Survey: Students Choosing Online Programs Closer to Home — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

 

Mentioned in that article:

 

Also see:

“It’s encouraging to see that a majority of students who are studying fully online are reporting great value and satisfaction with their online programs which are largely tied to ambitious career goals,” said Todd Zipper, president and CEO of Learning House, in a prepared statement. “With an increasing population of savvier consumers with high expectations, institutions need to do better at offering more quality, diverse programs that are sensitive to cost in order to keep up with the growing demands of online college students.”

 

From DSC:
If, in the year 2019, most students say online learning is as good or better than face-to-face, what will they say come 2025?  2035? 

Many people will still prefer to have F2F-based learning experiences no matter what year it is. That said, as the innovation continues to occur mainly in the digital/online/virtual realms, F2F will likely find it harder and harder to compete. My advice to current faculty members? Get experience teaching online — and do so as soon as you possibly can.

 

 

‘Robots’ Are Not ‘Coming for Your Job’—Management Is — from gizmodo.com by Brian Merchant; with a special thanks going out to Keesa Johnson for her posting this out on LinkedIn

A robot is not ‘coming for’, or ‘stealing’ or ‘killing’ or ‘threatening’ to take away your job. Management is.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

At first glance, this might like a nitpicky semantic complaint, but I assure you it’s not—this phrasing helps, and has historically helped, mask the agency behind the *decision* to automate jobs. And this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs (though it is also made in the interests of bolstering efficiency and improving operations and safety). It is a human decision that ultimately eliminates the job.

 

From DSC:
I’ve often said that if all the C-Suite cares about is maximizing profits — instead of thinking about their fellow humankind and society as a whole —  we’re in big trouble.

If the thinking goes, “Heh — it’s just business!” <– Again, then we’re in big trouble here.

Just because we can, should we? Many people should be reflecting upon this question…and not just members of the C-Suite.

 

 

 

Law’s Looming Skills Crisis — from forbes.com by Mark Cohen

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The good news is that legal professionals have more career paths, lifestyle options, and geographic nimbleness than ever before. The bad news is that relatively few in the industry are prepared to fill the new roles.

A growing list of clients demand transformed legal services. What does that mean? Legal professionals must meld law, technology, and business and apply principles of digital transformation to the legal function. They must be proactive, data-driven, client-centric, and collaborative*. They must appreciate that clients want solutions to business challenges, not legal tomes.

Legal culture responds to the warp speed change—when it does at all– with buzzwords, denial, and self-congratulation. The packed calendar of industry award dinners celebrating pioneers, innovation, diversity, and other self-declared advances belies data exposing law’s dreadful scorecard on diversity, gender pay equality, advancement opportunities for non-white males, and other legal guild cultural holdovers. Then there’s the disconnect between the lawyer and client view of industry performance. Law’s net promoter score lags other professions and almost all industries. Legal culture needs a jolt; client-centricity, the ability to respond rapidly and effectively to new risk factors and challenges, data-driven judgments, and agile workforces are among law’s transformational musts.

Legal culture is slow to embrace data, technology, new delivery models, multidisciplinary practice, regulatory reform, collaboration, diversity, gender pay equality, the distinction between the practice of law and the delivery of legal services, client-centricity, and digital transformation. Law is rooted in precedent; it looks to the past to prepare for the future. That is no longer the world we live in.

 

From DSC:
*And I would add the ability to look into the future, develop some potential scenarios and some responses to those potential scenarios…in other words, practice some methods used in futurism.

I would encourage my colleagues within the legal education world — which includes the American Bar Association (ABA) — but also judges, lawyers, legislators, attorney generals, public defenders, and many others to realize that we need to massively pick up the pace if we are to help tame the wild west of emerging technologies these days!

 

 

 

 

U of I to end on-campus MBA classes — from chicagobusiness.com by Lynne Marek
The Gies College of Business in Urbana-Champaign will direct more resources to its fast-growing online MBA program, among others. “The iMBA is the right format for the times,” according to the dean.

