Fractal university

This is not a product or anything for sale, but rather an effort to relive long term learning disability linked suffering. Feel free to contribute, but dare not suppress this rising of the human spirit.
Fractal University
A new kind of college, optimized for people with ADHD and Dyslexia. It runs on a social networking system, and students teach classes for their peers. The methodology is to minimize boredom and maximize direction by profit motive.
What is the problem?
Smart students who don't learn effectively in a study-and-test framework are being undeserved and squeezed through education systems that don't meet their needs.
How large is the problem?
5%-10% of students in the USA are diagnosed with ADHD.
and 5%-15% of students in the USA are considered dyslexic.
That's a $39 billion domestic market, at 2007 levels, for colleges optimized for people with ADHD and Dyslexia, at current attendance rates. This ignores the possibility that more people with ADHD and Dyslexia may attend college if there existed one optimized for their learning style.
Minimize boredom?
Because people with ADHD and Dyslexia get bored easily, can't grasp anything that doesn't catch their interest, and have a strong tendency to resist authority.
Aren't there drugs that can help manage the symptoms?

Rather than manage our symptoms, the purpose of Fractal University is to design an environment makes use of them.
What's wrong with standard college?
First: it assumes that everyone can and should learn a standardized course of information.

Second: it fails to incentiveize networking, and often students with the best marks trade off social skill development to earn them.

Third: it is structured to produce followers; this economy needs more leaders, as evidenced by the expanding gap between CEO and employee pay.

Fourth: it fails to incentiveize risk, yet amply punishes failure. This rewards conformity and thus allows apathy to erode creative drive.

Fifth: it grew out of an environment of information scarcity where a store of knowledge is valuable. This is in contrast to our modern environment of information plenitude, where knowledge selectivity is valuable. This is analogous to our ancestors admiring bodyfat, where now we try our best to avoid it.

Sixth: is produces students of proven diligence, what employers really need is proven effectiveness.
What's fundamentally different about FractalU?

Students get to freely exercise their naturally high tolerance for risk, motivated by their own Vision, and on a Mission they help design, based on their interests. Study whatever you want, and FractalU helps to provide the resources, organization, environment, motivation, and forces profit motive into all studies.
How does Fractal University plan to do this?

By employing social networking technology to enable: self-directed portfolio development, peer review, emergent peer-to-peer collaboration, knowledge sharing, and extensively moldable incentive structure. The Fractal University innovation is to support self-directed study, while increasing learning productivity as measured by real-world student effectiveness.
What are the learning objectives of a college for people with ADHD and Dyslexia?

Cultivate students who are able to solve pervasive problems they identify, in a profitable way.
The framework is 'identify a problem you can solve using less toil than it causes, and collect the difference.' Rather than attempting to master well worn disciplines, FractalU students get to focus on solving problems, and most importantly develop the skills to realize their solutions.
What skills must be cultivated to achieve that?

-Problem isolation
-Solution imagination
-Collaborative concept elaboration
-Imagination execution
-Idea presentation
-People organization
-Capital Raising
-Organizational structuring
-Solution marketing
-Solution selling
This is what students will spend their precious effort working on at Fractal University
How does this allow for self direction?

'Problem isolation' is produced by individual students, based on their experience, and what causes suffering in their life. This means that students 'imagine solutions' to whatever causes them trouble or inconvenience, including the way The Fractal University itself operates. University improvement itself will be specifically incentivized by quarterly origination of new university shares, equally distributed to students in exchange for part of their tuition. A good chunk of student effort will be employed in increasing the value of the university itself, as a way to develop student portfolios and grow their share value. The portfolio will be peer reviewed by other shareholding students every quarter, and be the sole record of their personal performance, in replacement of tests and grades. This allows us to incentivize performance and risk, instead of conformity and diligence. 'Collaborative concept elaboration' will enable students to extend their solutions beyond their zone of competence, while developing their skill of working with others. 'Imagination execution' is an exceptionally important skill to develop because every new idea has to be adapted to a form that works in the world, from one that works in the mind, only by trials of experience can this be cultivated. 'Idea presentation' is essential because even good ideas have to be conveyed to others to have any value. Every student will develop this skill extensively, simply because their portfolio does not reflect how a teacher rates a presentation, but rather if it wrung active support for the idea it presented. 'People organization' is developed by students efforts to execute their solutions, this is ensured because execution is what the portfolio is made of, just having an idea does the student no good. 'Capital raising' is essential to realization of any solution, be it within or outside the university budget. 'Organizational structuring' is developed as students systematize the execution of their ideas, especially effort directed at improving the university. Fractal University students have to learn about existing organizational structures, if they are to create value. Solution marketing' is developed as students learn the efforts required to get a good solution into other people's lives... what good is a solution that no one knows or even cares about? 'Solution selling' is important because solutions need to be delivered, not just known about. Selling is actually a part of every interpersonal 'target skill' just mentioned, why should anyone waste their time with you, when there are other people who could further their aims?
references
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Fractal University is socially networked widely. Linkedin TED Facebook Twitter BigThink Amazon
http://www.adhdaware.org/

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