Now is the right time to learn.
In the MESH® INSTITUTE for Advanced Competence we want to take the much-vaunted formula of “lifelong learning” seriously. Not only people change, but also their social environments. The acquisition and development of competences is therefore not a straightforward path. Both depend to a large extent on the challenges that different social environments pose to human knowledge and action over time.
When the framework of learning changes, learning changes.
What happens, so we wonder, if people are no longer learning in a way, that learning is no longer linked to educational tasks (“education”), as it is in school? How do we deal with this if learning is no longer, as in the university, primarily oriented towards science (“truth”), but if human learning — as in companies — is oriented towards external and internal markets, efficiency and effectiveness, profit and loss, in short: oriented towards profitability? What happens, we wonder further, if learning in companies — just as learning by companies — in turn takes place in environments that prove to be notoriously unstable, uncertain, entangled and ambiguous in the process of the digitalization of society?
Our answer: Lifelong learning can no longer be thought of and organised as merely a preparation for a profession or as a break from everyday working life. Progressive learning in the life course, i.e. the human competence to successfully adapt to different social environments and to actively participate in shaping them, can only be fully successful under the most realistic conditions of a professional practice.
New learning requires new networking.
The term “MESH” is borrowed from modern computer graphics. To process complex geometric models in computer-aided design (CAD), surfaces of bodies are first divided into simple and “regular” cells (e.g. triangles, tetrahedra). This step of generating meshings is called grid generation. By this form of dividing into parts the individual calculation of all details and the combining under a different viewing angle, the possibility was born to view, analyse and modify three-dimensional bodies from all positions on the computer screen.
In order to advance into new dimensions of competence development and expansion with new concepts and to clearly express the idea of a smooth transition between learning and working, the MESH® INSTITUTE works with a resolution and recombination technique — which is similar to the grid model on the computer.
Not only for the professional world of a digitalised society, but also for dealing with the associated social challenges. (Note here the four business areas of the MESH INSTITUTE are now linked)
business areas
THE MESH® INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED COMPETENCE
further education and training
Work-related skills development
Work-integrated skills development
Transdisciplinary competence research
MESH® ACADEMY is particularly aimed at individuals who are in any kind of professional transition phase (“off the job”) and who, whether full- or part-time, would like to adapt their competences to the changed framework conditions of a digitalised economy and society by means of tailor-made further education and training.
By MESH® INHOUSE we would like to bring our idea of a work-related competence development of employees directly into companies, authorities and associations. (“near the job”)
MESH@ CONSULTING is particularly aimed at specialists and managers in companies whose competences we develop in a work-integrated way (“on the job”) using suitable tools.
Having MESH® RESEARCH, we develop concepts for readjusting the relationship between academic and vocational education and prepare current research on competence measurement and development in a trans-disciplinary perspective ready for application.
We contribute to integrate learning in the form of competence development into the daily processes of work procedures.
The goal of the MESH® INSTITUTE is therefore to spin a net between professional training and further education offers outside of companies and such services that bring the acquisition and development of professional competencies as close as possible to the process of working or even integrate them into the process of working. The MESH® INSTITUTE is neither a pure educational institution nor does it merge into a management consultancy. For us, learning and working are not contradictions, they only challenge each other in different proportions.
Therefore, we do not only regard (higher) schools and further education institutions as organisations for the acquisition of competences, but would like to encourage companies, authorities and associations in particular to notice previously undiscovered learning environments for their employees in their everyday processes and to systematically exploit the associated competence development opportunities. We at the MESH® INSTITUTE would like to contribute to the fact that companies, authorities and associations are increasingly learning to see themselves as agencies for the development of advanced competence.