analytics

A new report from The Open University: Innovating Pedagogy 2017

On 12/07/2017, in adjunct faculty, analytics, data related items, education, faculty, higher education, ideas, innovation, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, open courseware and systems, pedagogy, professional development, psychology, relationships, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, UK, by Daniel Christian

Innovating Pedagogy 2017 — from iet.open.ac.uk

Excerpt:

This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This sixth report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education. To produce it, a group of academics at the Institute of Educational Technology in The Open University collaborated with researchers from the Learning In a NetworKed Society (LINKS) Israeli Center of Research Excellence (I-CORE). We proposed a long list of new educational terms, theories, and practices. We then pared these down to ten that have the potential to provoke major shifts in educational practice, particularly in secondary and tertiary education. Lastly, we drew on published and unpublished writings to compile the ten sketches of new pedagogies that might transform education. These are summarised below in an approximate order of immediacy and timescale to widespread implementation.

Excerpt:

Artificial Intelligence has leapt to the forefront of global discourse, garnering increased attention from practitioners, industry leaders, policymakers, and the general public. The diversity of opinions and debates gathered from news articles this year illustrates just how broadly AI is being investigated, studied, and applied. However, the field of AI is still evolving rapidly and even experts have a hard time understanding and tracking progress across the field.

Without the relevant data for reasoning about the state of AI technology, we are essentially “flying blind” in our conversations and decision-making related to AI.

Created and launched as a project of the One Hundred Year Study on AI at Stanford University (AI100), the AI Index is an open, not-for-profit project to track activity and progress in AI. It aims to facilitate an informed conversation about AI that is grounded in data. This is the inaugural annual report of the AI Index, and in this report we look at activity and progress in Artificial Intelligence through a range of perspectives. We aggregate data that exists freely on the web, contribute original data, and extract new metrics from combinations of data series.

All of the data used to generate this report will be openly available on the AI Index website at aiindex.org. Providing data, however, is just the beginning. To become truly useful, the AI Index needs support from a larger community. Ultimately, this report is a call for participation. You have the ability to provide data, analyze collected data, and make a wish list of what data you think needs to be tracked. Whether you have answers or questions to provide, we hope this report inspires you to reach out to the AI Index and become part of the effort to ground the conversation about AI.

Amazon & Google have started their own consulting operations, lending out some of their prized AI talent to customers.

On 12/01/2017, in Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, corporate / business world, data related items, emerging technologies, Google, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Google, Amazon Find Not Everyone Is Ready for AI — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Yet as Amazon and Google seek greater riches by infusing the world with artificial intelligence, they’ve started their own consulting operations, lending out some of their prized AI talent to customers. The reason: Those other businesses lack the expertise to take advantage of techniques such as machine learning.

…

The expertise shortage upsets the usual dynamic of the cloud market, where Amazon, Google, and others mostly compete on price and technical features. “If you’re a random manufacturing company in the midwest you may have money, but it’s hard to attract a $250,000-a-year Stanford PhD to work for you,” says Diego Oppenheimer, whose Google-backed startup provides tools that help companies deploy machine-learning software. Companies in that situation may be more swayed by an offer of help building AI, than pricing and performance, he says.

The Ivory Tower Can’t Keep Ignoring Tech [O’Neil]

On 11/16/2017, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, curriculum, ethics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, morals/values, programming, research, society, staying relevant, the downsides of how people use tech, universities, by Daniel Christian

The Ivory Tower Can’t Keep Ignoring Tech — from nytimes.com by Cathy O’Neil

Excerpt:

We need academia to step up to fill in the gaps in our collective understanding about the new role of technology in shaping our lives. We need robust research on hiring algorithms that seem to filter out people with mental health disorders, sentencing algorithms that fail twice as often for black defendants as for white defendants, statistically flawed public teacher assessments or oppressive scheduling algorithms. And we need research to ensure that the same mistakes aren’t made again and again. It’s absolutely within the abilities of academic research to study such examples and to push against the most obvious statistical, ethical or constitutional failures and dedicate serious intellectual energy to finding solutions. And whereas professional technologists working at private companies are not in a position to critique their own work, academics theoretically enjoy much more freedom of inquiry.

There is essentially no distinct field of academic study that takes seriously the responsibility of understanding and critiquing the role of technology — and specifically, the algorithms that are responsible for so many decisions — in our lives.

There’s one solution for the short term. We urgently need an academic institute focused on algorithmic accountability. First, it should provide a comprehensive ethical training for future engineers and data scientists at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with case studies taken from real-world algorithms that are choosing the winners from the losers. Lecturers from humanities, social sciences and philosophy departments should weigh in.

