominent anthropologist told me that at this point in her career she only focuses on research questions that would impact public policy. That is an interesting way for her to conduct her academic life, and her approach is consistent with my focus on research that will have an impact on how people pursue life long learning and live with curiosity. A relevant question for me is: Why does it matter that I am studying the impact of student oriented infrastructure for innovation, design and entrepreneurship on how students learn and prepare themselves as 21st century knowledge workers?

My research is meaningful because it examines how students learn at a university, which through a strategic shift in favor of STEM, arguably has positioned itself at the intersection of knowledge creation, technological innovation and disruption, and the potential application of technology through entrepreneurship (Roberts 2009). My research, at its core, analyses how and why students tap into student oriented infrastructure that works individually and together to create a novel environment for learning and creating intellectual capital in the form of ideas, physical objects and entrepreneurial ventures. This ecosystem fosters a new sense of expectancy about what is possible at an elite university and a sense of opportunity to take ownership of their learning. I refer to these resources as the Y-Tools. The Y-Tools include the following components:  pedagogy (Yale School of Management), an academic maker space (Center for Engineering, Innovation and Design), venture creation programs (Yale Entrepreneurial Institute), and programs for creating mission-driven enterprises (e.g. Yale InnovateHealth).

Yale’s strategic shift in support of STEM has made new resources available to students that were formerly unavailable to them. This strategic shift is concomitant with a new culture of learning. Students have innovated ways to use Y-Tools to fill the gap between how and what they want to learn and what was offered formally by the university. For example, HackYale and YHack perform important functions of teaching students how to code in a real world manner. These efforts are student-led, but university administrators have been pragmatic about providing physical space for these activities to occur. HackYale is run out of CEID. And YHack, which will take place on October 31st – November 2nd will be held on the West Campus again.

A member of the YHack leadership team explained that the group’s operating premise “is to give people time, money and space to sit around and tinker on their own personal projects. He continued, “YHack sparks that creative spirit. Instead of just working on dry problem sets from class, people are able to do creative stuff.” With YHack they want to “encourage people to get out of the mode of just programming for class projects.” They want people to experience the fun and creative spirit of true hacking. The ethos of YHack is consistent with the self-directed learning ethos of the wide toolbox cohort. Students are engaging in peer-to-peer teaching in order to fill the gap between the formal classroom and the real world skills that they need to succeed.

My ethnography demonstrates that understanding how the educational elite learn has implications for how education policy makers and administrators should think about the relationship between how 21st century students are being taught and how they learn. Because of Yale’s stature as an educational institution a study conducted at Yale should garner attention from education policy makers and stakeholders. Inquiring about a learning framework that Yale students are experimenting with should bring forward propositions about the relationship between self-directed learning, technology, the humanities and entrepreneurship.   

 

 

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