Excerpt:

The university has seen significant growth in its online MBA program since launching it in 2016. Enrollment in that ‘iMBA’ program increased more than tenfold to 1,955 for the most recent school year, up from 114 students in the first year. Meanwhile, the on-campus MBA student population has been declining, as it has at other U.S. universities, slipping to just 98 students in the most recent school year, from 149 in 2016. That’s happening at U.S. universities across the U.S. as more specialized graduate business degrees gain traction.

 

From DSC:
For busy working adults (who are also often parents), the online format is hard to beat in terms of convenience and using one’s time wisely.

 

Introduction: Leading the social enterprise—Reinvent with a human focus
2019 Global Human Capital Trends
— from deloitte.com by Volini?, Schwartz? ?, Roy?, Hauptmann, Van Durme, Denny, and Bersin

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Learning in the flow of life. The number-one trend for 2019 is the need for organizations to change the way people learn; 86 percent of respondents cited this as an important or very important issue. It’s not hard to understand why. Evolving work demands and skills requirements are creating an enormous demand for new skills and capabilities, while a tight labor market is making it challenging for organizations to hire people from outside. Within this context, we see three broader trends in how learning is evolving: It is becoming more integrated with work; it is becoming more personal; and it is shifting—slowly—toward lifelong models. Effective reinvention along these lines requires a culture that supports continuous learning, incentives that motivate people to take advantage of learning opportunities, and a focus on helping individuals identify and develop new, needed skills.

 

People, Power and Technology: The Tech Workers’ View — from doteveryone.org.uk

Excerpt:

People, Power and Technology: The Tech Workers’ View is the first in-depth research into the attitudes of the people who design and build digital technologies in the UK. It shows that workers are calling for an end to the era of moving fast and breaking things.

Significant numbers of highly skilled people are voting with their feet and leaving jobs they feel could have negative consequences for people and society. This is heightening the UK’s tech talent crisis and running up employers’ recruitment and retention bills. Organisations and teams that can understand and meet their teams’ demands to work responsibly will have a new competitive advantage.

While Silicon Valley CEOs have tried to reverse the “techlash” by showing their responsible credentials in the media, this research shows that workers:

    • need guidance and skills to help navigate new dilemmas
    • have an appetite for more responsible leadership
    • want clear government regulation so they can innovate with awareness

Also see:

  • U.K. Tech Staff Quit Over Work On ‘Harmful’ AI Projects — from forbes.com by Sam Shead
    Excerpt:
    An alarming number of technology workers operating in the rapidly advancing field of artificial intelligence say they are concerned about the products they’re building. Some 59% of U.K. tech workers focusing on AI have experience of working on products that they felt might be harmful for society, according to a report published on Monday by Doteveryone, the think tank set up by lastminute.com cofounder and Twitter board member Martha Lane Fox.

 

 
 

3 million older Americans can’t find high-paying jobs, and it has nothing to do with skills. Here’s the one barrier they face that no one’s addressing. — from businessinsider.com by Allana Akhtar

Excerpts (emphasis below by DSC):

  • The share of older workers in the US labor force is increasing rapidly, causing new discussions on how to train a 55-plus population for highly skilled jobs.
  • Much of the jobs older workers take come from low-wage industries. One solution to get older workers high-paying jobs is to train them in skills these industries need.
  • Still, activists say that without addressing ageism, older workers will not find high-paying work at the same rate younger workers do.

 

In light of the aging workforce, experts say getting an education at age 22 will not last if Americans work into their 80s. 

 

Yet activists argue the biggest barrier to entry for older workers isn’t a lack of skills: ***it’s ageism.*** 

 

An investigation by ProPublica last year found more than half of US workers are pushed out of longtime jobs before they choose to retire. Seniors who want to work yet cannot find the opportunity to do so are often broke: the share of US workers who have suffered financially damaging, employer driven job separation after 50 increased from 10% in 1998 to 30% as of 2016, ProPublica found.

“Most older adults really have come to face that they are not going to make the same salaries,” Fisher said. “People who lose their jobs in their 50s are really in big trouble. It is very hard to get another job.”