Somewhat related:

More than 50 experts just told DHS that using AI for “extreme vetting” is dangerously misguided — from qz.com by Dave Gershgorn
Excerpt:
A group of experts from Google, Microsoft, MIT, NYU, Stanford, Spotify, and AI Now are urging (pdf) the Department of Homeland Security to reconsider using automated software powered by machine learning to vet immigrants and visitors trying to enter the United States.

Updating Education for the Evolving Job Market: Learning at the Pace of Life and Work — from huffingtonpost.com by Sophie Wade

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A technology-stimulated, connected, and accelerated marketplace is generating different roles and additional skills requirements for us as workers. The traditional model of completing our lifelong education needs before we enter the workforce is now obsolete. On-the-job experience must now be supplemented as business and technological requirements evolve significantly and rapidly. Compelling new multilevel learning options are emerging to cater to the new necessity of updating important knowledge and capabilities at work. Many new offerings are online and modular in order to be accessible and flexible, giving labor force participants greater opportunity to remain relevant and competitive.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Era, evolution typically occurred from generation to generation. New developments were adopted by incoming cohorts, adding to and then replacing well-established workers’ existing practices of which could be phased out gradually. However, the exponential pace that is characteristic of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is requiring modifications to be absorbed and adapted within a generation accompanied by frequent incremental updates and revisions. Innovative learning models and modules that target incoming and existing working populations are being built out to respond to business-related requirements as new fields, disciplines, and roles appear and are established.

I talked to Anant Agarwal, CEO and Founder of edX, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT about the situation for new workforce entrants and the future education of workers. He spoke of what he called “MOOC 2.0” as the next phase of evolution of this high-profile MOOC (Massively Open Online Course) platform and the strategic rationale and content of edX’s new MicroMasters program offerings.

As a member of the International Education Committee, at edX we are extremely aware of the changing nature of work and jobs. It is predicted that 50 percent of current jobs will disappear by 2030.

Anant Agarwal, CEO and Founder of edX, and
Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT

From DSC:
We are moving towards providing up-to-date, relevant “streams of content” (which will in many cases represent unbundled content/courses). Mark my words, that’s the future that we’re heading for — and the future that we’ll need to successfully adapt to the new, exponential pace of change. Organizations offering such streams will be providing a valuable service in terms identifying, presenting, curating the most relevant, up-to-date content.

Plan now to attend the 2018 Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference — tour USC’s campus!

On 11/09/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty, future of higher education, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, IT in HE, K-12 related, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, learning theories, liberal arts, lifelong learning, maker movement, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, online learning, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reinvent, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, staying relevant, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I am honored to be currently serving on the 2018 Advisory Council for the Next Generation Learning Spaces Conference with a great group of people. Missing — at least from my perspective — from the image below is Kristen Tadrous, Senior Program Director with the Corporate Learning Network. Kristen has done a great job these last few years planning and running this conference.

NOTE:
The above graphic reflects a recent change for me. I am still an Adjunct Faculty Member
at Calvin College, but I am no longer a Senior Instructional Designer there.
My brand is centered around being an Instructional Technologist.

This national conference will be held in Los Angeles, CA on February 26-28, 2018. It is designed to help institutions of higher education develop highly-innovative cultures — something that’s needed in many institutions of traditional higher education right now.

I have attended the first 3 conferences and I moderated a panel at the most recent conference out in San Diego back in February/March of this year. I just want to say that this is a great conference and I encourage you to bring a group of people to it from your organization! I say a group of people because a group of 5 of us (from a variety of departments) went one year and the result of attending the NGLS Conference was a brand new Sandbox Classroom — an active-learning based, highly-collaborative learning space where faculty members can experiment with new pedagogies as well as with new technologies. The conference helped us discuss things as a diverse group, think out load, come up with some innovative ideas, and then build the momentum to move forward with some of those key ideas.

If you haven’t already attended this conference, I highly recommend that you check it out. You can obtain the agenda/brochure for the conference by providing some basic contact information here.

