change

The new labor market: No bachelor’s required? [Lanahan]

On 07/14/2022, in 21st century, Alternatives, business, career development, change, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, higher education, skills, society, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The new labor market: No bachelor’s required? — from hechingerreport.org by Lawrence Lanahan
More workers without degrees are landing jobs they’d have been shut out of before. Will it last?

Excerpt:

Thanks to a tight labor market, more good jobs are opening up to workers who lack a bachelor’s degree. A month after Maryland’s announcement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis directed government agencies in his state to embrace hiring workers for skills, not degrees. Private sector employers have been rolling back B.A. requirements too.

The Post-Covid New Normal is Looking Bipolar — from philonedtech.com by Phil Hill

Excerpt:

I think it is important to deal with evidence on enrollment trends on their own terms and not just in the context of Covid recovery, and not just based on pre-Covid trends. The data we’re seeing recently have some big implications for the health of institutions, for online and hybrid education, and for alternative educational programs (and even alternative scheduling of programs).

The observation that higher education fortunes differ between elites and more open access institutions is not new, but what is becoming clear is that increasing separation cannot be explained away by Covid.

Also relevant/see:

Supporting Students and Faculty in the New Normal — from campustechnology.com by Thomas Hoover, Richard Shrubb, Donna Johnson
As classrooms evolve to accommodate the flexibility and innovation of new learning models, it’s important to provide ample training and resources for all constituents. Here are three key areas to consider.

Several items from EducationWeek that show how serious the situation is becoming in K12

On 07/09/2022, in career development, change, dangers of the status quo, education, education reform, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, teachers, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Education Week -- The Top 7

Excerpt:

The struggle to keep classrooms fully staffed is getting increasingly desperate and it shows in this week’s top stories. A dozen states are amending—or considering amending—their teacher certification rules to expand their teacher pipelines. Districts are using 4-day school weeks as a carrot to draw job applicants. And then there’s emergency certification. In some states, the last-resort practice is becoming business as usual. Some educators wonder if that’s a good idea.

Across the country, policymakers are taking steps to relax their states’ certification requirements to get more teachers in the classroom and circumvent shortages.

Reviews by Education Week and the Education Commission of the States found about a dozen states that have recently amended—or are considering amending—teacher certification rules. Some are changing the criteria for licensure, others are expanding the qualifying score on state licensing tests, and some are dropping licensure tests altogether.

Those changes reflect a teacher pipeline in flux.

Source

Also relevant/see:

Principals Are on the Brink of a Breakdown — from edsurge.com by Emily Tate Sullivan
A recent survey found 85 percent of school principals are experiencing job-related stress and 48 percent are dealing with burnout. What can be done to keep them in their roles?

Teaching Financial Literacy — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
More states are adopting financial literacy requirements for students. Here are tips for teaching the topic.

Excerpt:

Teaching students about this financial misinformation is vital, Pelletier says. As is giving students the tools to understand cryptocurrency, NFTs, intense inflation, and student debt, along with more traditional lessons in financial literacy.

Financial Literacy: Teaching and Engagement Resources
There are free online resources with ready-to-go financial lesson plans, videos, and classroom exercises.

While not much time is spent in K-12 educating students about money, once they graduate, it will be an important topic for them. “Not a day will go by that they’re not thinking about money. How to make it, how to spend it, how to save it,” Pelletier says. “And yet it’s like the least thing you’re taught in school.”

From DSC:
I appreciated Erik’s article/topic here and I would add that I wish that we would teach high schoolers about legal-related items such as wills, trusts, power of attorney for health care and for finances, finding legal assistance, etc.

But even as I write this, I recall that my neighbor is leaving our local school district to move to another school district for her kids’ sake (her and her husband’s words, not mine). I get it. Teachers have sooooo much on their plate already. So I don’t mean to throw another item on their jammed-full job plates.

But I hope that we will look at how to redesign our lifelong learning ecosystems to make them even more relevant, helpful, practical, useful, and up-to-date/responsive. We would probably find that the youth would be more attentive if they sensed that the information they are being taught will definitely come in handy in their futures. Better yet, bring former students in via digital video to relay practical examples of things that they — or their parents, grandparents, friends, etc. — are experiencing to the current students.

Also relevant/see:

High School Students Say They Learn The Most Important Skills Outside of School — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The trend that could have a huge impact on education, at the K-12 and college level, Evans argues. For one thing, it’s a challenge to teachers—that they should do more to tap into the intrinsic motivation of students, that students can learn so much more if they’re excited about what they’re doing.

From DSC:
This item from EdSurge mentioned “free agent learning” — so I put a Google Alert out there for this phrase this morning, as I want to learn more about that topic/item.

What’s next for online education? — from educationalist.substack.com by Alexandra Mihai

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

An ecosystem not a dichotomy
As you’re hopefully already getting from my thoughts so far, I personally see our options for quality education in the future more like an ecosystem and not a series of mutually exclusive paths. It’s time to discard- or at least question-the “online vs. in person” dichotomy, almost always unfavourable to online education. It’s time to think in a more nuanced way about this. And, yes, you’ve guessed, more nuanced is always more difficult. Seeing the shades of grey requires a critical lens that we don’t need to see black and white.

The extent to which online education will be used in the future does not depend only on people (micro level), it depends on institutions (meso level) and policies (macro level).

The learning ecosystem, in my view:

- includes various modalities used in a complementary way and as a continuum;
- serves a multitude of audiences, at different stages of learning, with different aims and degrees of engagement;
- requires comprehensive and interconnected support structures at institutional level, for students and faculty.

Also from educationalist.substack.com by Alexandra Mihai, see:

Intentional learning design — from educationalist.substack.com by Alexandra Mihai

Excerpt:

My definition
Let’s start with a definition. By intentional learning design I mean designing learning experiences:

- Focusing on the “why”: ensuring that any decision taken at the design stage is aligned with the overall narrative of the course and, more precisely, with the learning objectives; this requires self-reflection, at least some knowledge of the main pedagogical principles, attention to detail and openness to see learning design as an iterative process and not a box on a checklist;
- Focusing on students’ experience: designing a course/ programme that is well tailored to students’ needs; this requires knowing your students well, making your design choices explicit to them and involving them in an ongoing dialogue.

Mid-term reflections on my American adventure

Excerpt:

A sneak peek into my research on Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTLs)
With a big part of the data collection already behind me, I thought I’d briefly share here some of my most important- and sometimes surprising- findings so far. While still pretty superficial, this can hopefully give you an insight into the discussions I’ve been having and hopefully make you curious to find out more once I’ll get to publish my results.

- Positioning of CTLs.
- Sense of CTL vulnerability.
- The backgrounds and personalities of CTL leaders.
- Integrated CTLs.
- Credibility.
- Who works in CTLs?
- Professional development and career paths in CTLs.
- CTL offer and programming.
- Graduate student support.
- Online education.

Will a “Google PhD” become as good as a university-granted PhD? [Dawson]

On 07/05/2022, in 21st century, Alternatives, career development, change, entrepreneurship, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, heutagogy, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, skills, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Will a “Google PhD” become as good as a university-granted PhD? — from rossdawson.com by Ross Dawson

Excerpt:

A fundamental issue now is the degree to which employers care about the piece of paper as against the knowledge and capability. That is rapidly shifting as companies realize they will often miss out on exceptionally talented people if they insist on formal qualifications.

Entrepreneurs of course only care whether they have the knowledge to do what they’re undertaking.

It is a shifting landscape. Traditional advanced degrees have their place and will not disappear.

But “Google PhDs” will in some cases be as good, if they result in an equivalent level of expertise.

Blurring the lines between education and workforce — from hechingerreport.org by Javeria Salman
A proposition to ‘blur’ the boundaries between K-12, higher ed, and the workforce industry

Excerpts:

One idea that’s been gaining steam since last year is to break down barriers between high school, college and career to create a system that bridges all three.

The concept is called the “Big Blur.”

“What would it look like to change the typical, or what we think of as the conventional high school experience and instead design something that was built for the modern economy?” said Vargas.

Vargas said that JFF is arguing for new programs or institutions that serve students in grades 11 through 14 (grades 13 and 14 being the first two years of college, under our current configuration). The institutions would be co-designed with regional employers so that all students get work-based learning experiences and graduate — without tuition costs — with a post-secondary credential that has labor market value.

The state of teaching and learning in K12 — from Instructure

What began as an unplanned shift to remote learning two years ago has grown into a movement—a transformation, really—that has given way to a more measured approach to intentionally designed digital learning. The adoption of new educational technologies and instructional strategies has evolved teaching and learning as we know it at an unprecedented pace.

Meet the metaverse: Creating real value in a virtual world [Hazan & Yee]

On 06/29/2022, in business, career development, change, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, Metaverse, online learning, participation, platforms, society, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, telecommunications, training / L&D, user experience (UX), vendors, Virtual courts and law firms, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, vocational / trades, webinars, youth, by Daniel Christian

Meet the metaverse: Creating real value in a virtual world — from mckinsey.com with Eric Hazan and Lareina Yee

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Welcome to the metaverse. Now, where exactly are we? Imagine for a moment the next iteration of the internet, seamlessly combining our physical and digital lives. It’s many things: a gaming platform, a virtual retail spot, a training tool, an advertising channel, a digital classroom, a gateway to entirely new virtual experiences. While the metaverse continues to be defined, its potential to unleash the next wave of digital disruption is clear. In the first five months of 2022, more than $120 billion have been invested in building out metaverse technology and infrastructure. That’s more than double the $57 billion invested in all of 2021.

How would you define the metaverse?
Lareina: What’s exciting is that the metaverse, like the internet, is the next platform on which we can work, live, connect, and collaborate. It’s going to be an immersive virtual environment that connects different worlds and communities. There are going to be creators and alternative currencies that you can buy and sell things with. It will have a lot of the components of Web3 and gaming and AR, but it will be much larger.

Also relevant/see:

Value creation in the metaverse — from mckinsey.com

Also relevant/see:

Omar Wael built his first robot at the age of nine. ?

Now he's 13 and building a metaverse using his mother's old clothes. ?

See more ? pic.twitter.com/WxYMnaOQvt

— Euronews Next (@euronewsnext) June 28, 2022

Changing the narrative on degree requirements [Fain]

On 06/24/2022, in 21st century, Alternatives, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, society, sociology, United States, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Changing the narrative on degree requirements — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Paul Fain; with thanks to Ryan Craig (I believe) for this resource
An ad campaign from Opportunity@Work and the Ad Council will call on employers to drop the “paper ceiling” and hire more skilled workers without four-year degrees.

Excerpt:

A new national advertising campaign will seek to influence employers to look beyond the four-year degree in hiring, with the message that a “paper ceiling” holds back half the U.S. workforce.

The ads from Opportunity@Work and the Ad Council are slated to start running in September. With slick production and some big corporate partners, including Walmart and Google, the campaign is designed to nudge hiring managers across the country to make good on the growing number of pledges from company C-suites, state capitals, and the White House to drop barriers for skilled job seekers who lack bachelor’s degrees.

This group of more than 70M Americans includes community college graduates, experienced workers, veterans of the U.S. military, and completers of job training programs or alternatives to college, according to the nonprofit Opportunity@Work. The ads will celebrate these workers, which the group says are skilled through alternative routes (STARs).

Also relevant, see:

Americans support student loan forgiveness, but would rather rein in college costs — from npr.org by Cory Turner; with thanks to Bryan Alexander for posting this on LinkedIn

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Erasing old debts vs. fixing the system
In one of the poll’s most unexpected findings, respondents were asked to choose which sentence they agreed with more:

1. “The government should prioritize making college more affordable for current and future students”
2. “The government should prioritize forgiving some debt for those with existing student loans”

A whopping 82% said the government’s priority should be making college more affordable for current and future students. Just 16% believed forgiving student debts should take priority.

“What that tells me is that, while student loan forgiveness for some is seen as a good proposal and a short-term fix, where we actually need to go from here is true, systematic change,” Newall says.

The Future of Education | By Futurist Gerd Leonhard | A Video for EduCanada

On 06/23/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, Canada, career development, change, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Design Thinking, economics, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, ethics, Europe, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, health, higher education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, morals/values, Natural Language Processing (NLP), pace of change, reinvent, skills, society, sociology, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), training / L&D, trends, universities, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The Future of Education | By Futurist Gerd Leonhard | A Video for EduCanada — from futuristgerd.com

Per Gerd:

Recently, I was invited by the Embassy of Canada in Switzerland to create this special presentation and promotional video discussing the Future of Education and to explore how Canada might be leading the way. Here are some of the key points I spoke about in the video. Watch the whole thing here: the Future of Education.

…because by 2030, I believe, the traditional way of learning — just in case — you know storing, downloading information will be replaced by learning just in time, on-demand, learning to learn, unlearning, relearning, and the importance of being the right person. Character skills, personality skills, traits, they may very well rival the value of having the right degree.

…

If you learn like a robot…you’ll never have a job to begin with.

Gerd Leonhard

Also relevant/see:

The Next 10 Years: Rethinking Work and Revolutionising Education (Gerd Leonhard’s keynote in Riga) — from futuristgerd.com

We need to go beyond the focus on STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) towards HECI (humanity, ethics, creativity, imagination) — from futuristgerd.com by Gerd Leonhard
…an important realisation that recently dawned on me. What will our schools, colleges and universities do about this?

“It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark.”

Gerd Leonhard

We need to go beyond the focus on STEM (science, tech, engineering, math) towards HECI (humanity, ethics, creativity, imagination)

Also see:

Demarginalizing Design: 3 powerful ways to get started — from ditchthattextbook.com by Dee Lanier

Excerpt:

Get proximate to the pain

Gather the people that are most affected by the problem.
Listen for pain. Emotions such as outrage and frustration are insights into the source of the problem.
Design with them, not for them. Your job is to facilitate the discussion that allows them to come up with their own solutions that affect their community.

From DSC:
You will notice some more postings regarding “Design Thinking” on this Learning Ecosystems blog from time to time. I’m continuing to do this because as we move more toward a reality of lifelong learning, we should probably rethink the entire cradle-to-grave design of our learning ecosystems.

New Pathways: Experiencing Success In What’s Next — from Getting Smart

Excerpt:

Some of you were able to attend our official kick-off event yesterday (on 6/21/22), but for those who weren’t able to make it we wanted to let you know that our new campaign, New Pathways, has officially begun!. Over the next few years, and in partnership with ASA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Stand Together and the Walton Foundation, we will be dedicated to tracking innovations in the following six pillars:

We believe that when combined, these pillars enable learners to find success in what’s next in their professional lives, their personal lives and in their communities.

From DSC:
Inflation way up. Real wages way down. Not a good mix for higher education. And faculty members aren’t the only ones impacted here. These developments may cause the rise of additional alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education out there.

One of the resources mentioned in Isha Trivedi’s article out at The Chronicle of Higher Education that’s entitled “Faculty-Pay Survey Records the Largest One-Year Drop Ever” was this one:

The Annual Report on the Economic Status of the Profession, 2021-22 — from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

Key Findings (emphasis DSC):
Provisional results were released in early April 2022, including summary tables and institution-level datasets. Key findings include:

From 2020–21 to 2021–22, average salaries for full-time faculty members increased 2.0 percent, consistent with the flat wage growth observed since the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
Real wages for full-time faculty fell below Great Recession levels in 2021, with average salary falling to 2.3 percent below the 2008 average salary, after adjusting for inflation.
Real wages for full-time faculty members decreased 5.0 percent after adjusting for inflation, the largest one-year decrease on record since the AAUP began tracking this measure in 1972.
In 2021–22, 97.2 percent of full-time faculty members were covered by retirement plans, a 2.8 percentage point increase from 2020–21.
Institutions reported full-time faculty salaries for women that are 81.9 percent of those for men in 2021–22, on average. The gender pay gap is greatest at the full professor rank.
From 2019–20 to 2021–22, the number of full-time women faculty members increased 1.6 percent, compared with a 2.5 percent decrease for men.
In 2020–21, average pay for adjunct faculty members to teach a course section ranged from $2,979 in public associate’s institutions without ranks to $5,557 in public doctoral institutions.
In fall 2020, about three in five (61.5 percent) faculty members were on contingent appointments.

Also relevant, see:

The Big Quit | Even tenure-line professors are leaving academe. – from chronicle.com by Joshua Doležal
Higher Ed’s Enrollment Crash Has Been Underway for Years — from chronicle.com by Audrey Williams June

Learning Ecosystems

The new labor market: No bachelor’s required? [Lanahan]

What’s next for online education? + two other items from “The Educationalist” — by Alexandra Mihai

Will a “Google PhD” become as good as a university-granted PhD? [Dawson]

Meet the metaverse: Creating real value in a virtual world [Hazan & Yee]

Changing the narrative on degree requirements [Fain]

More fuel for the disruption fire in higher education [Christian]

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