| |9 Mar-Apr 2017HIGHERReviewTraditional classroom techniques with their power-driven dominant hierarchies intimidate and restrict young minds in every wayand callous attitude of graduates who enter the job market. There is ample evidence to prove that participative environments foster greater creativi-ty and commitment, promotes extra role behaviors and leads to high per-formance work environments, where ownership and responsibility are high. All participative engagements should have the students actively involved in designing the learning, evaluation and assessment environment.Collaboration and cooperation are the corner stones of effective pedagogy and andragogy. In the realm of higher education, andragogical approach-es represent new ways of making, sharing and using digital documents. Hence, collaboration becomes anoth-er key competency of the 21st century workforce.Knowledge generation: Collab-orative inquiry should be used as a framework to explore knowledge gen-eration as an instructional philosophy, which assumes that adult learners have something meaningful to contribute to a learning experience. Funding and infrastructure remain fundamental to-wards the successful implementation of this model. Substantial self-reflec-tion takes place in this model, which serves as a basis for self-discovery and self-renewal, a key to understanding and knowing oneself better.The above discussion reveals that participative collaboration unearths self-awareness as students engage in a process of unlearning and become in-quisitive which is the core of envision-ing. Below are a few core global career competencies students develop as a re-sult of the above process:Optimism: Maintaining a positive and proactive "can-do" attitude under com-plex circumstances Self-regulation: Going from self-be-lieve to self-knowledgeEmbracing complexity and its contradictions: A personal attitude towards uncertain and unpredictable environmentsNetworking skills: The ability to build partnerships and alliancesEnvisioning: The era of envisioning has begunGlobal events point to the tip of the iceberg in the paradigm shift that de-mands the establishment of a learning environment that is highly conducive to the development of critical-thinking skills and emotional intelligence. These competencies can only be developed through an open-systems approach, whereby synergies are created cata-lyzing the individual abilities of each student, thus enabling businesses to be-come pro-actively adaptive. Dr. Agna Fernandez
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