Per Kristen Tadrous, here’s why you want to check out USC:

A true leader in innovation: USC made it to the Top 20 of Reuter’s 100 Most Innovative Universities in 2017!
Detailed guided tour of leading spaces led by the Information Technology Services Learning Environments team
Benchmark your own learning environments by getting a ‘behind the scenes’ look at their state-of-the-art spaces
There are only 30 spots available for the site tour

Building Spaces to Inspire a Culture of Innovation — a core theme at the 4^th Next Generation Learning Spaces summit, taking place this February 26-28 in Los Angeles. An invaluable opportunity to meet and hear from like-minded peers in higher education, and continue your path toward lifelong learning. #ngls2018 http://bit.ly/2yNkMLL

2018 Tech Trends for Journalism & Media Report + the 2017 Tech Trends Annual Report that I missed from the Future Today Institute

On 11/08/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), bots, business, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, corporate / business world, digital audio, digital learning, digital textbooks, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engineering, future, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interactivity, internet, journalism, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, media/film, microlearning, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new media literacies, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, podcasting, political science, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, trends, universities, user experience (UX), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

2018 Tech Trends For Journalism Report — from the Future Today Institute

Key Takeaways

2018 marks the beginning of the end of smartphones in the world’s largest economies. What’s coming next are conversational interfaces with zero-UIs. This will radically change the media landscape, and now is the best time to start thinking through future scenarios.
In 2018, a critical mass of emerging technologies will converge finding advanced uses beyond initial testing and applied research. That’s a signal worth paying attention to. News organizations should devote attention to emerging trends in voice interfaces, the decentralization of content, mixed reality, new types of search, and hardware (such as CubeSats and smart cameras).
Journalists need to understand what artificial intelligence is, what it is not, and what it means for the future of news. AI research has advanced enough that it is now a core component of our work at FTI. You will see the AI ecosystem represented in many of the trends in this report, and it is vitally important that all decision-makers within news organizations familiarize themselves with the current and emerging AI landscapes. We have included an AI Primer For Journalists in our Trend Report this year to aid in that effort.
Decentralization emerged as a key theme for 2018. Among the companies and organizations FTI covers, we discovered a new emphasis on restricted peer-to-peer networks to detect harassment, share resources and connect with sources. There is also a push by some democratic governments around the world to divide internet access and to restrict certain content, effectively creating dozens of “splinternets.”
Consolidation is also a key theme for 2018. News brands, broadcast spectrum, and artificial intelligence startups will continue to be merged with and acquired by relatively few corporations. Pending legislation and policy in the U.S., E.U. and in parts of Asia could further concentrate the power among a small cadre of information and technology organizations in the year ahead.
To understand the future of news, you must pay attention to the future of many industries and research areas in the coming year. When journalists think about the future, they should broaden the usual scope to consider developments from myriad other fields also participating in the knowledge economy. Technology begets technology. We are witnessing an explosion in slow motion.

Those in the news ecosystem should factor the trends in this report into their strategic thinking for the coming year, and adjust their planning, operations and business models accordingly.

2017 Tech Trends Annual Report — from the Future Today Institute; this is the first I’ve seen this solid report

Excerpts:

This year’s report has 159 trends.
This is mostly due to the fact that 2016 was the year that many areas of science and technology finally started to converge. As a result we’re seeing a sort of slow-motion explosion––we will undoubtedly look back on the last part of this decade as a pivotal moment in our history on this planet.
…
Our 2017 Trend Report reveals strategic opportunities and challenges for your organization in the coming year. The Future Today Institute’s annual Trend Report prepares leaders and organizations for the year ahead, so that you are better positioned to see emerging technology and adjust your strategy accordingly. Use our report to identify near-future business disruption and competitive threats while simultaneously finding new collaborators and partners. Most importantly, use our report as a jumping off point for deeper strategic planning.

Also see:

Emerging eLearning Tools and Platforms Improve Results — from learningsolutionsmag.com

Augmented and virtual reality offer ways to immerse learners in experiences that can aid training in processes and procedures, provide realistic simulations to deepen empathy and build communication skills, or provide in-the-workflow support for skilled technicians performing complex procedures.
Badges and other digital credentials provide new ways to assess and validate employees’ skills and mark their eLearning achievements, even if their learning takes place informally or outside of the corporate framework.
Chatbots are proving an excellent tool for spaced learning, review of course materials, guiding new hires through onboarding, and supporting new managers with coaching and tips.
Content curation enables L&D professionals to provide information and educational materials from trusted sources that can deepen learners’ knowledge and help them build skills.
eBooks, a relative newcomer to the eLearning arena, offer rich features for portable on-demand content that learners can explore, review, and revisit as needed.
Interactive videos provide branching scenarios, quiz learners on newly introduced concepts and terms, offer prompts for small-group discussions, and do much more to engage learners.
Podcasts can turn drive time into productive time, allowing learners to enjoy a story built around eLearning content.
Smartphone apps, available wherever learners take their phones or tablets, can be designed to offer product support, info for sales personnel, up-to-date information for repair technicians, and games and drills for teaching and reviewing content; the possibilities are limited only by designers’ imagination.
Social platforms like Slack, Yammer, or Instagram facilitate collaboration, sharing of ideas, networking, and social learning. Adopting social learning platforms encourages learners to develop their skills and contribute to their communities of practice, whether inside their companies or more broadly.
xAPI turns any experience into a learning experience. Adding xAPI capability to any suitable tool or platform means you can record learner activity and progress in a learning record store (LRS) and track it.

