The $330 billion corporate training market is enormous, fragmented, and complex. For years it was dominated by Learning Management Systems (LMS) and content providers, each pioneered in the early 2000s. These systems served well, but the needs of employees and organizations moved ahead.
Today companies want not only a place to find and administer learning, they want a “Learning Platform” that creates mastery. And this market, that of “Learning Delivery Platforms,” is far more complex than you think. Let me put it straight: video-based chapter by chapter courses don’t teach you much. Companies want a solution that is expert-led, engaging, includes assignments and coaching, and connects employees to experts and peers.
Well there’s a new breed of platforms focused in this area, and I call them Capability Academy systems.
These are platforms explicitly to bring together expert teachers, AI-enabled collaboration, assignments, and coaching to drive mastery. They can train thousands of people in small cohorts, offering hands-on support for technical or PowerSkills topics. And the results are striking: these vendors achieve 90% completion rates and netPromoter scores above 60 (far above traditional content libraries).
The guide is packed with tools that can meet so many of your needs as a teacher, and many of them are already well established and widely used. But every January, we like to choose six that we think deserve a little extra attention. Most are not actually brand-new to the world, but each one has something special about it. So here we go!
6 Google Scholar Tips From Its Co-Creator— from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang Google Scholar can be a great tool for teachers and their students. Here’s how to get the most out of it.
Excerpt:
Anurag Acharya co-created Google Scholar in 2004. The Google engineer and former professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara was inspired to create the free search tool after being frustrated by being unable to access research articles as a student at the Kharagpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology.
Today, Acharya is head of Google Scholar and an authority on how the scholarly search engine can best be used by teachers and their students. He offers these tips and best practices for teachers to use and share with their students.
Teaching: A Path to L&D aims to provide free guidance to teachers looking to move into the world of Learning and Development, specifically Instructional Design. Check out our website at www.teachlearndev.org for free coaching, webinars, and resources to help you on your journey!
Here’s the list of sources: https://t.co/fJd4rh8kLy. The larger resource area at https://t.co/bN7CReGIEC has sample ChatGPT essays, strategies for mitigating harm, and questions for teachers to ask as well as a listserv.
— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) January 11, 2023
Microsoft is reportedly eyeing a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the startup that created the viral chatbot ChatGPT, and is planning to integrate it into Office products and Bing search.The tech giant has already invested at least $1 billion into OpenAI. Some of these features might be rolling out as early as March, according to The Information.
This is a big deal. If successful, it will bring powerful AI tools to the masses.So what would ChatGPT-powered Microsoft products look like? We asked Microsoft and OpenAI. Neither was willing to answer our questions on how they plan to integrate AI-powered products into Microsoft’s tools, even though work must be well underway to do so. However, we do know enough to make some informed, intelligent guesses. Hint: it’s probably good news if, like me, you find creating PowerPoint presentations and answering emails boring.
I have maintained for several years, including a book ‘AI for Learning’, that AI is the technology of the age and will change everything. This is unfolding as we speak but it is interesting to ask who the winners are likely to be.
People who have heard of GPT-3 / ChatGPT, and are vaguely following the advances in machine learning, large language models, and image generators. Also people who care about making the web a flourishing social and intellectual space.
That dark forest is about to expand. Large Language Models (LLMs) that can instantly generate coherent swaths of human-like text have just joined the party.
It is in this uncertain climate that Hassabis agrees to a rare interview, to issue a stark warning about his growing concerns. “I would advocate not moving fast and breaking things.”
…
“When it comes to very powerful technologies—and obviously AI is going to be one of the most powerful ever—we need to be careful,” he says. “Not everybody is thinking about those things. It’s like experimentalists, many of whom don’t realize they’re holding dangerous material.” Worse still, Hassabis points out, we are the guinea pigs.
Demis Hassabis
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Hassabis says these efforts are just the beginning. He and his colleagues have been working toward a much grander ambition: creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, by building machines that can think, learn, and be set to solve humanity’s toughest problems.Today’s AI is narrow, brittle, and often not very intelligent at all. But AGI, Hassabis believes, will be an “epoch-defining” technology—like the harnessing of electricity—that will change the very fabric of human life. If he’s right, it could earn him a place in history that would relegate the namesakes of his meeting rooms to mere footnotes.
But with AI’s promise also comes peril.In recent months, researchers building an AI system to design new drugs revealed that their tool could be easily repurposed to make deadly new chemicals. A separate AI model trained to spew out toxic hate speech went viral, exemplifying the risk to vulnerable communities online. And inside AI labs around the world, policy experts were grappling with near-term questions like what to do when an AI has the potential to be commandeered by rogue states to mount widespread hacking campaigns or infer state-level nuclear secrets.
Headteachers and university lecturers have expressed concerns that ChatGPT, which can provide convincing human-sounding answers to exam questions, could spark a wave of cheating in homework and exam coursework.
Now, the bot’s makers, San Francisco-based OpenAI, are trying to counter the risk by “watermarking” the bot’s output and making plagiarism easier to spot.
Students need now, more than ever, to understand how to navigate a world in which artificial intelligence is increasingly woven into everyday life. It’s a world that they, ultimately, will shape.
We hail from two professional fields that have an outsize interest in this debate. Joanne is a veteran journalist and editor deeply concerned about the potential for plagiarism and misinformation. Rebecca is a public health expert focused on artificial intelligence, who champions equitable adoption of new technologies.
We are also mother and daughter. Our dinner-table conversations have become a microcosm of the argument around ChatGPT, weighing its very real dangers against its equally real promise. Yet we both firmly believe that a blanket ban is a missed opportunity.
ChatGPT: Threat or Menace? — from insidehighered.com by Steven Mintz Are fears about generative AI warranted?
The rapid pace of change is driven by a “perfect storm” of factors, including the falling cost of computing power, the rise of data-driven decision-making, and the increasing availability of new technologies. “The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent,”concluded Andrew Doxsey, co-founder of Libra Incentix, in an interview. “Unlike previous technological revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving exponentially rather than linearly. Furthermore, it disrupts almost every industry worldwide.”
An updated version of the AI chatbot ChatGPT was recently released to the public.
I got the chatbot to write cover letters for real jobs and asked hiring managers what they thought.
The managers said they would’ve given me a call but that the letters lacked personality.
.
I mentor a young lad with poor literacy skills who is starting a landscaping business. He struggles to communicate with clients in a professional manner.
I created a GPT3-powered Gmail account to which he sends a message. It responds with the text to send to the client. pic.twitter.com/nlFX9Yx6wR
When I first came across the title “Instructional Designer” while looking for alternative career options, I was just as confused as anybody would be hearing about our job for the first time. I remember asking questions like: What does an Instructional Designer do? Why is it called Instructional Design? Wouldn’t a title such as Learning Experience Designer or Training Content Developer suit them better? How are their skill sets different from curriculum developers like teachers’? etc.
Then, the more I learnt about the different roles of Instructional Designers, and the more job interviews I had, ironically, the less clarity I had over the companies’ expectations of us.
The truth is that the role of an Instructional Designer varies from company to company. What a person hired with the title “Instructional Designer” ends up doing depends on a range of factors such as the company’s training portfolio, the profile of their learners, the size of the L&D team, the way they use technology, just to mention a few.
From DSC: I don’t know a thing about idolcourses.com, but I really appreciated running across this posting by Ivett Csordas about the various job titles out there and the differences between some of these job titles. The posting deals with job titles associated with developers, designers, LXD, LMS roles, managers, L&D Coordinators, specialists, consultants, and strategists.
An idea that was used internally at McKinsey and Company as far back as the 1980s, the concept of a T-shaped skills profile (Figure 1) features:
A horizontal bar — the broad skill set comprising interpersonal, functional, and industry-specific skills
A vertical bar — in-depth, specialized knowledge in areas related to the employee’s field, specific role, and individual interests, focus topics, or experience .
By experimenting with online, cohort-based learning programs, we learned that peer learning is one of the most effective ways to broaden horizons. People can share real-world challenges or questions that arise during the work week and get a range of advice and tactics from their peers.
Peer learning gives a way to make learning stick by encouraging people to discuss ideas, explain themselves, actively listen to others, and refine their thinking.
It takes a village — from chieflearningofficer.com by Joe Mitchell Colleges, companies and training providers have a unique opportunity to work together to address tech worker shortages and create more opportunities and upward mobility.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
But what higher education institutions and companies need isn’t a totally new approach that ignores the old systems —it’s someone to act as connective tissue between them.Fortunately, an emerging cadre of education providers are doing just that: developing the curriculum to help students earn industry-recognized credentials that can help them get good jobs right away in high-demand fields, and then working with universities to get that curriculum to their students.
The environment seems ripe for this type of collaboration. A 2020 survey of business leaders found that 70 percent think higher education institutions should be more involved in job training. Nearly 90 percent say colleges and universities could help their students learn industry-specific knowledge and advanced technical skills.
Five Ways to Strengthen the Employee-Employer Relationship in 2023— from sloanreview.mit.edu by Ally MacDonald; with thanks to Roberto Ferraro for this resource Organizational experts offer insights on how to make meaningful changes to engage employees in the coming year.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Before 2020, the structure of jobs evolved sluggishly and unimaginatively, despite evidence that traditional ways of working often harmed employee well-being. The past two years have provided leaders with an opportunity to rethink how their employees work. Those seizing this chance are applying an R&D mindsetto how jobs are designed, with the goal of structuring work in ways that allow their employees to thrive while on the job and in their nonwork lives as well. It is these forward-thinking leaders who will make 2023 the most innovative year ever when it comes to how people work.
From DSC: I like the idea of an R&D mindset. Very nice.
From DSC:
Check out the items below. As with most technologies, there are likely going to be plusses & minuses regarding the use of AI in digital video, communications, arts, and music.
DC: What?!? Wow. I should have seen this coming. I can see positives & negatives here. Virtual meetings could become a bit more creative/fun. But apps could be a bit scarier in some instances, such as with #telelegal.
If the U.S. economy contracts over the next year or two, as a majority of experts anticipate, there will be an enormous need for education and training. Workers will want to reskill and retrain for a reshaped world of work. Colleges and universities will have a critical role to play in getting Americans back to work and on a path toward more stable careers.
The 39 million Americans with some college but no credential will be the key to recovery, and colleges and universities must redouble their efforts to get these learners back in school and on a path toward new careers.
From DSC: Given the above is true/occurs, my question is this: Has higher ed kept up curriculum- and content-wise?
In 2023, we are going to a huge increase in content creation generated by AI avatars. The use cases the infinite – from demos and tutorials to billboards and even ads.
? Here are 6 companies that are currently defining the future of content creation:
Daunt refused to play this game. He wanted to put the best books in the window. He wanted to display the most exciting books by the front door. Even more amazing, he let the people working in the stores make these decisions.
This is James Daunt’s super power: He loves books.
But I almost hate to say it, because the lesson is so simple.
If you want to sell music, you must love those songs. If you want to succeed in journalism, you must love those newspapers. If you want to succeed in movies, you must love the cinema.
But this kind of love is rare nowadays. I often see record labels promote new artists for all sorts of gimmicky reasons—even labels I once trusted such as Deutsche Grammophon or Concord. I’ve come to doubt whether the people in charge really love the music.
From DSC:
For those who dog the “doomsayers” of higher ed…
You need to realize many “doomsayers” are trying to get traditional institutions of higher education to change, experiment, lower their price tags, collaborate with K12 and/or with the corporate/vocational realms, and to innovate
While many of those same institutions haven’t closed (at least not yet), there are many examples of budget cuts, downsizing, layoffs, early retirements, etc.
Many of those same institutions are not the same as they were 20-30 years ago — not even close. This is becoming especially true for liberal arts colleges.
Here’s one example that made me post this reflection:
NPR’s Sarah McCammon talks with Hechinger Report Author Jon Marcus about the financial woes of rural universities and why some are dropping dozens of programs.
Excerpt:
Many colleges and universities in rural America are slashing budgets as enrollment numbers continue to dwindle. And often, the first things to be cut are humanities programs like history and English. It’s forcing some students to consider transferring to other schools or leaving higher education altogether. Jon Marcus has been covering this erosion of funding at rural universities and its domino effects with The Hechinger Report, and he joins us now. Welcome to the program.
This may come as a surprise — adult learners over 25 make up nearly 40 percent of today’s U.S. undergraduate population at colleges and universities. However, these learners often find themselves treated as outliers by institutions designed for traditional students, which leads to poorer learner outcomes and, as a result, barriers to social mobility.
To ensure adult learners can meaningfully participate in your workforce education program, organizations can build on-ramps capable of accommodating all learners.
On-ramps provide employees access to high-quality academic programs, enable them to continue their educational journey toward a degree or certification by meeting them where they are, and hold a key role in paving the way for successful learner outcomes.
Some use cases of the convergence of AI and 5G are:
Metaverse: AI is a key technology that helps bring Metaverse to life and now with the addition of 5G, streaming experiences would become enjoyable and maintaining connectivity without any disruption of external factors like geographical locations would be eliminated.
Digital assistants in the form of chatbots and virtual avatars: Digital assistants today use AI to replicate the human brain and converse with people in human language by understanding intent. With 5G the speed at which the speech is converted to text will improve drastically.
Education: AI and 5G are helping bring education to students’ doorstep through virtual reality and is making this available, efficiently as in real-world classrooms. Solving queries is possible quickly without any restrictions. Betty in Archie Comics attending her classes virtually is a reality due to these technologies.
Healthcare: AI and 5G in healthcare are proliferating an accurate diagnosis of diseases, real-time monitoring, and quick treatment facilities. This has become possible with the right use of data- collection, transmission, and analysis.
Automotive: AI and 5G together is making vehicles smarter and reducing the risk of mishaps on roads by employing various data-powered safety and driving efficiency measures in vehicles.
What I do take away from these surveys however, is that the majority of AI experts take the prospect of very powerful AI technology seriously. It is not the case that AI researchers dismiss extremely powerful AI as mere fantasy.
The huge majority thinks that in the coming decades there is an even chance that we will see AI technology which will have a transformative impact on our world. While some have long timelines, many think it is possible that we have very little time before these technologies arrive. Across the three surveys more than half think that there is a 50% chance that a human-level AI would be developed before some point in the 2060s, a time well within the lifetime of today’s young people.
Three reasons why NLP will go mainstream in healthcare in 2023 — from healthcareitnews.com by Bill Siwicki A natural language processing expert explains why he feels the technology’s kinks have been ironed out, its ROI has been proven and the timing is right for healthcare to take advantage of information-extraction tools.
13 tech predictions for 2023 — from enterprisersproject.com by Katie Sanders What can you expect in the world of IT next year? Business and IT leaders share their thoughts
Until now, AI has operated almost exclusively in the cloud. But increasingly diverse streams of data are being generated around the clock from sensors at the edge. These require real-time inference, which is leading more AI deployments to move to edge computing.
For airports, stores, hospitals and more, AI brings advanced efficiency, automation and even cost reduction, which is why edge AI adoption accelerated last year.
In 2023, expect to see a similarly challenging environment, which will drive the following edge AI trends.
Digital transformation: 5 trends to watch in 2023 — from enterprisersproject.com by Ritish Reddy As enterprises continue to digitally transform, IT leaders must look toward the future. Expect to see these trends in 2023