 

 

5 new legal professions under the impact of legal tech — from medium.com by Valentin Pivovarov

Excerpt:

Professionals who work in the field of jurisprudence should take into account the coming changes. It is necessary to realize the significance of the transition from an industrial society operating with printed texts to an information society operating with Internet-oriented resources. Legal innovations implementation will allow specialists to change their routines and make their work more effective. It is already important to retrain and look for new opportunities. And it doesn’t matter whether you work in a large law company or your own legal tech startup. The game is changing.

 

How the internet of things will change your life — from uk.rs-online.com

 

‘Internet of Things’ is transforming health care, Geneia president says — from unionleader.com by Kim Haas

 

What are the issues with Fog Computing? — from yourtechdiet.com by Brian Curtis

Advantages:

• It reduces the amount of data transferred to the cloud by having an edge location.
• Supports mobility and improves system response time.
• It minimizes network latency and conserves network bandwidth.
• Data can be processed with no bandwidth availability.
• Acts like an intermediate b/w IOT devices and Cloud computing infrastructure.

Disadvantages:

• It has some wireless security issues and privacy concerns.
• Authentication issues and trusted certificates concern

Fog computing helps in building some of the Smart Hi-Tech Cities, Buildings, Vehicle networks and Software Defined Networks (SDN).

 

Smart building complexity is creating dangerous new hacking opportunities — from techradar.com by Ian Heritage
Complex IoT environments can spell bad news for IT professionals

 

How 5G will fast track the internet of things — from .inkstonenews.com by Zheping Huang

Excerpt:

In Hangzhou, police officers are notified of major car accidents soon after they happen, traffic lights automatically adjust to changes in the volume of vehicles on the road and, in emergencies, fire trucks and ambulances are not stopped by a single red light until they arrive at the scene.

The city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province is one of the country’s major tech hubs. Its smart infrastructure powers the City Brain project, a cloud computing and AI-driven urban traffic-management system. It covers a total area of 162 square miles – that’s seven times the size of Manhattan.

When 5G mobile services start to roll out worldwide next year, smart cities such as Hangzhou will get even smarter as next-generation wireless technology helps industries realize the full potential of the internet of things (IoT).

“5G, from the beginning of its infrastructure design, has the internet of things in mind,” said Cui Kai, a Beijing-based IoT analyst with research firm International Data Corporation (IDC).

The stakes are high for industries around the world, as global spending on IoT is forecast to exceed $1 trillion in 2022, up from an estimated $745 billion this year, according to IDC.

 

With peak data rates up to 20 times faster than 4G, 5G will serve as “the connective tissue” for IoT, autonomous cars, smart cities and new mobile applications – providing the backbone for the industrial internet, according to a Deloitte report.

 

 

How the Internet of Things (IoT) can change the face of your business — from yourtechdiet.com by Brian Curtis

What is an IoT platform?
IOT platform is the support software which connects hardware, data networks and access points to other parts, i.e. to end-user application. Moreover, the IOT platform helps to automate their environment. So you can consider it as a middleware solution between data and the user.

Here are the five reasons why your business needs IoT.

  • Helps to know your customer better
  • Strengthen business operations
  • IoT can help to automate the jobs so your resource can work on what’s more required for your business.
  • Supply-chain analytics- IOT can manage your inventory so that you can save tons of time.

 

 

2019 State of Corporate Law Departments Report — from Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, the International Bar Association (IBA), the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), and UK-based legal research firm Acritas

 

 

Because many corporate law departments are faced with dynamic and wide-ranging problems, the solutions require a highly diverse set of skills and capabilities. Teams of lawyers alone are no longer enough to solve all problems in optimal ways. That’s why law departments must provide legal support to corporations that not only enables them to maximize their competitive advantage, but also safeguards the organization against unnecessary risk.

The State of Corporate Law Departments 2019 — a new report that was recently published by Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute, the International Bar Association (IBA), the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC), and UK-based legal research firm Acritas — examines the landscape for corporate law departments and explains that in order to maximize the value of legal services being delivered, corporate law departments must make their best efforts to improve the impact of those legal services while at the same time reducing the cost of those services.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

However, this report suggests that in order to maximize the value delivered, it’s time to pay as much attention to improving the impact of legal services the corporate law departments are delivering as it is to reducing the cost of those services.