DevLearn Attendees Learn How to ‘Think Like a Futurist’ — from learningsolutionsmag.com

Excerpt:

How does all of this relate to eLearning? Again, Webb anticipated the question. Her response gave hope to some—and terrified others. She presented three possible future scenarios:

Everyone in the learning arena learns to recognize weak signals; they work with technologists to refine artificial intelligence to instill values. Future machines learn not only to identify correct and incorrect answers; they also learn right and wrong. Webb said that she gives this optimistic scenario a 25 percent chance of occurring.
Everyone present is inspired by her talk but they, and the rest of the learning world, do nothing. Artificial intelligence continues to develop as it has in the past, learning to identify correct answers but lacking values. Webb’s prediction is that this pragmatic optimistic scenario has a 50 percent chance of occurring.
Learning and artificial intelligence continue to develop on separate tracks. Future artificial intelligence and machine learning projects incorporate real biases that affect what and how people learn and how knowledge is transferred. Webb said that she gives this catastrophic scenario a 25 percent chance of occurring.

In an attempt to end on a strong positive note, Webb said that “the future hasn’t happened yet—we think” and encouraged attendees to take action. “To build the future of learning that you want, listen to weak signals now.”

10 really hard decisions coming our way — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Things are about to get interesting. You’ve likely heard that Google’s DeepMind recently beat the world’s best Go player. But in far more practical and pervasive ways, artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping into every aspect of life–every screen you view, every search, every purchase, and every customer service contact.

What’s happening? It’s the confluence of several technologies–Moore’s law made storage, computing, and access devices almost free.

This Venn diagram illustrates how deep learning is a subset of AI and how, when combined with big data, can inform enabling technologies in many sectors. For examples, to AI and big data add:

Robotics, and you have industry 4.0.
Cameras and sensor package, and you have self-driving cars.
Sensors and bioinformatic maps, and you have precision medicine.

While there is lots of good news here–diseases will be eradicated and clean energy will be produced–we have a problem: this stuff is moving faster than civic infrastructure can handle. Innovation is outpacing public policy on all fronts. The following are 10 examples of issues coming at us fast that we (in the US in particular) are not ready to deal with.

Unemployment.
Income inequality.
Privacy
Algorithmic bias.
Access.
Machine ethics.
Weaponization.
Humanity.
Genome editing.
Bad AI.

From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I’m big on pulse-checking the pace of technological change — because it has enormous ramifications for societies throughout the globe, as well as for individuals, workforces, corporations, jobs, education, training, higher education and more. Readers of this blog will again hear me say that the pace of change has changed. We’re now on an exponential pace/trajectory (vs. a slow, steady, linear path).

“Innovation is outpacing public policy on all fronts.”

How true this is. Our society doesn’t know how to deal with this new pace of change. How shall we tackle this thorny issue?

From DSC:
Some of the largest waves of change that are hitting the beaches of numerous societies throughout the globe are coming from technological changes such as:

Artificial intelligence (which includes things like machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, personal assistants, bots, algorithms, and the like)
Big data and analytics
Robotics
The digital transformation of businesses
New forms of human computer interaction such as virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality
Mobile computing
Cloud computing
The Internet of Things
Wearables
…and more

But in all of these developments, what is common amongst them is that the pace of change has changed. It’s much faster now. In fact, we are no longer on a linear path of slow, steady, incremental changes. We are now on an exponential trajectory – or pace – of change.

This new pace of change is starting to have profound implications for societies, individuals, institutions of higher education, and workforces throughout the globe. Some of these ramifications include:

Profound modifications to the existing workforce; in some cases, staff reductions
New fields, new positions
New skillsets that require highly-educated individuals as well as a massive amount of additional training for existing employees
New methods of learning and the requirement for lifelong, constant learning from here on out
The need to become more responsive and nimble
The need to pulse-check a variety of landscapes to ascertain the best potential strategies to pursue (in light of the potential upcoming scenarios)

Yet the changes aren’t just arising from technological changes. For institutions of higher education, there have been other areas of change that bring with them significant impact, such as:

Decreases in state funding
The increasing costs of healthcare and benefits for faculty, staff, and administrators
Headwinds from demographic-related declines (depending upon one’s geographic location)
Aging facilities and infrastructures
…and more.

Navigating these rough waters is not easy. But the key questions now are:

Is your institution poised to ride the waves of change or is it about to get crushed by these same waves?

Is someone at your organization looking out for these oncoming waves?
That is, is someone pulse-checking a variety of landscapes to ascertain the trends that are developing, trends that could significantly impact your institution and/or your students?

What are some of the ways that your organization could respond to these waves of change to positively impact the following parties?
- Your organization
  What new programs could be offered at your institution? How is the level of responsiveness at your institution to these changes?
- Your students
  Many jobs that your students will have in their futures haven’t even been invented yet. How can you best develop them to be ready for the new, exponential pace of change? How are you helping your graduates who (increasingly) need to come back to your institution and reinvent themselves – quickly, conveniently, and cost-effectively?
- Your employees
  Given all of this change, the professional growth of your own faculty members, staff, and members of your administration is extremely important. How are you looking after their growth?

Would you use the word “innovative” to describe the culture of your organization? That is, is your institution willing to experiment and take some calculated risks? To take no action or risks in the current environment is likely the biggest risk of all.

For institutions of higher education: Some of the ways to respond to the new, exponential pace of change [Christian]

On 10/18/2017, in 21st century, adult learning, Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business, business side of he, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, consortiums, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, distance education, education reform, elearning, emerging technologies, expectations, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, interaction design, interface design, internet, leadership, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, machine-to-machine communications, Michigan, Mixed Reality (MR), online learning, organizational change, pace of change, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, platforms, real-world assignments, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technology (general), traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), user interface design, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
In Part I, I looked at the new, exponential pace of change that colleges, community colleges and universities now need to deal with – observing the enormous changes that are starting to occur throughout numerous societies around the globe. If we were to plot out the rate of change, we would see that we are no longer on a slow, steady, incremental type of linear pathway; but, instead, we would observe that we are now on an exponential trajectory (as the below graphic from sparks & honey very nicely illustrates).

How should colleges and universities deal with this new, exponential pace of change?

1) I suggest that you ensure that someone in your institution is lifting their gaze and peering out into the horizons, to see what’s coming down the pike. That person – or more ideally, persons – should also be looking around them, noticing what’s going on within the current landscapes of higher education. Regardless of how your institution tackles this task, given that we are currently moving at an incredibly fast pace, this trend analysis is very important. The results from this analysis should immediately be integrated into your strategic plan. Don’t wait 3-5 years to integrate these new findings into your plan. The new, exponential pace of change is going to reward those organizations who are nimble and responsive.

2) I recommend that you look at what programs you are offering and consider if you should be developing additional programs such as those that deal with:

Artificial Intelligence (Natural Language Processing, deep learning, machine learning, bots)
New forms of Human Computer Interaction such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality
User Experience Design, User Interface Design, and/or Interaction Design
Big data, data science, working with data
The Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications, sensors, beacons, etc.
Blockchain-based technologies/systems
The digital transformation of business
Freelancing / owning your own business / entrepreneurship (see this article for the massive changes happening now!)
…and more

3) If you are not already doing so, I recommend that you immediately move to offer a robust lineup of online-based programs. Why do I say this? Because:

Without them, your institution may pay a heavy price due to its diminishing credibility. Your enrollments could decline if learners (and their families) don’t think they will get solid jobs coming out of your institution. If the public perceives you as a dinosaur/out of touch with what the workplace requires, your enrollment/admissions groups may find meeting their quotas will get a lot harder as the years go on. You need to be sending some cars down the online/digital/virtual learning tracks. (Don’t get me wrong. We still need the liberal arts. However, even those institutions who offer liberal arts lineups will still need to have a healthy offering of online-based programs.)
Online-based learning methods can expand the reach of your faculty members while offering chances for individuals throughout the globe to learn from you, and you from them
Online-based learning programs can increase your enrollments, create new revenue streams, and develop/reach new markets
Online-based learning programs have been proven to offer the same learning gains – and sometimes better learning results than – what’s being achieved in face-to-face based classrooms
The majority of pedagogically-related innovations are occurring within the online/digital/virtual realm, and you will want to have built the prior experience, expertise, and foundations in order to leverage and benefit from them
Faculty take their learning/experiences from offering online-based courses back into their face-to-face courses
Due to the increasing price of obtaining a degree, students often need to work to help get them (at least part of the way) through school; thus, flexibility is becoming increasingly important and necessary for students
An increasing number of individuals within the K-12 world as well as the corporate world are learning via online-based means. This is true within higher education as well, as, according to a recent report from Digital Learning Compass states that “the number of higher education students taking at least one distance education course in 2015 now tops six million, about 30% of all enrollments.”
Families are looking very closely at their return on investments being made within the world of higher education. They want to see that their learners are being prepared for the ever-changing future that they will encounter. If people in the workforce often learn online, then current students should be getting practice in that area of their learning ecosystems as well.
As the (mostly) online-based Amazon.com is thriving and retail institutions such as Sears continue to close, people are in the process of forming more generalized expectations that could easily cross over into the realm of higher education. By the way, here’s how our local Sears building is looking these days…or what’s left of it.

