The 2022 L&D Global Sentiment Survey — from donaldtaylor.co.uk by Donald Taylor
Excerpt:
This year’s L&D Global Sentiment Survey, the ninth, shows L&D at a turning point, as the result of two forces. One is the demands of organisations, as they emerge from the pandemic, for more training delivery, very often with unchanged or reduced resources for L&D. The other is the need to deal with the emergency measures put in place in 2020 to deal with the immediate impact of COVID-19.
This sense of practitioners being under pressure is amply illustrated by responses to the free text question ‘What is your biggest L&D challenge in 2022?’ 40% of respondents answered, with the answers painting a picture of practitioners being asked to do more, in difficult circumstances, to support the learning of overworked employees and uninterested employers.
It is tempting to see this as a return to business-as-usual for L&D. Hasn‘t it always been the case that the department needed to fight for the attention of both executives and employees? Behind this undeniable reality, however, there are definite signs of longer-term trends emerging.
Airbnb’s design for employees to live and work anywhere — from news.airbnb.com; with thanks to Tom Barrett for this resource
Excerpt:
Airbnb is in the business of human connection above all else, and we believe that the most meaningful connections happen in person. Zoom is great for maintaining relationships, but it’s not the best way to deepen them. Additionally, some creative work and collaboration is best done when you’re in the same room. I’d like working at Airbnb to feel like you’re working at one of the most creative places on Earth, and this will only happen with some in-person collaboration time.
The right solution should combine the best of the digital world and the best of the physical world. It should have the efficiency of Zoom, while providing the meaningful human connection that only happens when people come together. We have a solution that we think combines the best of both worlds.
We’ve designed a way for you to live and work anywhere—while collaborating in a highly coordinated way, and experiencing the in-person connection that makes Airbnb special. Our design has five key features…
Now, a thought exercise on that item from Tom Barrett:
While you are there, extend the thought experiment and imagine the new policy for a school, college or university.
- You can work from home or the office
- You can move anywhere in the country you work in, and your compensation won’t change
- You have the flexibility to travel and work around the world
- We’ll meet up regularly for team gatherings, off-sites, and social events
- We’ll continue to work in a highly coordinated way
From DSC:
As a reflection on this thought experiment, this graphic comes to my mind again. Teachers, professors, trainers, staff, and students can be anywhere in the world:
Grandpa Creates Hologram Twin For Future Grandkids Using VR — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick
Not even death will stop this tech-savvy grandfather from meeting his great-grandchildren.
“I think it is a wonderful way to preserve my family’s history for future generations,” said Jerry while speaking to Jam Press. “To see myself like that, is just mind-blowing — it feels like watching a movie. By not just reading the words as in my memoir but to actually get the chance to see and hear me recalling the stories is just magical.”
Also from Kyle Melnick:
How VR/AR Technology Is Being Used To Treat Autism
XRHealth brings its unique VR/AR therapy to the United States.
Excerpt:
Previously available in Australia, the technology has been used to treat the effects of autism, from anxiety and stress to attention, memory, mobility/coordination, and frustration tolerance. XRHealth’s healthcare platform offers a variety of professional services. This includes one-on-one meet-ups with XRHealth therapists as well as virtual group sessions, all of which accessible remotely using modern VR headsets.
Math worksheets for the learning process — from intelligenthq.com
Excerpt:
If you want to master the subject of mathematics, constant practice of various topics is a must. To ensure that you have the proper grasp of all the topics of the subject, solving worksheets for math is one of the best techniques. Worksheets for math facilitate the stepwise mechanism which enhances the learning process and helps students identify their mistakes. Once they can recognize what their mistakes are, they can work on improving them. Worksheets for math also have visual problems that help in the visualization process of students and make their analyzing and strategic capability high. Take worksheets for math from Cuemath and excel in math.
Also see:
Also relevant/see:
In New Math Proofs, Artificial Intelligence Plays to Win — from quantamagazine.org; with thanks to Alec Lazarescu on Twitter for this resource
A new computer program fashioned after artificial intelligence systems like AlphaGo has solved several open problems in combinatorics and graph theory.
My thanks to Mr. Jack Uldrich for the following three items:
The Five-Day Workweek Is Dying — from theatlantic.com by Derek Thompson
And the implications for work and cities are going to be fascinating.
Excerpt:
According to data from Kastle Systems, which tracks building access across the country, office attendance is at just 33 percent of its pre-pandemic average. That’s lower than in-person attendance in just about any other industry for which we have good data. Even movie theaters—a business sometimes written off as “doomed”—have recovered almost twice as much.
What once seemed like a hot take is becoming a stone-cold reality: For tens of millions of knowledge-economy workers, the office is never coming all the way back. The implications—for work, cities, and the geography of labor—will be fascinating.
Panama – ENVIRONMENT: 175 countries sign plastic waste treaty — from menafn.com
Excerpt:
At a meeting of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, 175 countries on March 2 passed a resolution on the first treaty to directly tackle the 9 billion tonnes of plastic produced since the plastic age ramped up in the 1950s. Work now begins on how to implement the treaty by 2024.
Single DNA Test for Over 50 Genetic Diseases Will Cut Diagnosis From Decades to Days — from
Excerpt:
A new DNA test, developed by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and collaborators from Australia, UK and Israel, has been shown to identify a range of hard-to-diagnose neurological and neuromuscular genetic diseases quicker and more-accurately than existing tests.
