Unlock the Future: How Foresight is Revolutionizing Higher Education
An exclusive look into transforming learning through future thinking, featuring insights from Dr. Lana Hiasat.
Are you ready for the future of higher education? In a world defined by rapid change and uncertainty, the ability to anticipate and navigate potential futures is no longer a luxury – it’s essential. We sat down with Dr. Lana Hiasat, a Certified Foresight Trainer and academic leader, to understand her journey and how foresight is reshaping classrooms today.
Discovering the Power of Foresight
Dr. Hiasat’s journey into foresight began in 2018 when she was chosen among program chairs and senior faculty for intensive future foresight training in collaboration with The Futures School (TFSX). Spanning nearly two years, the foresight development program was a strategic initiative by the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) in the UAE.
The training program included immersive, in-person sessions led by global foresight pioneers Yvette Montero Salvatico and Frank Spencer. Dr. Hiasat progressed through three certification levels: Foresight Practitioner, Influencer, and finally, Certified Foresight Trainer, a credential she has renewed through 2027. What started as structured training evolved into a fundamental mindset shift.
A Transformative Experience
Working with HCT and TFSX on this extensive foresight process was transformative for Dr. Hiasat, both professionally and personally. She initially approached it with curiosity, not fully realizing how profoundly it would alter her worldview. The workshops fostered engaging discussions with colleagues from across the UAE, pushing participants to think beyond conventional perceptions. The opportunity for creativity offered a welcome contrast to traditional academic settings.
The structure of the engagement allowed participants to truly internalize foresight as a mindset, rather than just a set of methods. Dr. Hiasat found herself applying futures thinking in various aspects of her work, including mentoring students, designing forward-looking capstone projects, and leading research on emotional intelligence and sustainable education. Foresight fundamentally redefined her perspective on adaptability and innovation within higher education.
The Impact of Becoming a Certified Foresight Trainer
Earning the Certified Foresight Trainer credential marked a defining milestone in Dr. Hiasat’s academic career. It empowered her to move beyond theoretical understanding and embed foresight as a practical, strategic tool within higher education. In her teaching focusing on applied skills capstone projects at HCT, she now guides students in utilizing foresight tools to explore significant long-term challenges relevant to their context while developing actionable solutions, effectively making her students “future ready”.
This credential positioned her as both a practitioner and a mentor. It also opened doors to connect with global futures networks and thought leaders, notably through participation in events like the Dubai Future Forum. These interactions continue to fuel her curriculum development and research collaborations.
A remarkable result of her applied foresight work was her research paper, Empowering Sustainability Engagement in Higher Education: A Competency-Based Approach to Advancing SDG 4, which recently won First Prize for Best Academic Research Paper at the SEE Global Sustainability Summit 2025. This study integrated Strategic Foresight with competency-based learning (CBL), focusing on how students could apply futures thinking to tackle sustainability challenges. Dr. Hiasat introduced the concept of “climate shock” and a copyrighted matrix visualizing adaptive learner responses to sustainability disruption. She credits the foresight thinking processes and tools with enabling this innovation, allowing her to extend her thinking beyond traditional methods.
Foresight in Action: The Classroom Revolution
Integrating foresight into her teaching and research has become a cornerstone of Dr. Hiasat’s academic practice since becoming certified. A key example is the Applied Skills Capstone course, where she guides interdisciplinary student teams. They explore critical, UAE-relevant sustainability challenges like food security, sustainable construction, eco-tourism, environmental protection, and water management, all viewed through a foresight lens.
Students identify a focal issue and then employ foresight tools such as the futures wheel, STEEP analysis, and backcasting to generate multiple scenario pathways. This process is transformative, shifting their thinking from a linear approach to a more systemic one, empowering them to navigate uncertainty with greater confidence.
To enhance this process further, Dr. Hiasat has embedded Generative AI. She developed custom GPTs like the Future Foresight Bot and the Classrooms of Tomorrow Agent to offer students real-time support for writing scenarios and developing strategic ideas. She has also created tailored prompt libraries for foresight education, including structured backcasting exercises where students can envision preferred futures for their personal growth or sustainability projects and map out milestones across 5-, 10-, and 20-year timelines.
Dr. Hiasat feels that foresight, bolstered by AI, has not only reshaped her classroom but has become a way for students to build agency, apply interdisciplinary thinking, and visualize sustainable futures.
These elements reflect the evolving needs of learners in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world. As AI continues to blur boundaries, educators must evolve into curators of experience, designers of transformative learning environments, and facilitators of meaning-making.
Dr. Hiasat is optimistic about how technology, used responsibly and ethically, can augment empathy, creativity, and agency. Tools like custom GPTs, scenario generators, image/video generators, and backcasting prompts empower students to not just complete tasks but to envision their preferred futures and design pathways to achieve them. She finds it exciting that higher education is moving from being a gatekeeper of knowledge to becoming a launchpad for purposes.
*Framework of essential elements of the Classrooms of Tomorrow (CoT) developed by Lana Hiasat and Christine Coombe
Your Path to Adopting Foresight
Dr. Hiasat’s strongest advice for those in higher education or similar fields considering adopting foresight practices is to “step into the future with intention.” She sees integrating foresight as essential for creating resilient institutions, relevant curricula, and graduates prepared for the future.
Her key recommendations are:
- Seek formal foresight training, such as that offered by The Futures School (TFSX), to build a strong foundation in tools like horizon scanning, alternative futures, and backcasting. She notes that certification is important for both theoretical understanding and leading change.
- Immerse yourself in the global foresight community by attending conferences, summits, and forums like the Dubai Future Forum. These events expose you to diverse applications and connections with futurists from various sectors.
- Start applying foresight in small steps; don’t wait until you feel completely “ready”. This could mean simply posing futures-thinking questions, piloting scenario-building activities with students or colleagues, or using AI tools to explore complex problems.
She highlights that embedding foresight alongside competency-based learning and generative AI has significantly boosted student engagement and fostered a learning culture that is anticipatory, interdisciplinary, and solution-oriented.
Dr. Lana Hiasat, EdD/ET, SFHEA
Senior Lecturer / Senior HEA Fellow; Faculty and Program Chair - General Studies, Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT)
Dr. Lana Hiasat is a senior lecturer and has a doctoral degree in educational leadership with a specialization in educational technology. She is also a Senior Fellow HEA (SFHEA) certified trainer in future foresight, and a practitioner in intercultural intelligence, emotional intelligence, and Kaizen Creativity. Lana has published in areas of future foresight, emotional intelligence, artificial intelligence, smart and blended learning, educational leadership, intercultural intelligence, and online teaching and learning. Lana has served as the co-chair for several international conferences. She was on the task force to develop the social sciences curriculum in the UAE and has developed a certification leadership training on emotional intelligence for educational leaders. She is currently working on two interdisciplinary research grants funded by HCT on classrooms of tomorrow and future citizen competencies. She is the recipient of 2023-2024 Teacher Excellence Award.