4) I recommend that you move towards offering more opportunities for lifelong learning, as learners need to constantly add to their skillsets and knowledge base in order to remain marketable in today’s workforce. This is where adults greatly appreciate – and need – the greater flexibility offered by online-based means of learning. I’m not just talking about graduate programs or continuing studies types of programs here. Rather, I’m hoping that we can move towards providing streams of up-to-date content that learners can subscribe to at any time (and can drop their subscription to at any time). As a relevant side note here, keep your eyes on blockchain-based technologies here.

5) Consider the role of consortia and pooling resources. How might that fit into your strategic plan?

6) Consider why bootcamps continue to come onto the landscape. What are traditional institutions of higher education missing here?

7) And lastly, if one doesn’t already exist, form a small, nimble, innovative group within your organization — what I call a TrimTab Group — to help identify what will and won’t work for your institution.

For those seeking to be better communicators/leaders/servants, you need to check out “Communicate Like a True Leader”

On 10/17/2017, in 21st century, Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, bots, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communications, community colleges, computer science, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, engineering, ethics, Facebook / Meta Platforms, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, leadership, liberal arts, marketing/social marketing, Michigan, Microsoft, morals/values, organizational change, pace of change, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, relationships, robotics, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, universities, writing, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I know Quentin Schultze from our years working together at Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA). I have come to greatly appreciate Quin as a person of faith, as an innovative/entrepreneurial professor, as a mentor to his former students, and as an excellent communicator.

Quin has written a very concise, wisdom-packed book that I would like to recommend to those people who are seeking to be better communicators, leaders, and servants. But I would especially like to recommend this book to the leadership at Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Nvidia, the major companies developing robots, and other high-tech companies. Why do I list these organizations? Because given the exponential pace of technological change, these organizations — and their leaders — have an enormous responsibility to make sure that the technologies that they are developing result in positive changes for societies throughout the globe. They need wisdom, especially as they are working on emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), personal assistants and bots, algorithms, robotics, the Internet of Things, big data, blockchain and more. These technologies continue to exert an increasingly powerful influence on numerous societies throughout the globe today. And we haven’t seen anything yet! Just because we can develop and implement something, doesn’t mean that we should. Again, we need wisdom here.

But as Quin states, it’s not just about knowledge, the mind and our thoughts. It’s about our hearts as well. That is, we need leaders who care about others, who can listen well to others, who can serve others well while avoiding gimmicks, embracing diversity, building trust, fostering compromise and developing/exhibiting many of the other qualities that Quin writes about in his book. Our societies desperately need leaders who care about others and who seek to serve others well.

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Quin’s book. There are few people who can communicate as much in as few words as Quin can. In fact, I wish that more writing on the web and more articles/research coming out of academia would be as concisely and powerfully written as Quin’s book, Communicate Like a True Leader: 30 Days of Life-Changing Wisdom.

To lead is to accept responsibility and act responsibly.
— Quentin Schultze

Amazon and Microsoft announce Gluon, making deep learning accessible to all developers

On 10/13/2017, in Amazon, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), Microsoft, platforms, programming, by Daniel Christian

AWS and Microsoft announce Gluon, making deep learning accessible to all developers — from news.microsoft.com
New open source deep learning interface allows developers to more easily and quickly build machine learning models without compromising training performance. Jointly developed reference specification makes it possible for Gluon to work with any deep learning engine; support for Apache MXNet available today and support for Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit coming soon.

Excerpt:

SEATTLE and REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 12, 2017 — On Thursday, Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced a new deep learning library, called Gluon, that allows developers of all skill levels to prototype, build, train and deploy sophisticated machine learning models for the cloud, devices at the edge and mobile apps. The Gluon interface currently works with Apache MXNet and will support Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit (CNTK) in an upcoming release. With the Gluon interface, developers can build machine learning models using a simple Python API and a range of prebuilt, optimized neural network components. This makes it easier for developers of all skill levels to build neural networks using simple, concise code, without sacrificing performance. AWS and Microsoft published Gluon’s reference specification so other deep learning engines can be integrated with the interface. To get started with the Gluon interface, visit https://github.com/gluon-api/gluon-api/.

Microsoft and Amazon struck a brilliant partnership to take on Google in the next big thing for cloud computing — from finance.yahoo.com Business Insider by Julie Bort

Excerpt:

Microsoft and Amazon announced a surprise partnership on Thursday in which they were jointly releasing for free a new software tool for developers called Gluon.
Gluon makes it easier for developers to build AI/machine learning systems, aka apps that can learn.
But there’s another, more important reason this partnership is interesting: it challenges Google in its one big area of dominance.

Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2018 — from Gartner Research

Summary

The intelligent digital mesh is a foundation for future digital business and its ecosystems. To create competitive advantage, enterprise architecture and technology innovation leaders must evaluate these top trends to identify opportunities that their organizations can exploit.

Key Findings

Artificial intelligence (AI) delivers value to every industry, enabling new business models. It does so by supporting key initiatives such as customer engagement, digital production, smart cities, self-driving cars, risk management, computer vision and speech recognition.
As people, places, processes and “things” become increasingly digitalized, they will be represented by digital twins. This will provide fertile ground for new event-driven business processes and digitally enabled business models and ecosystems.
The way we interact with technology will undergo a radical transformation over the next five to 10 years. Conversational platforms, augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality will provide more natural and immersive interactions with the digital world.
A digital business is event-centric, which means it must be continuously sensing and adapting. The same applies to the security and risk infrastructure that supports it, which must focus on deceiving potential intruders and predicting security events.

Table of Contents

Analysis

Trend No. 1: AI Foundation
Today’s AI Is Narrow AI

Trend No. 2: Intelligent Apps and Analytics
Augmented Analytics Will Enable Users to Spend More Time Acting on Insights

Trend No. 3: Intelligent Things
Swarms of Intelligent Things Will Work Together

Trend No. 4: Digital Twins
Digital Twins Will Be Linked to Other Digital Entities

Trend No. 5: Cloud to the Edge
Edge Computing Brings Distributed Computing Into the Cloud Style

Trend No. 6: Conversational Platforms
Integration With Third-Party Services Will Further Increase Usefulness

Trend No. 7: Immersive Experience
VR and AR Can Help Increase Productivity

Trend No. 8: Blockchain
Blockchain Offers Significant Potential Long-Term Benefits Despite Its Challenges

Trend No. 9: Event-Driven Model
Events Will Become More Important in the Intelligent Digital Mesh

Trend No. 10: Continuous Adaptive Risk and Trust
Barriers Must Come Down Between Security and Application Teams

Gartner Recommended Reading

Also see:

AI, Merging of Digital and Physical Worlds Among Top 10 Tech Trends for 2018 — from campustechnology.com by Joshua Bolkan
Excerpt:
Gartner has released its list of top 10 strategic technology trends for 2018 with a focus for the coming year on technologies related to artificial intelligence and machine learning and those that blend the physical and digital worlds.

100 Data and Analytics Predictions Through 2021 — from Gartner

From DSC:
I just wanted to include some excerpts (see below) from Gartner’s 100 Data and Analytics Predictions Through 2021 report. I do so to illustrate how technology’s impact continues to expand/grow in influence throughout many societies around the globe, as well as to say that if you want a sure thing job in the next 1-15 years, I would go into studying data science and/or artificial intelligence!

Excerpts:

As evidenced by its pervasiveness within our vast array of recently published Predicts 2017 research, it is clear that data and analytics are increasingly critical elements across most industries, business functions and IT disciplines. Most significantly, data and analytics are key to a successful digital business. This collection of more than 100 data-and-analytics-related Strategic Planning Assumptions (SPAs) or predictions through 2021, heralds several transformations and challenges ahead that CIOs and data and analytics leaders should embrace and include in their planning for successful strategies. Common themes across the discipline in general, and within particular business functions and industries, include:

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a core business and analytic competency. Beyond yesteryear’s hard-coded algorithms and manual data science activities, machine learning (ML) promises to transform business processes, reconfigure workforces, optimize infrastructure behavior and blend industries through rapidly improved decision making and process optimization.
Natural language is beginning to play a dual role in many organizations and applications as a source of input for analytic and other applications, and a variety of output, in addition to traditional analytic visualizations.
Information itself is being recognized as a corporate asset (albeit not yet a balance sheet asset), prompting organizations to become more disciplined about monetizing, managing and measuring it as they do with other assets. This includes “spending” it like cash, selling/licensing it to others, participating in emerging data marketplaces, applying asset management principles to improve its quality and availability, and quantifying its value and risks in a variety of ways.
Smart devices that both produce and consume Internet of Things (IoT) data will also move intelligent computing to the edge of business functions, enabling devices in almost every industry to operate and interact with humans and each other without a centralized command and control. The resulting opportunities for innovation are unbounded.
Trust becomes the watchword for businesses, devices and information, leading to the creation of digital ethics frameworks, accreditation and assessments. Most attempts at leveraging blockchain as a trust mechanism fail until technical limitations, particularly performance, are solved.