Is Artificial Intelligence Undermining The Legal System? — from lawyer-monthly.com
Globally recognised artificial intelligence expert Dr Lance Eliot explains how AI is undermining the legal system.
Excerpt:
Well, imagine if I told you that the text messages, the emails, and the video clips were all crafted via the use of AI-based deepfake technologies. None of that seeming “evidence” of wrongdoing or at least inappropriate actions of the prosecutor are real. They certainly look to be real. The texts use the same style of text messaging that the prosecutor normally uses. The emails have the same written style as other emails by the prosecutor.
And, the most damning of the materials, those video clips of the prosecutor, are clearly the face of the prosecutor, and the words spoken are of the same voice as the prosecutor. You might have been willing to assume that the texts and the emails could be faked, but the video seems to be the last straw on the camel’s back. This is the prosecutor caught on video saying things that are utterly untoward in this context. All of that could readily be prepared via the use of today’s AI-based deepfake high-tech.
So, be on the watch for getting AI-based deepfake materials produced about you.
Triumphs and Troubles in Online Learning Abroad — from edsurge.com by Robert Ubell
Excerpt:
In Canada, for example, about two-thirds of colleges offer online degrees—and many have for years. While here in the U.S., a far smaller number grant degrees online.
I thought it would be good to do some digging to explore a more nuanced appreciation of the status of virtual instruction outside the U.S.
From DSC:
I would also like to mention that there’s a lot happening in Australia and in India along these lines, and likely in many other countries as well. But I think that one can only cover so much in one posting. 🙂
‘Human-in-the-loop’ solutions will comprise 30% of new legal tech automation by 2025: Gartner — from thelawyermag.com/au/ by Lucy Saddleton
Excerpt:
“There’s little question that growth in legal work is outstripping growth in legal headcount, and on the surface, this can make advanced automation solutions appear very attractive to legal leaders,” said Zack Hutto, director, advisory in the Gartner Legal & Compliance practice. “The question is whether the legal department has the capabilities required to customize and configure advanced machine learning systems, which will be needed to enable them to handle the unique scenarios and frequent exceptions that come about in this type of work.”
Legal work is outstripping growth in legal headcount
Inside Melbourne’s Major New Interactive Gallery, Where Art and Science Collide — from broadsheet.com.au by Liv Downing
The inaugural Science Gallery exhibition tackles mental health head-on, but with an out-of-the-box approach. Across 3500 square metres, there’s a kaleidoscopic human-sized hamster wheel you can step inside, a gigantic white balloon trapped in a pink cage, and a fake bedroom where two performance artists will live for a week.
Inside Higher Ed Acquired by Times Higher Education — from insidehighered.com by Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman
Our editors Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman explain how this combination of publishing companies will improve global coverage of postsecondary education and better serve the higher ed community.
Excerpt:
As journalists, we often say that we want to report the news, not be the news. We are making an exception [on 1/10/22] to announce that Inside Higher Ed has been acquired by Times Higher Education (THE), the world’s leading provider of higher education news, data and insights.
From DSC:
As the article below clearly relays, MOOCs did NOT fail! In the last decade, they have reached 220 million learners worldwide!
I don’t know the total number of graduates from the Ivy League — throughout all of the relevant institutions’ histories — but I would bet you that MOOCs have reached far more learners. And MOOCs did so in less than a decade.
And you’re going to tell me MOOCs have been a failure?!!!! Are you being serious!?!?! You can talk about completion rates all that you want to (and that misses the point, as some people sign up for MOOCs without ever intending to finish the entire course). As with other things, people get out of something what they put into that thing.
A Decade of MOOCs: A Review of Stats and Trends for Large-Scale Online Courses in 2021 — from edsurge.com by Dhawal Shah
Excerpts:
Now, a decade later, MOOCs have reached 220 million learners, excluding China where we don’t have as reliable data, . In 2021, providers launched over 3,100 courses and 500 microcredentials.
…
Originally, MOOC providers relied on universities to create courses. But that dependence is declining as more and more of the courses are created by companies every year. These corporate partners in course creation include tech giants Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.
…the majority of the new courses launched on Coursera in 2021 are not from universities anymore.
…
These mass online courses were born without a business model. Yet within a decade, MOOCs went from no revenue to bringing in well over a half a billion dollars annually.
The next age of the internet could suck power away from Big Tech while living on the same backbone as cryptocurrencies. Here’s what to know about Web3. — from businessinsider.com by Katie Canales
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
- Web3 is the next generation of the internet and will exist on the blockchain.
- It will be decentralized, meaning it won’t be controlled entities like Facebook or Google.
- Twitter, GameStop, Reddit, and VC firm a16z are all putting resources into building Web3.
…
One aspect of the metaverse is that users will hopefully be able to go virtually from platform to platform with one single account — just like we will in Web3.
And NFTs, one-of-a-kind tokens representing your ownership of a virtual good, could be more easily bought and sold with cryptocurrencies within a space like Web3.
From DSC:
How might “Web3” translate into the future of lifelong learning? Here’s one vision/possibility:
Each person would have a learner profile/account that could seamlessly log into multiple education/training providers’ platforms and services. The results of that learning could be stored in one’s cloud-based learner profile. This type of next-generation learning platform would still need subject matter experts, instructional designers, programmers, and other team members. But the focus would be on building skills — skills that an artificial intelligence-backed interface would demonstrate are currently being requested by the modern workplace. This constantly-being-updated list of skills could then link to the learning-related experiences and resources that people could choose from in order to develop those skills.
The following vision/graphic also comes to my mind:
