future of higher education

AI Forces Shaping Work & Learning in 2030 [IFTF and Lumina Foundation]

On 10/18/2018, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, personalized/customized learning, platforms, programming, society, staying relevant, student-related, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

In the 2030 and beyond world, employers will no longer be a separate entity from the education establishment. Pressures from both the supply and demand side are so large that employers and learners will end up, by default, co-designing new learning experiences, where all learning counts.

OBJECTIVES FOR CONVENINGS

Identify the skills everyone will need to navigate the changing relationship between machine intelligence and people over the next 10-12 years.
Develop implications for work, workers, students, working learners, employers, and policymakers.
Identify a preliminary set of actions that need to be taken now to best prepare for the changing work + learn ecosystem.

Three key questions guided the discussions:

What are the LEAST and MOST essential skills needed for the future?
Where and how will tomorrow’s workers and learners acquire the skills they really need?
Who is accountable for making sure individuals can thrive in this new economy?

This report summarizes the experts’ views on what skills will likely be needed to navigate the work + learn ecosystem over the next 10–15 years—and their suggested steps for better serving the nation’s future needs.

In a new world of work, driven especially by AI, institutionally-sanctioned curricula could give way to AI-personalized learning. This would drastically change the nature of existing social contracts between employers and employees, teachers and students, and governments and citizens. Traditional social contracts would need to be renegotiated or revamped entirely. In the process, institutional assessment and evaluation could well shift from top-down to new bottom-up tools and processes for developing capacities, valuing skills, and managing performance through new kinds of reputation or accomplishment scores.

…

In October 2017, Chris Wanstrath, CEO of Github, the foremost code-sharing and social networking resource for programmers today, made a bold statement: “The future of coding is no coding at all.” He believes that the writing of code will be automated in the near future, leaving humans to focus on “higher-level strategy and design of software.” Many of the experts at the convenings agreed. Even creating the AI systems of tomorrow, they asserted, will likely require less human coding than is needed today, with graphic interfaces turning AI programming into a drag-and-drop operation.

Digital fluency does not mean knowing coding languages. Experts at both convenings contended that effectively “befriending the machine” will be less about teaching people to code and more about being able to empathize with AIs and machines, understanding how they “see the world” and “think” and “make decisions.” Machines will create languages to talk to one another.

…

Here’s a list of many skills the experts do not expect to see much of—if at all—in the future:

Coding. Systems will be self-programming.
Building AI systems. Graphic interfaces will turn AI programming into drag-and-drop operations.
Calendaring, scheduling, and organizing. There won’t be need for email triage.
Planning and even decision-making. AI assistants will pick this up.
Creating more personalized curricula. Learners may design more of their own personalized learning adventure.
Writing and reviewing resumes. Digital portfolios, personal branding, and performance reputation will replace resumes.
Language translation and localization. This will happen in real time using translator apps.
Legal research and writing. Many of our legal systems will be automated.
Validation skills. Machines will check people’s work to validate their skills.
Driving. Driverless vehicles will replace the need to learn how to drive.

Here’s a list of the most essential skills needed for the future:

Quantitative and algorithmic thinking.
Managing reputation.
Storytelling and interpretive skills.
First principles thinking.
Communicating with machines as machines.
Augmenting high-skilled physical tasks with AI.
Optimization and debugging frame of mind.
Creativity and growth mindset.
Adaptability.
Emotional intelligence.
Truth seeking.
Cybersecurity.

The rise of machine intelligence is just one of the many powerful social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces that are rapidly and disruptively changing the way everyone will work and learn in the future. Because this largely tech-driven force is so interconnected with other drivers of change, it is nearly impossible to understand the impact of intelligent agents on how we will work and learn without also imagining the ways in which these new tools will reshape how we live.

This is how the Future Today Institute researches, models & maps the future & develops strategies

Also see what the Institute for the Future does in this regard

Foresight Tools
IFTF has pioneered tools and methods for building foresight ever since its founding days. Co-founder Olaf Helmer was the inventor of the Delphi Method, and early projects developed cross-impact analysis and scenario tools. Today, IFTF is methodologically agnostic, with a brimming toolkit that includes the following favorites…

From DSC:
How might higher education use this foresight workflow? How might we better develop a future-oriented mindset?

From my perspective, I think that we need to be pulse-checking a variety of landscapes, looking for those early signals. We need to be thinking about what should be on our radars. Then we need to develop some potential scenarios and strategies to deal with those potential scenarios if they occur. Graphically speaking, here’s an excerpted slide from my introductory piece for a NGLS 2017 panel that we did.

