change

A fresh look at blockchain in higher ed [Schroeder]

On 11/07/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Blockchain, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, emerging technologies, higher education, platforms, society, tools, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

A fresh look at blockchain in higher ed — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
Blockchain is advancing in higher education, as it is in all of society, with some interesting new applications and ramifications.

Excerpt:

Perhaps more importantly, blockchain will facilitate the difficult shift in higher education that we are now navigating. We are moving from a degree-centric environment in which the university is engaged in the life cycle of the student while on campus to one that is more of a supply-chain design providing lifelong learning. In the emerging mode, the university will engage the student prior to their first arrival on campus (or online) through their degree experience and far beyond. Michael Matthews of the Tambellini Executive Advisory Council suggests the magnitude of the impact is akin to other seismic changes we have seen in recent decades:

Just like the iPod, iPad, and smart phone revolutionized the music industry, blockchain technologies will eventually break apart the systems we have been using. The ability to put purchased data such as music in the hands of users eventually changed the systems and devices that were once needed. The whole music industry shifted the way songs were purchased and delivered once the supply chain was created to accommodate the devices.

Food for thought: “Contested idea of the university” [Conway]

On 11/02/2019, in 21st century, change, colleges, community colleges, future, future of higher education, higher education, universities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Some food for thought:

Contested idea of the university — from Maree Conway

Five principles for thinking like a futurist [Gorbis]

On 11/02/2019, in 21st century, change, changing business models, computer science, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, new business models, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Five principles for thinking like a futurist — from er.educause.edu by Marina Gorbis
Thinking about the future allows us to imagine what kind of future we want to live in and how we can get there.

Excerpt:

In my twenty years at the Institute, I’ve developed five core principles for futures thinking:

Forget about predictions.
Focus on signals.
Look back to see forward.
Uncover patterns.
Create a community.

As the microcredential market booms, don’t forget the learner — from edsurge.com by Kathleen deLaski

Excerpt:

While this system of microcredentials theoretically will make learning more affordable, portable and relevant, will a diverse range of learners know how and why to take advantage of it? And perhaps more importantly, will they trust it?

The simple answer: only if we intentionally focus on designing around that question.

Also see:

The Learner Revolution — from eddesignlab.org
Reflections from five years of applied human-centered design at 100+ institutions

Excerpt:

Higher education is in the throes of a Learner Revolution that will fundamentally change the way students and institutions interact. We see the beginning of this movement now and will see all colleges and universities responding —- or not, at their peril — within a decade. Trends ranging from declining numbers of traditional students, to the rise of artificial intelligence, to the shrinking half-life of job skills have conspired toward this wake-up call moment for all but the most exclusive global higher education brands. At the same time, and partly because of the pressure, leaders are addressing the needs and goals of a changing student population. The calls for “student-centered” design can be heard throughout the ecosystem today, in a way that was just beginning when we started the Education Design Lab.

Colleges and universities must be much more deeply attuned to the twin pressures of learners’ decreasing appetite for debt and employers’ honing of their hiring requirements. That means, in part, an increasing focus on work-relevant skills and competencies—both technical skills and soft skills such as communication and systems thinking. Degrees as the most valuable workforce currency are beginning to give way to more nuanced competencies.

…

Yet, for the estimated three-quarters of students with at least one non-traditional characteristic, higher education has been in need of serious redesign for at least two decades.

Law librarians & the future of law firms [Furlong]

On 10/28/2019, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, library / librarians, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Law librarians & the future of law firms — from aallnet.org by Jordan Furlong

Excerpt:

Law firms that want to win the highest-value, most complex work from clients will need more than just smart lawyers. They will need powerful knowledge engines to augment and amplify the skills of those lawyers, while also constituting capital assets that accrue in size and value every year. Law libraries and legal information professionals hold the key to assembling and growing such engines, and they are, therefore, the key to the future sustainability and competitiveness of the firms themselves.

Delivering learning across a lifetime: Higher education’s new paradigm — from evolllution.com with thanks to Mr. Amrit Ahluwalia for his work on this

Excerpt:

Higher education is no longer a single engagement in an individual’s life, or a stop-off point between high school and a career.
Today, and into the future, higher education’s role is ongoing as the demands of the future labor market will require individuals to continuously up-skill and re-skill to remain relevant. As such, while the traditional two- or four-year postsecondary model will continue to play an important role, colleges and universities must expand their repertoire to consciously deliver learning across individuals’ lifetimes.

Read on to learn how the 100 Year Life is changing the fundamental learning needs of individuals across the labor market, and to understand how postsecondary institutions can evolve to fulfil their missions within this new paradigm.

From DSC:
This important perspective/trend reminds me of the graphic below…

Also see:

60 years of higher ed --really?

The employee of the future, he added, “typically will have a new job every five years, probably for 60 to 80 years, and probably every one of those will require skills you did not learn in college.”

“Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game” [Hao & Stray] Plus several other legal-related items.

On 10/17/2019, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, changing business models, collaboration, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, ethics, Europe, global / globalization, innovation, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, new business models, society, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao and Jonathan Stray
Play our courtroom algorithm game The US criminal legal system uses predictive algorithms to try to make the judicial process less biased. But there’s a deeper problem.

Excerpt:

As a child, you develop a sense of what “fairness” means. It’s a concept that you learn early on as you come to terms with the world around you. Something either feels fair or it doesn’t.

But increasingly, algorithms have begun to arbitrate fairness for us. They decide who sees housing ads, who gets hired or fired, and even who gets sent to jail. Consequently, the people who create them—software engineers—are being asked to articulate what it means to be fair in their code. This is why regulators around the world are now grappling with a question: How can you mathematically quantify fairness?

This story attempts to offer an answer. And to do so, we need your help. We’re going to walk through a real algorithm, one used to decide who gets sent to jail, and ask you to tweak its various parameters to make its outcomes more fair. (Don’t worry—this won’t involve looking at code!)

The algorithm we’re examining is known as COMPAS, and it’s one of several different “risk assessment” tools used in the US criminal legal system.

But whether algorithms should be used to arbitrate fairness in the first place is a complicated question. Machine-learning algorithms are trained on “data produced through histories of exclusion and discrimination,” writes Ruha Benjamin, an associate professor at Princeton University, in her book Race After Technology. Risk assessment tools are no different. The greater question about using them—or any algorithms used to rank people—is whether they reduce existing inequities or make them worse.

You can also see change in these articles as well:

Legal Innovation – It’s Not Just For Big Law — from artificiallawyer.com
Say the words ‘legal innovation’ and Big Law firms often come to mind. But, the reality is that the firms genuinely focused on innovation and leveraging legal tech to improve how they deliver legal services is a rapidly widening group, and far beyond just the massive global firms.
PwC Legal Arm Partners With Contract Startup ThoughtRiver — from by Simon Lock
The agreement will see PwC launch pre-screening products for clients in collaboration with ThoughtRiver by the first quarter of 2020.
Artificial Intelligence Is on the Case in the Legal Profession — from observer.com by Harmon Leon
Artificial intelligence (AI) is, in fact, becoming a mainstay component of the legal profession. In some circumstances, this analytics-crunching technology is using algorithms and machine learning to do work that was previously done by entry-level lawyers.
KPMG Legal Expands in Eastern Europe by Absorbing Tech-Centric Law Firm — from by Varsha Patel
KPMG absorbed Fernbach & Partners in a move to create “the leading technology, IP and privacy practice in Romania”.

DC: In the future…will there be a “JustWatch” or a “Suppose” for learning-related content?

On 10/17/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, blended learning, business side of he, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, convergence, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, distance education, e-books, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, flipping -- inverted learning, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, love of learning, media/film, microlearning, mobile learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, new business models, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, podcasting, professional development, second screen apps, simulations, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, society, storytelling, streams of content, student-related, surviving, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, telepresence, television, tools, training / L&D, TVs, universities, usability, user experience (UX), user interface design, vendors, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, webinars, by Daniel Christian

In case you missed it, WMU-Cooley’s President and Board of Directors took a look at our tuition rates and made the decision to reduce them by 21 percent starting Fall 2020! https://t.co/FjC6hk4vnE pic.twitter.com/NkCMAzoomE

— WMU-Cooley Law School (@WMUcooleylaw) October 16, 2019

From DSC:
Regular readers of this blog will know that for years, I’ve made it one of my goals to try and raise awareness of the need for institutions of higher education to lower their tuitions! For example, Yohan Na and I designed the graphic below way back in 2009.

Daniel S. Christian: My concerns with just maintaining the status quo

Through those years, I cringed when I kept hearing various Boards say, “We only increased our tuition by ___ % — the lowest percentage increase in our state.” The direction was completely wrong! It needed to go down, not up. If you work in higher ed, I encourage you to find a way for that to happen at your own institution.

So I’m very pleased to report that the WMU-Thomas M. Cooley Law School — where I work — was able to reduce tuition by 21%!!!

Don’t get me wrong, some tough decisions were made to pave the way for that to occur. But this will be the case no matter which institution of higher education that you look at. An institution will have to make some tough choices to reduce their tuition. But it HAS to occur. We can’t keep this upward trajectory going.

If we don’t change this trajectory, we will continue to put enormous gorillas (of debt) on our graduates’ backs! Such debt will take our graduates decades to pay off.

We need to be aware of these invisible gorillas of debt. That is, our students move on…and we don’t see them. But their gorillas remain.

Addendum on 10/18/19:

The 2019 Law School Experience — from info.cooley.edu

Victoria Vuletich, the assistant dean at the Grand Rapids, Michigan campus of Western Michigan University Cooley Law School, was interviewed by the State Bar of Michigan’s Legal Talk Network to discuss what the law school experience is like for the current generation of students.

Priorities for new lawyers are changing. Can the legal industry keep up? — — from law.com by Annie Datesh, Natasha Allen, and Nicole Hatcher, Atrium
As the legal field continues to move forward, it is well-primed to place greater value on technological advancements, diverse leadership, and healthy work cultures over settling for the status quo.

Excerpts:

Yet the legal industry these lawyers are joining is evolving, and now increasingly hosts a new cohort of professionals—those shaped by technology and innovation, and who value diversity, mentorship, and efficiency over homogeneous workplaces with minimal coaching and exhausted capacities.
…
Amid a strengthening job market, why are jobs in a generally well-respected industry being looked over in favor of other industries? One reason could be the legal industry’s notorious lack of progressiveness. The industry’s technology landscape is one such area of slow growth; its lack of diversity is another.

The legal industry’s long-standing dismissal of technology, while slowly changing, is fairly well known. While legal technology holds enormous potential for law firms, the industry as a whole has been famously slow to adopt modern technologies or meaningfully innovate on the traditional law firm business model. Why? For smaller firms, money can be tight, and solutions can be expensive.

The good news is that the legal industry is slowly but surely becoming more receptive to the benefits of evolving its traditional approach to the business and practice of law. Legal technologies continue to offer increased efficiencies to law firms, should they elect to adopt them, and the call for diversity and other cultural improvements within firms and the legal industry more broadly is on the rise.
…
Those players in the legal industry who are able to recognize prevailing industry trends now will be in the best position to act on them.

An inserted graphic from DSC:

The Future Ready Lawyer — from Wolters Kluwer

Excerpts:

Leveraging technology as a strategic advantage is characteristics of high-performing businesses and professionals around the world. The same is true for the legal sector. Technology is a differentiator, and will become even more important as legal professionals recognize and leverage the unprecedented insights, capabilities and efficiencies that technology delivers. In addition, the emerging legal ecosystems will demand it, as tech-empowered players outside of the traditional legal profession continue to enter and disrupt the market.

From DSC:
It’s interesting to note how many times the words “technology” (205 times) and/or the word “technologies” (77 times) appear in that report.

Big money is betting on legal industry transformation [Cohen]

On 10/07/2019, in Amazon, business, career development, change, changing business models, corporate / business world, Cost of legal services - including access, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, Google, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, platforms, technology (general), tools, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Big money is betting on legal industry transformation — from forbes.com by Mark Cohen

Excerpts:

Law has been big business for decades, but only recently has significant venture capital, private equity, and entrepreneur money been pumped into the legal sector. Last year saw an eye-popping 718% increase in legal industry investment, and this year’s capital infusion through the third-quarter has already surpassed last year’s $1 billion total and could well double it. Capital is turbocharging customer-centric providers that are leveraging technology, process, new skillsets, and data to transform the legal function and the delivery of legal services.

…
Teaser alert: what’s to prevent Amazon, Google, or some other tech giant from entering the legal space, creating a global platform, injecting billions into infrastructure and talent, creating a global legal services hub that connects consumers with global legal delivery sources as never before imagined? Short answer: the inclination to do so.

Legal delivery has morphed into a three-legged stool supported by legal, technological, and business expertise.

‘Goliath is winning’: The biggest U.S. banks are set to automate away 200,000 jobs — from gizmodo.com by Brian Merchant

Excerpt (excerpt):

Over the next decade, U.S. banks, which are investing $150 billion in technology annually, will use automation to eliminate 200,000 jobs, thus facilitating “the greatest transfer from labor to capital” in the industry’s history. The call is coming from inside the house this time, too—both the projection and the quote come from a recent Wells Fargo report, whose lead author, Mike Mayo, told the Financial Times that he expects the industry to shed 10 percent of all of its jobs.

This, Mayo said, will lay the groundwork for, and I quote, “a golden age of banking efficiency.” The job cuts are slated to hit front offices, call centers, and branches the hardest, where 20-30 percent of those roles will be on the chopping block. They will be replaced by better ATMs, automated chatbots, and software instruments that take advantage of big data and cloud computing to make investment decisions.

“The next decade should be the biggest decade for banks in technology in history,” Mayo said.

From DSC:
How does this impact entry level positions? How does this help a young graduate who is trying to get out of the Catch 22 with job experience? How are colleges and universities helping young people navigate these quickly changing landscapes?

IT laggards could lose up to $20 billion in revenue over the next 5 years, says Accenture [Dignan]

On 10/03/2019, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, data related items, ideas, innovation, internet, platforms, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, trends, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

IT laggards could lose up to $20 billion in revenue over the next 5 years, says Accenture — from zdnet.com by Larry Dignan
Accenture’s leaders see enterprise technologies as a system compared to independent fixes and bet on cloud, AI, big data analytics and IoT.

Excerpt:

Companies that fail to scale innovation may lose up to $20 billion in revenue over the next five years as enterprises thrive or dive based on information technology decisions, according to Accenture.

Accenture’s report was based on a survey of more than 8,300 companies across 20 industries and 22 countries. Accenture scored companies on technology adoption, depth of technology adoption and cultural readiness. From there, Accenture segmented companies into leaders, defined as the top 10%, and laggards, which represent the bottom 25%.

Also see:

Digital transformation: 3 change management mistakes to avoid — from enterprisersproject.com by Peter Bendor-Samuel
The degree of change and the pace of change both pick up during a digital transformation. Don’t let these common change management mistakes trip you up
up

The 7 biggest technology trends in 2020 everyone must get ready for now [Marr]

On 10/02/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, emerging technologies, future, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, internet, IT in HE, law schools, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, Natural Language Processing (NLP), pace of change, platforms, programming, society, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, tools, trends, United States, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

The 7 biggest technology trends in 2020 everyone must get ready for now — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

Excerpts:

AI-as-a-service
5G data networks
Autonomous Driving
Personalized and predictive medicine
Computer Vision
Extended Reality
Blockchain Technology

From DSC:
I appreciate this list from Bernard. I would also add voice-enabled interfaces/products (NLP) to this list, as well as more integration of AI into learning-related applications and services.

For the federal agencies, state representatives, senators, law schools, students in law school, lawyers, legislators, CIO’s, and CEO’s etc. out there: Are you/we ready for these? Given the pace of exponential change, how are you seeking to keep a pulse-check on these types of emerging technologies and their impacts on our society? How are you/we guiding the development of these emerging technologies?

Learning Ecosystems

A fresh look at blockchain in higher ed [Schroeder]

Food for thought: “Contested idea of the university” [Conway]

Five principles for thinking like a futurist [Gorbis]

The WMU-Cooley Law School reduces tuition by 21% — excellent!

Priorities for new lawyers are changing. Can the legal industry keep up? [Datesh, Allen, & Hatcher]

Big money is betting on legal industry transformation [Cohen]

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