…

Education
Significant changes to the global education landscape have taken shape in 2016, and spotlight new and interesting trends for 2017 and beyond. “Predicts 2017: Education Gets Personal” is focused on several SPAs, each uniquely contributing to the foundation needed to create the digitalized education environments of the future. Organizations and institutions will require new strategies to leverage existing and new technologies to maximize benefits to the organization in fresh and
innovative ways.

By 2021, more than 30% of institutions will be forced to execute on a personalization strategy to maintain student enrollment.
By 2021, the top 100 higher education institutions will have to adopt AI technologies to stay competitive in research.

…

Artificial Intelligence
Business and IT leaders are stepping up to a broad range of opportunities enabled by AI, including autonomous vehicles, smart vision systems, virtual customer assistants, smart (personal) agents and natural-language processing. Gartner believes that this new general-purpose technology is just beginning a 75-year technology cycle that will have far-reaching implications for every industry. In “Predicts 2017: Artificial Intelligence,” we reflect on the near-term opportunities, and the potential burdens and risks that organizations face in exploiting AI. AI is changing the way in which organizations innovate and communicate their processes, products and services.

Practical strategies for employing AI and choosing the right vendors are available to data and analytics leaders right now.

By 2019, more than 10% of IT hires in customer service will mostly write scripts for bot interactions.
Through 2020, organizations using cognitive ergonomics and system design in new AI projects will achieve long-term success four times more often than others.
By 2020, 20% of companies will dedicate workers to monitor and guide neural networks.
By 2019, startups will overtake Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft in driving the AI economy with disruptive business solutions.
By 2019, AI platform services will cannibalize revenues for 30% of market-leading companies. “Predicts 2017: Drones”
By 2020, the top seven commercial drone manufacturers will all offer analytical software packages.
“Predicts 2017: The Reinvention of Buying Behavior in Vertical-Industry Markets”
By 2021, 30% of net new revenue growth from industry-specific solutions will include AI technology.

…

Advanced Analytics and Data Science
Advanced analytics and data science are fast becoming mainstream solutions and competencies in most organizations, even supplanting traditional BI and analytics resources and budgets. They allow more types of knowledge and insights to be extracted from data. To become and remain competitive, enterprises must seek to adopt advanced analytics, and adapt their business models, establish specialist data science teams and rethink their overall strategies to keep pace with the competition. “Predicts 2017: Analytics Strategy and Technology” offers advice on overall strategy, approach and operational transformation to algorithmic business that leadership needs to build to reap the benefits.

By 2018, deep learning (deep neural networks [DNNs]) will be a standard component in 80% of data scientists’ tool boxes.
By 2020, more than 40% of data science tasks will be automated, resulting in increased productivity and broader usage by citizen data scientists.
By 2019, natural-language generation will be a standard feature of 90% of modern BI and analytics platforms.
By 2019, 50% of analytics queries will be generated using search, natural-language query or voice, or will be autogenerated.
By 2019, citizen data scientists will surpass data scientists in the amount of advanced analysis
produced.

By 2020, 95% of video/image content will never be viewed by humans; instead, it will be vetted by machines that provide some degree of automated analysis.

Through 2020, lack of data science professionals will inhibit 75% of organizations from achieving the full potential of IoT.

Top Trends in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017 — from gartner.com by Kasey Panetta
Enterprises should explain the business potential of blockchain, artificial intelligence and augmented reality.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

…emerging technologies such as machine learning, blockchain, drones (commercial UAVs), software-defined security and brain-computer interfaces have moved significantly along the Hype Cycle since 2016.
…

The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2017 focuses on three emerging technology mega-trends: Artificial intelligence (AI) everywhere, transparently immersive experiences and digital platforms. Enterprise architects and technology innovation leaders should explore and ideate these three mega-trends to understand the future impacts to their business.

“Organizations will continue to be faced with rapidly accelerating technology innovation that will profoundly impact the way they deal with their workforces, customers and partners,” says Mike J. Walker, research director. “Our 2017 Hype Cycle reveals three distinct technology trends that profoundly create new experiences with unrivaled intelligence, and offer platforms that propel organizations to connect with new business ecosystems in order to become competitive over the next five to 10 years.”

Learning Ecosystems

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