Indeed, today’s legal problems are dynamic and wide-ranging, and the solutions require a highly diverse set of skills and capabilities. Teams of lawyers alone are no longer enough to solve problems in optimal ways. All types of professional need to work together collaboratively, often from different organizations, and they need the support of modern working processes and systems.

Innovative law departments and innovative law firms score significantly higher across all key performance areas, including the ultimate measures of quality and value.

Innovation incorporates a whole host of different areas, such as embracing legal technologies, utilizing expert professionals holistically with lawyers, overhauling work processes and pricing models, and building collaborative partnerships between in-house teams and their outside law firms and alternative legal services suppliers.

To that end, the report identified a number of key levers that corporate law departments can use to create a higher performing legal function and enhance the impact that their departments makes on the overall success of the organization.

The solution to this challenge reinforces the key findings of this report as a whole — the need to tap into a diverse range of skills beyond legal expertise, to access new technologies, and to report on the progress made.

 

 

Blockchain stats, facts, & trends in 2019 and beyond — from yourtechdiet.com by Brian Curtis

Blockchain Predictions for 2019 & Beyond

  • Market value projection of the blockchain industry will be $60 billion by 2020.
  • By the end of 2019, global spending on blockchain solutions is projected to reach about 2.9 billion U.S. dollars and also projected to reach 11.7 billion by 2022.
  • In 2022, the U.S’ expenditures on blockchain solutions is projected to reach 4.2 billion U.S. dollars, thus making it the largest spender.
  • Finance is the biggest Blockchain value sector with a market share of 60.5 percent.
  • The market value of blockchain in the food and agriculture market, globally, is projected to climb 1.4 billion U.S. dollars by 2028.
  • In a research, 30 percent of respondents considered China to be the territory leader in blockchain technology development from 2021-2023.
  • The blockchain spending of China is forecasted to grow to 1.42 billion U.S. dollars by 2022.
  • The blockchain market value in South Korea is forecasted to reach 356.2 billion by 2022.
  • It is projected that, by 2025, 55 percent of healthcare applications will adopt blockchain for commercial deployment.

 

Also see:

 

 

Blockchain could be used by at least 50% of all companies within 3 years, Oracle exec says — from forbes.com by Monica Melton with thanks to Michael Mathews for his LinkedIn-based posting on this

Excerpt:

Ten years after the idea of blockchain was conceived, the technology that underpins cryptocurrencies is starting to be used by large enterprises as a secure way to track goods. But mass utilization is still years away, and it won’t be for every company, said a panel of blockchain executives.

“My projection is that between 50% and 60% of companies will use blockchain in the next few years,” said Frank Xiong, Oracle’s group vice president of blockchain product development at the Forbes CIO Summit in Half Moon Bay, California, Monday.

 

 

Skills gap? Augmented reality can beam in expertise across the enterprise — from by Greg Nichols
Hives of subject matter experts could man augmented reality switchboards, transferring knowledge to field.

Excerpt:

Some 10 million manufacturing jobs will likely be needed in the coming decade, yet many of those will likely go unfilled, according to Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute. Somewhat ironically, one of the biggest factors holding back a strong American manufacturing segment in 2019 may not be cheap foreign labor but unqualified U.S. labor.

Augmented reality, which is still trying to find its stride in the enterprise, could help by serving as a conduit for on-the-job knowledge transfer.

“We are excited to offer industrial enterprises a new way to use AR to leverage the tribal knowledge of subject matter experts (SMEs) and help alleviate the skills gap crisis threatening today’s industrial enterprise,” says Mike Campbell, EVP, augmented reality products, PTC.

 

10 predictions for the future of the IoT — from bbntimes.com by Ahmed Banafa

 

 

Also see:

  • How Artificial Intelligence will kickstart the Internet of Things — from bbntimes.com by Ahmed Banafa
    Excerpt:
    Examples of such IoT data: 

    • Data that helps cities predict accidents and crimes
    • Data that gives doctors real-time insight into information from pacemakers or biochips
    • Data that optimize productivity across industries through predictive maintenance on equipment and machinery
    • Data that creates truly smart homes with connected appliances
    • Data that provides critical communication between self-driving cars

 

 
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