This resource regarding their foresight workflow was mentioned in a recent e-newsletter from the FTI where they mentioned this important item as well:

Climate change: a megatrend that impacts us all
Excerpt:
Earlier this week, the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change issued a dire report [PDF]. To say the report is concerning would be a dramatic understatement. Models built by the scientists show that at our current rate, the atmosphere will warm as much as 1.5 degrees Celsius, leading to a dystopian future of food shortages, wildfires, extreme winters, a mass die-off of coral reefs and more –– as soon as 2040. That’s just 20 years away from now.

But China also decided to ban the import of foreign plastic waste –– which includes trash from around the U.S. and Europe. The U.S. alone could wind up with an extra 37 million metric tons of plastic waste, and we don’t have a plan for what to do with it all.

Immediate Futures Scenarios: Year 2019

Optimistic: Climate change is depoliticized. Leaders in the U.S., Brazil and elsewhere decide to be the heroes, and invest resources into developing solutions to our climate problem. We understand that fixing our futures isn’t only about foregoing plastic straws, but about systemic change. Not all solutions require regulation. Businesses and everyday people are incentivized to shift behavior. Smart people spend the next two decades collaborating on plausible solutions.
Pragmatic: Climate change continues to be debated, while extreme weather events cause damage to our power grid, wreak havoc on travel, cause school cancellations, and devastate our farms. The U.S. fails to work on realistic scenarios and strategies to combat the growing problem of climate change. More countries elect far-right leaders, who shun global environmental accords and agreements. By 2029, it’s clear that we’ve waited too long, and that we’re running out of time to adapt.
Catastrophic: A chorus of voices calling climate change a hoax grows ever louder in some of the world’s largest economies, whose leaders choose immediate political gain over longer-term consequences. China builds an environmental coalition of 100 countries within the decade, developing both green infrastructure while accumulating debt service. Beijing sets global standards emissions––and it locks the U.S out of trading with coalition members. Trash piles up in the U.S., which didn’t plan ahead for waste management. By 2040, our population centers have moved inland and further north, our farms are decimated, our lives are miserable.

Watchlist: United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; European Geosciences Union; National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); NASA; Department of Energy; Department of Homeland Security; House Armed Services Sub-committee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities; Environmental Justice Foundation; Columbia University’s Earth Institute; University of North Carolina at Wilmington; Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; National Center for Atmospheric Research.

3 trends shaping the future world of work — from hrtechnologist.com by Becky Frankiewicz, President of Manpower Group North America

Excerpt:

In a world of constant change, continuity has given way to adaptability. It’s no secret the world of work has changed. Yet today it’s changing faster than ever before.

The impact of technology means new skills and new roles are emerging as fast as others become extinct.

My career path is a case in point. When I entered high school, I intended to follow a linear career path similar to generations before me. Pick a discipline, get a degree, commit to it, retire. Now in my fourth career, that’s not how it worked out, and I’m glad. In fact, the only true constant I’ve had is constant learning. Because success in the future won’t be defined by performance, but by potential and the ability to learn, apply and adapt.

From Jobs for Life to Skills for Life
Each day we see firsthand technology’s impact on jobs. 65% of the jobs my three daughters will do don’t even exist yet. Employability is less about what you already know and more about your capacity to learn. It requires a new mindset for us to develop a workforce with the right skillsets, and for individuals seeking to advance their careers. We need to be ready to help upskill and reskill people for new jobs and new roles.

Will #AI — in real-time — be able to present helpful resources in the smart classroom of the future? [Christian]

On 09/26/2018, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assistive technologies, bots, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, face-to-face, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, lifelong learning, Microsoft, Natural Language Processing (NLP), New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, smart classrooms, tools, training / L&D, universities, user experience (UX), voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, webinars, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Microsoft’s conference room of the future “listens” to the conversations of the team and provides a transcript of the meeting. It also is using “artificial intelligence tools to then act on what meeting participants say. If someone says ‘I’ll follow up with you next week,’ then they’ll get a notification in Microsoft Teams, Microsoft’s Slack competitor, to actually act on that promise.”

This made me wonder about our learning spaces in the future. Will an #AI-based device/cloud-based software app — in real-time — be able to “listen” to the discussion in a classroom and present helpful resources in the smart classroom of the future (i.e., websites, online-based databases, journal articles, and more)?

Will this be a feature of a next generation learning platform as well (i.e., addressing the online-based learning realm)? Will this be a piece of an intelligent tutor or an intelligent system?

Hmmm…time will tell.

Also see this article out at Forbes.com entitled, “There’s Nothing Artificial About How AI Is Changing The Workplace.”

Here is an excerpt:

The New Meeting Scribe: Artificial Intelligence

As I write this, AI has already begun to make video meetings even better. You no longer have to spend time entering codes or clicking buttons to launch a meeting. Instead, with voice-based AI, video conference users can start, join or end a meeting by simply speaking a command (think about how you interact with Alexa).

Voice-to-text transcription, another artificial intelligence feature offered by Otter Voice Meeting Notes (from AISense, a Zoom partner), Voicefox and others, can take notes during video meetings, leaving you and your team free to concentrate on what’s being said or shown. AI-based voice-to-text transcription can identify each speaker in the meeting and save you time by letting you skim the transcript, search and analyze it for certain meeting segments or words, then jump to those mentions in the script. Over 65% of respondents from the Zoom survey said they think AI will save them at least one hour a week of busy work, with many claiming it will save them one to five hours a week.

To higher ed: When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. [Christian]

On 09/25/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accreditation, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Mixed Reality (MR), more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, robotics, science, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. What do I mean by that?

Consider this quote from an article that Jeanne Meister wrote out at Forbes entitled, “The Future of Work: Three New HR Roles in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:”*

This emphasis on learning new skills in the age of AI is reinforced by the most recent report on the future of work from McKinsey which suggests that as many as 375 million workers around the world may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills because approximately 60% of jobs will have least one-third of their work activities able to be automated.

Go scan the job openings and you will likely see many that have to do with technology, and increasingly, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, big data, cloud-based services, robotics, automation, bots, algorithm development, blockchain, and more.

From Robert Half’s 2019 Technology Salary Guide

How many of us have those kinds of skills? Did we get that training in the community colleges, colleges, and universities that we went to? Highly unlikely — even if you graduated from one of those institutions only 5-10 years ago. And many of those institutions are often moving at the pace of a nice leisurely walk, with some moving at a jog, even fewer are sprinting. But all of them are now being asked to enter a race track that’s moving at 180mph. Higher ed — and society at large — are not used to moving at this pace.

This is why I think that higher education and its regional accrediting organizations are going to either need to up their game hugely — and go through a paradigm shift in the required thinking/programming/curricula/level of responsiveness — or watch while alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education increasingly attract their learners away from them.

This is also, why I think we’ll see an online-based, next generation learning platform take place. It will be much more nimble — able to offer up-to-the minute, in-demand skills and competencies.

The below graphic is from:
Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

* Three New HR Roles To Create Compelling Employee Experiences
These new HR roles include:

IBM: Vice President, Data, AI & Offering Strategy, HR
Kraft Heinz Senior Vice President Global HR, Performance and IT
SunTrust Senior Vice President Employee Wellbeing & Benefits

What do these three roles have in common? All have been created in the last three years and acknowledge the growing importance of a company’s commitment to create a compelling employee experience by using data, research, and predictive analytics to better serve the needs of employees. In each case, the employee assuming the new role also brought a new set of skills and capabilities into HR. And importantly, the new roles created in HR address a common vision: create a compelling employee experience that mirrors a company’s customer experience.

An excerpt from McKinsey Global Institute | Notes from the Frontier | Modeling the Impact of AI on the World Economy

Workers.
A widening gap may also unfold at the level of individual workers. Demand for jobs could shift away from repetitive tasks toward those that are socially and cognitively driven and others that involve activities that are hard to automate and require more digital skills.12 Job profiles characterized by repetitive tasks and activities that require low digital skills may experience the largest decline as a share of total employment, from some 40 percent to near 30 percent by 2030. The largest gain in share may be in nonrepetitive activities and those that require high digital skills, rising from some 40 percent to more than 50 percent. These shifts in employment would have an impact on wages. We simulate that around 13 percent of the total wage bill could shift to categories requiring nonrepetitive and high digital skills, where incomes could rise, while workers in the repetitive and low digital skills categories may potentially experience stagnation or even a cut in their wages. The share of the total wage bill of the latter group could decline from 33 to 20 percent.13 Direct consequences of this widening gap in employment and wages would be an intensifying war for people, particularly those skilled in developing and utilizing AI tools, and structural excess supply for a still relatively high portion of people lacking the digital and cognitive skills necessary to work with machines.

“For museums, augmented reality is the next frontier” + 3 other XR-related items

On 09/22/2018, in Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, innovation, interactivity, learning spaces, smart classrooms, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

For museums, augmented reality is the next frontier — from wired.com by Arielle Pardes

Excerpt:

Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to go into space, stood in the center of the room and prepared to become digital. Around her, 106 cameras captured her image in 3-D, which would later render her as a life-sized hologram when viewed through a HoloLens headset.

Jemison was recording what would become the introduction for a new exhibit at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, which opens tomorrow as part of the Smithsonian’s annual Museum Day. In the exhibit, visitors will wear HoloLens headsets and watch Jemison materialize before their eyes, taking them on a tour of the Space Shuttle Enterprise—and through space history. They’re invited to explore artifacts both physical (like the Enterprise) and digital (like a galaxy of AR stars) while Jemison introduces women throughout history who have made important contributions to space exploration.

Interactive museum exhibits like this are becoming more common as augmented reality tech becomes cheaper, lighter, and easier to create.

Oculus will livestream it’s 5th Connect Conference on Oculus venues — from vrscout.com by Kyle Melnick

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Using either an Oculus Go standalone device or a mobile Gear VR headset, users will be able to login to the Oculus Venues app and join other users for an immersive live stream of various developer keynotes and adrenaline-pumping esports competitions.

From DSC:
What are the ramifications of this for the future of webinars, teaching and learning, online learning, MOOCs and more…?

10 new AR features in iOS 12 for iPhone & iPad — from mobile-ar.reality.news by Justin Meyers

Excerpt:

Apple’s iOS 12 has finally landed. The big update appeared for everyone on Monday, Sept. 17, and hiding within are some pretty amazing augmented reality upgrades for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches. We’ve been playing with them ever since the iOS 12 beta launched in June, and here are the things we learned that you’ll want to know about.

For now, here’s everything AR-related that Apple has included in iOS 12. There are some new features aimed to please AR fanatics as well as hook those new to AR into finally getting with the program. But all of the new AR features rely on ARKit 2.0, the latest version of Apple’s augmented reality framework for iOS.

Berkeley College Faculty Test VR for Learning— from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Excerpt:

In a pilot program at Berkeley College, members of a Virtual Reality Faculty Interest Group tested the use of virtual reality to immerse students in a variety of learning experiences. During winter 2018, seven different instructors in nearly as many disciplines used inexpensive Google Cardboard headsets along with apps on smartphones to virtually place students in North Korea, a taxicab and other environments as part of their classwork.

Participants used free mobile applications such as Within, the New York Times VR, Discovery VR, Jaunt VR and YouTube VR. Their courses included critical writing, international business, business essentials, medical terminology, international banking, public speaking and crisis management.

Courses in VR and AR will now be available thanks to Amazon Sumerian partnership [Rebecca Hills-Duty]

On 09/12/2018, in Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Australia, collaboration, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, platforms, teaching online, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Courses in VR and AR will now be available thanks to Amazon Sumerian partnership — from vrfocus.com by Rebecca Hills-Duty
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) have announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services.

Excerpt:

Last year Amazon announced a new feature for its Amazon Web Services called Amazon Sumerian, a platform that would allow anyone to create full-featured virtual reality experiences. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) have now announced that it will be offering short courses in artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and VR thanks to a partnership with Amazon Web Services.

The new partnership between RMIT and Amazon Web Services was announced at the AWS Public Sector Summit and Canberra, Australia on Wednesday. The new courses will be using the Amazon Sumerian platform.

The newly launched courses includes Developing AI Strategy, Developing AR and VR Strategy and Developing AR and VR Applications. All of these have been adapted from the AWS Educate program, which was created to react to the changing nature of the workplace, and how immersive technology is increasingly relevant.

My team’s mission is to build a community of lifelong learners, successfully navigating the world of work … yes, sometimes your degree is the right solution education wise for a person, but throughout our lives, certainly I know in my digital career, constantly we need to be updating our skills and understand the new, emerging technology and talk with experts.”

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’ [Schaffhauser]

On 09/12/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, business side of he, career development, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, faculty, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’ — from by Dian Schaffhauser
When you can bring huge numbers of students together with lots of well-branded universities and global enterprises seeking a highly skilled workforce, could those linkages be strong enough to forge a new future for massive open online courses?

Excerpts:

Campus Technology: Coursera used to be a MOOC operator, but now it’s a tech company, an LMS company, a virtual bootcamp and more. So how are you describing Coursera these days?

Maggioncalda: As a learning platform. We like to say to our universities, “Coursera is a platform for your global campus.”

You have [traditional universities] teaching with some of the world’s best professors, with some of the most cutting-edge research, to a population of people who have sat right here in front of you, on a small parcel of land, and who pay a lot of money to do that. It’s been very high quality that’s been available to the very few.

What we’re interested in doing is taking that quality of education and making it available to a vast group of people. When you think about our business model, I like to think about it as an ecosystem of learners, educators and employers. What we do is we link them together. We have 34 million learners from around the world. Our biggest country represented is the United States, followed by India, followed by China, followed by Mexico, followed by Brazil. A lot of the emerging markets and the learners there are coming to Coursera to learn and prosper.

…

[Editor’s note: Coursera currently hosts 10 online degree programs. And most recently, in July 2018, the University of Pennsylvania announced that it was launching its first fully online master’s degree, delivered through Coursera and priced at about a third of the cost of its on-campus equivalent.]…

…

CT: Let’s talk about the University of Pennsylvania deal. Do you think that’s going to put some competitive pressure on the other Tier 1 schools to jump into the fray?

Maggioncalda: This is a very well-regarded program. The University of Pennsylvania is a very well-regarded university. I think it’s causing a lot of people to re-evaluate what they were imagining their future might look like: Maybe learners really do want to have access that’s more convenient and lower cost and they don’t have to quit their jobs to take. And maybe there is literally a world of learners who can’t come to campus, in India and Europe and Latin America and Russia and Asia Pacific and China.

As a learning platform. We like to say to our universities, “Coursera is a platform for your global campus.”

Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO

In two years we’ve had over 1,400 companies hire Coursera to deliver university courses at work to their employees.

Now we’re starting to link the 34 million learners out there to the employers who are looking for people who have certain skills, saying, “Look, if you’re on Coursera learning about this thing, there might be companies who want to hire people that know the thing that you just learned.”

Jeff Maggioncalda, Coursera CEO

Learning from the Living [Class] Room:
A global, powerful, next generation learning platform — meant to help people
reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, conveniently, & consistently

A new, global, collaborative learning platform that offers more choice, more control to learners of all ages – 24×7 – and could become the organization that futurist Thomas Frey discusses here with Business Insider:
- “I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider.
A learner-centered platform that is enabled by – and reliant upon – human beings but is backed up by a powerful suite of technologies that work together in order to help people reinvent themselves quickly, conveniently, and extremely cost-effectively
A customizable learning environment that will offer up-to-date streams of regularly curated content (i.e., microlearning) as well as engaging learning experiences
Along these lines, a lifelong learner can opt to receive an RSS feed on a particular topic until they master that concept; periodic quizzes (i.e., spaced repetition) determine that mastery. Once mastered, the system will ask the learner as to whether they still want to receive that particular stream of content or not.
A Netflix-like interface to peruse and select plugins to extend the functionality of the core product
An AI-backed system of analyzing employment trends and opportunities will highlight those courses and “streams of content” that will help someone obtain the most in-demand skills
A system that tracks learning and, via Blockchain-based technologies, feeds all completed learning modules/courses into learners’ web-based learner profiles
A learning platform that provides customized, personalized recommendation lists – based upon the learner’s goals
A platform that delivers customized, personalized learning within a self-directed course (meant for those content creators who want to deliver more sophisticated courses/modules while moving people through the relevant Zones of Proximal Development)
Notifications and/or inspirational quotes will be available upon request to help provide motivation, encouragement, and accountability – helping learners establish habits of continual, lifelong-based learning
(Potentially) An online-based marketplace, matching learners with teachers, professors, and other such Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
(Potentially) Direct access to popular job search sites
(Potentially) Direct access to resources that describe what other companies do/provide and descriptions of any particular company’s culture (as described by current and former employees and freelancers)
(Potentially) Integration with one-on-one tutoring services

Try before you buy: “Education Up” colleges & universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down”

On 09/07/2018, in 21st century, business, career development, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, future of higher education, higher education, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, trends, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Try before you buy — from universityventures.com

Excerpts:

There are two reasons why the skills gap persists in a full-employment economy. On the student or candidate side, there is “Education Friction.” Education Friction is why individuals fail to upskill themselves with the skills demanded by employers. This is a result of the time required to upskill, the cost, and – most important – the uncertainty of a positive employment outcome. The second and often overlooked contributor to the skills gap is “Hiring Friction” on the part of employers; employers are increasingly reluctant to hire candidates without exact relevant experience. The cost of a bad hire is higher than ever, as is employee churn, as is the cost of replacing terminated employees – all of which have contributed to an increase in experience requirements for positions that should be (and once were) entry level.

…

From time immemorial, all serious education, training, and workforce efforts to close the skills gap have started by identifying missing skills, developing curriculum, and delivering programs. These “Education Up” models are logical, but also easy. The hardest part of the skills gap is not identifying skills or skill building, but rather building the bridge to employers.

…

The urgent need to reduce Hiring Friction, coupled with the regulatory barrier to utilizing assessments at the top of the hiring funnel, is giving rise to new models that are the antithesis of “Education Up.” These new “Employer Down” models start with employers and the entry-level positions they need to fill, and eliminate Hiring Friction by allowing employers to try before they buy. Staffing and business services companies are hiring candidates themselves, providing Last-Mile Training, and placing newly-trained talent at the service of employers so they can try before they buy. Some Employer Down models add a new “emerging talent” product to an existing talent business (i.e., staffing or placement). Others establish outsourced apprenticeship programs to add a talent dimension to an existing business service, which can boost pricing power, increase market share, and accelerate growth. What they have in common is that candidates are hired and trained by the provider and then, while remaining employed by the provider, perform work for clients; clients convert candidates to full-time employees only when they’re good and ready. Here’s what else they have in common: scalable business models built around the provision of proven entry-level talent.

“Education Up” colleges and universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down.”

Smart Machines & Human Expertise: Challenges for Higher Education — from er.educause.edu by Diana Oblinger

Excerpts:

What does this mean for higher education? One answer is that AI, robotics, and analytics become disciplines in themselves. They are emerging as majors, minors, areas of emphasis, certificate programs, and courses in many colleges and universities. But smart machines will catalyze even bigger changes in higher education. Consider the implications in three areas: data; the new division of labor; and ethics.

Colleges and universities are challenged to move beyond the use of technology to deliver education. Higher education leaders must consider how AI, big data, analytics, robotics, and wide-scale collaboration might change the substance of education.

Higher education leaders should ask questions such as the following:

What place does data have in our courses?
Do students have the appropriate mix of mathematics, statistics, and coding to understand how data is manipulated and how algorithms work?
Should students be required to become “data literate” (i.e., able to effectively use and critically evaluate data and its sources)?

…

Higher education leaders should ask questions such as the following:

How might problem-solving and discovery change with AI?
How do we optimize the division of labor and best allocate tasks between humans and machines?
What role do collaborative platforms and collective intelligence have in how we develop and deploy expertise?

…
Higher education leaders should ask questions such as the following:

Even though something is possible, does that mean it is morally responsible?
How do we achieve a balance between technological possibilities and policies that enable—or stifle—their use?
An algorithm may represent a “trade secret,” but it might also reinforce dangerous assumptions or result in unconscious bias. What kind of transparency should we strive for in the use of algorithms?

Is higher ed shooting itself in the foot? [Christian]

On 08/22/2018, in 21st century, adult learning, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, face-to-face, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, heutagogy, higher education, ideas, informal learning, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, pace of change, platforms, real-world assignments, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, training / L&D, trends, universities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

15 more companies that no longer require a degree — apply now — from glassdoor.com

Excerpt:

With college tuition soaring nationwide, many Americans don’t have the time or money to earn a college degree. However, that doesn’t mean your job prospects are diminished. Increasingly, there are many companies offering well-paying jobs to those with non-traditional education or a high-school diploma.
…
Google and Ernest & Young are just two of the champion companies who realize that book smarts don’t necessarily equal strong work ethic, grit and talent. Whether you have your GED and are looking for a new opportunity or charting your own path beyond the traditional four-year college route, here are 15 companies that have said they do not require a college diploma for some of their top jobs.

From DSC:
Several years ago when gas prices were sky high, I couldn’t help but think that some industries — though they were able to grab some significant profits in the short term — were actually shooting themselves in the foot for the longer term. Sure enough, as time went by, people started looking for less expensive alternatives. For example, they started buying more hybrid vehicles, more electric cars, and the sales of smaller cars and lighter trucks increased. The average fuel economy of vehicles went up (example). The goal was to reduce or outright eliminate the number of trips to the gas station that people were required to make.

These days…I wonder if the same kind of thing is happening — or about to happen — with traditional institutions of higher education*? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

Traditional institutions of higher education better find ways to adapt, and to change their game (so to speak), before the alternatives to those organizations gain some major steam. There is danger in the status quo. Count on it. The saying, “Adapt or die” has now come to apply to higher ed as well.

Faculty, staff, and administrators within higher ed are beginning to experience what the corporate world has been experiencing for decades.

Faculty can’t just teach what they want to teach. They can’t just develop courses that they are interested in. The demand for courses that aren’t attractive career-wise will likely continue to decrease. Sure, it can be argued that many of those same courses — especially from the liberal arts colleges — are still valuable…and I would agree with some of those arguments. But the burden of proof continues to be shifted to the shoulders of those proposing such curricula.

Also, the costs of obtaining a degree needs to come down or:

The gorillas of debt on peoples’ backs will become a negative word of mouth that will be hard to compete against or adequately address as time goes by
The angst towards higher ed will continue to build
People will bolt for those promising alternatives to traditional higher ed where the graduates (badge earners, or whatever they’re going to be called) of those programs are hired and shown to be effective employees
I hope that this isn’t the case and that it’s not too late to change…but history will likely show that higher ed shot itself in the foot. The warning signs were all over the place.

The current trends are paving the way for a next generation learning platform that will serve someone from cradle to grave.

* I realize that many in higher ed would immediately dispute that their organizations are out to grab short term profits, that they don’t operate like a business, that they don’t operate under the same motivations as the corporate world, etc. And I can see some of these folks’ points, no doubt. I may even agree with some of the folks who represent organizations who freely share information with other organizations and have motivations other than making tons of money. But for those folks who staunchly hold to the belief that higher ed isn’t a business at all — well, for me, that’s taking things way too far. I do not agree with that perspective at all. One has to have their eyes (and minds) closed to cling to that perspective anymore. Just don’t ask those folks to tell you how much their presidents make (along with other higher-level members of their administrations), the salaries of the top football coaches, or how many millions of dollars many universities’ receive for their television contracts and/or their ticket sales, or how much revenue research universities bring in from patents and so on and so forth.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter

2. Facebook Goes Back to College (emphasis DSC)
TechCrunch report on how digital giants are buying into Last-Mile Training by partnering with Pathstream to deliver necessary digital skills to community college students.
Most good first jobs specifically require one or more technologies like Facebook or Unity — technologies that colleges and universities aren’t teaching. If Pathstream is able to realize its vision of integrating industry-relevant software training into degree programs in a big way, colleges and universities have a shot at maintaining their stranglehold as the sole pathway to successful careers. If Pathstream’s impact is more limited, watch for millions of students to sidestep traditional colleges, and enroll in emerging faster and cheaper alternative pathways to good first jobs — alternative pathways that will almost certainly integrate the kind of last-mile training being pioneered by Pathstream.

America’s colleges and universities could learn a thing or two from Leo, because they continue to resist teaching students the practical things they’ll need to know as soon as they graduate; for instance, to get jobs that will allow them to make student loan payments. Digital skills head this list, specifically experience with the high-powered software they’ll be required to use every day in entry-level positions.

But talk to a college president or provost about the importance of Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Tableau, Adobe and Autodesk for their graduates, and they’re at a loss for how to integrate last-mile training into their degree programs in order prepare students to work on these essential software platforms.

Enter a new company, Pathstream, which just announced a partnership with tech leader Unity and previously partnered with Facebook. Pathstream supports the delivery of career-critical software skill training in VR/AR and digital marketing at colleges and universities.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter
3. Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College
Inside Higher Education Q&A on upcoming book A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College.
Last-mile training is the inevitable by-product of two crises, one generally understood, the other less so. The crisis everyone understands is affordability and unsustainable levels of student loan debt. The other crisis is employability. Nearly half of all college graduates are underemployed in their first job. And we know that underemployment is pernicious and lasting. According to the recent report from Strada’s Institute for the Future of Work, two-thirds of underemployed graduates remain underemployed five years later, and half remain underemployed a decade later. So today’s students no longer buy that tired college line that “we prepare you for your fifth job, not your first job.” They know that if they don’t get a good first job, they’re probably not going to get a good fifth job. As a result, today’s students are laser-focused on getting a good first job in a growing sector of the economy.

2018 NMC Horizon Report: The trends, challenges, & developments likely to influence ed tech

On 08/18/2018, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), blended learning, Bring your own device (BYOD), change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, pedagogy, platforms, smart classrooms, student-related, teaching & learning, tools, trends, universities, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

2018 NMC Horizon Report — from library.educause.edu

Excerpt:

What is on the five-year horizon for higher education institutions? Which trends and technology developments will drive educational change? What are the critical challenges and how can we strategize solutions? These questions regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the discussions of 71 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2018 Higher Education Edition brought to you by EDUCAUSE. This Horizon Report series charts the five-year impact of innovative practices and technologies for higher education across the globe. With more than 16 years of research and publications, the Horizon Project can be regarded as one of education’s longest-running explorations of emerging technology trends and uptake.

Six key trends, six significant challenges, and six developments in educational technology profiled in this higher education report are likely to impact teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher education. The three sections of this report constitute a reference and technology planning guide for educators, higher education leaders, administrators, policymakers, and technologists.

Also see:

2018 Higher Ed Horizon Report Highlights Measuring Learning and Redesigning Spaces — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser

Campus Technology recently announced the recipients of the 2018 Campus Technology Impact Awards.

Categories include:

Teaching and Learning
Education Futurists
Student Systems & Services
Administration
IT Infrastructure & Systems

From DSC:
Having served as one of the judges for these competitions during the last several years, I really appreciate the level of innovation that’s been displayed by many of the submissions and the individuals/institutions behind them.

6 developments in ed tech from this year’s Horizon Report [educause]

On 08/11/2018, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, future of higher education, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, maker movement, Mixed Reality (MR), robotics, universities, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

Vanguard Projects: Expanding Teaching and Learning Horizons
Authors — from er.educause.edu by Malcolm Brown
Members of the higher education community provided a long list of projects that exemplify the six developments in educational technology from this year’s Horizon Report. A few of the projects are highlighted to convey a sense of the range and direction of current innovations in teaching and learning in higher education.

Excerpt:

This list summarizes the distribution across the six developments (as laid out in the preview):

Mixed reality: 31.4%
Makerspaces: 28.6%
Adaptive learning technology: 16.2%
Analytics technologies: 15.2%
Artificial intelligence: 4.8%
Robotics: 3.8%

Why higher ed should do more with blockchain tech — from by Dian Schaffhauser
Oral Roberts University recently held a conference to persuade higher education institutions that it’s time to get on board the blockchain train. Its recommendations: Learn about the technology’s potential, test it out and collaborate.

Excerpt:

As CIO Michael Mathews, the event’s organizer, explained, blockchain will be as important to transforming education as the internet was. He said he believes those colleges and universities that jump on the secure public ledger concept early enough and begin testing it out will be the ones who could see the biggest benefits.

Mathews believes blockchain will have the “biggest payback” within an organization’s processes where trust is essential as part of a “value chain”: student application processing, transcript evaluations, articulation agreements. Blockchain “templates” that run in the cloud could replace “entire cumbersome processes”…

From DSC:
It could easily be that blockchain-based technologies and processes feed into cloud/web-based learner profiles in the future. That’s one aspect of the next generation learning platform that I’m pulse checking — I call it Learning from the Living [Class] Room.

Blockchain could be involved with cloud/web-based learner profiles in the future

Blockchain -- something to keep on our radars in higher education

Also, from a while back…

Oracle to Launch Blockchain Products This Month — from investopedia.com by Shobhit Seth

Excerpt:

Tech corporations are seeing big opportunities in the blockchain space, and are now in a closely contested race to seize them sooner rather than later.

Oracle Corp. has announced that it will unveil its blockchain software later this month, reports Bloomberg. Oracle will launch its platform-as-a-service blockchain product later this month, which will be followed by launch of the decentralized ledger-based applications next month.

The Redwood City, California-based software giant is already having clients on board for its blockchain offerings. Santiago-based Banco de Chile is one of the early clients that Oracle is working with to record inter-bank transactions on a hyperledger. The world’s second-largest software company is also working with the government of Nigeria, which is aiming to document customs and import duties on a blockchain. Oracle is also hopeful of offering solutions to a large number of pharmaceutical companies to efficiently track and locate batches of drugs to help them reduce the number of recalls. Thomas Kurian, president of product development, said that Oracle’s products will be compatible with other platforms.

Learning Ecosystems

How to research, model & map the future & develop strategies [Future Today Institute]

“For museums, augmented reality is the next frontier” + 3 other XR-related items

Why higher ed should do more with blockchain tech [Schaffhauser]

Categories

Tags