The following are the units and weekly themes for our course lectures.

Students: Presentation slides for these lectures are posted to the course shell.
Educators: If you interested in adapting a version of this course for your own institution, we'd love to help you.
Course slides (15 weeks) are available to qualified instructors on request. Email course director John Smart (john smart{at}accelerating.org). Join the Foresight Education & Research Network (FERN), a group of 150+ individuals teaching or researching foresight education around the world.



Unit I. The Big Picture (Weeks 1-4)
Intro to and history of futures studies, theories of universal change, and the unique nature of our time—scientific and technological progress that runs faster every year of our lives.
Week 1 – Intro to Futures Studies
Week 2 – Evolution, Development, and the Future of Science
Week 3 – Accelerating Change and the Future of Technology, Part I
Week 4 – Accelerating Change and the Future of Technology, Part II



Unit II. Global and Societal Foresight (Weeks 5-9)
Forces and choices affecting our planet and our socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-cultural environments.
Week 5 – Global Trends, Scenarios, and Models
Week 6 – Global Problems and Priorities
Week 7 – Economics and the Future of Capitalism
Week 9 – Politics and the Future of Security and Democracy
Week 9 – Culture, Media and Education in a Network Society



Unit III. Business and Organizational Foresight (Weeks 10-11)
Forces and choices shaping the business and organizational world, the many social definitions of success, and practical success strategies.
Week 10 – Biz-Org Leadership, Innovation, Learning, and Predicting
Week 11 – Biz-Org Planning, Consensus-Building, Benefiting, and Metrics



Unit IV. Personal and Career Foresight (Weeks 12-15)
Using foresight in your personal life and future careers. Finding your own strengths, passions, vision, and voice, and navigating an increasingly option-rich future, "present trends extended" (PTE).
Week 12 – Personal and Career Creativity and Visioning
Week 13 – Personal and Career Learning and Predicting
Week 14 – Personal and Career Planning and Negotiating
Week 15 – Personal and Career Benefiting and Measuring

Great Futures Books (GFBs)
150 Great Futures Books (10 per week x 15 weeks) are introduced, passed around, and briefly discussed in this course.

Great Futures Videos (GFVs)
Roughly 15 videos (1 per week x 15 weeks) will be viewed and discussed on ourFutures Movie Night during the course, and selections from additional videos may be viewed in class as time is available.


All material on this wiki is open source, creative commons licensed. Feel free to use any portion of this with appropriate attribution to "University of Advancing Technology, Foresight Development curriculum."