Making Your Research Applicable for Mainstream Audiences — from insidehighered.com by Diana Brazzell
Four ways to extend the reach of your scholarly work beyond academe.

Excerpt:

Many academics I work with struggle to make their research applicable for audiences outside academia. They’re doing important, even ground-breaking work, but they aren’t sure how their ideas can make the leap from labs and libraries to newspapers, boardrooms, hospitals and the halls of government.

Below are four ways you can make your research applicable to policy, business, public health and people’s everyday lives, along with examples of how some of the academics we collaborate with at Footnote have used these techniques.

From DSC:
Faculty members, doing this could help reduce the backlash that’s been building against higher education. Folks out in society could see how the work that you are doing is relevant to them. For example, your podcasts, Tweets, postings out on LinkedIn, your vidcasts, or your blog postings could be read by students, teachers, administrators or others within the K-12 space. And the topic could peak their interest and curiosity. Who knows, your research may just jump start someone else’s passion in that area or even someone else’s career. But at minimum, it could show that some faculty members are interested in talking to/with a far wider audience than just the peers in their discipline.

 

Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack on the Transformative Possibilities of this Moment — from law.upenn.edu with Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack

Excerpt:

Bridget Mary McCormack is Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and is a leading voice on modernizing court systems to expand access to justice and deepen public confidence in legal systems.

On this episode, she joins us to share her thoughts on how courts can learn from the experiences COVID-19 has created to better serve the public in a post-pandemic world. She also shares her views on how regulatory reform can transform legal services and why improving legal systems matters for the entire American experiment.


Addendum on 12/13/21:
Ontario Court Lays Down the Law on Technology Competence and Video Proceedings — from legaltechmonitor.com by Bob Ambrogi

An Ontario judge has laid down the law on technology competence, ruling in no uncertain terms that every lawyer has a duty to keep pace with changing technology, and that a lawyer’s discomfort with new technologies — in this case, video depositions — is no excuse for reverting to pre-pandemic methods.

 

Cisco and Google join forces to transform the future of hybrid work — from blog.webex.com by Kedar Ganta

Cisco and Google join forces to transform the future of hybrid work

Excerpts:

Webex [on 12/7/21] announced the public preview of its native meeting experience for Glass Enterprise Edition 2 (Glass), a lightweight eye wearable device with a transparent display developed by Google. Webex Expert on Demand on Glass provides an immersive collaboration experience that supports natural voice commands, gestures on touchpad, and head movements to accomplish routine tasks.

 

 

UpCounsel Crowdfunds $3.3m, Plans IPO + Cuts Legal Costs By 75%! — from artificiallawyer.com

By eliminating overhead and outrageous hourly rates, UpCounsel allows you to kire a partner-level attorney at a third of the price

Excerpt:

The last point is how this helps to encourage more crowdfunding in this sector. Ruby Datum the VDR company is also currently doing a crowdfunding, and Clocktimizer was funded in the same way before it was bought up by Litera. So, perhaps we will see more approaches like this. That said, UpCounsel is itself owned by an investment group – along with 1,630 others now, so it’s not a pure-play crowdfunding in its entirety.

This will be watched by the VC world and the legal market in general for signs of whether it is succeeding with its goals.

Also see:

TECHREPORT 2021: Technology Training — from lawtechnologytoday.org by Sofia Lingos

ABA Techreport 2021 -- technology training

 

 

EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues — from educause.edu

EDUCAUSE's 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

 

EDUCAUSE's 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help create the higher education we deserve —through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place student success at the center, and a sustainable business model that redefines “the campus.”

See the 2022 Top 10 IT Issues

Almost two years into a global pandemic, it’s clear the higher education we knew will never return and now we can focus on getting the higher education we deserve.

 


From DSC:
I’m assuming that the we in the we deserve (as highlighted above) includes the students, as *the students* are the ones who most need for things to change.

That said, I’m doubtful such profound change will occur within higher education as it stands today. The existing cultures may prevent such significant and necessary change from occurring — and higher ed isn’t used to dealing with the current exponential pace of change that we’re experiencing. Plus, the downward spirals that many institutions are in don’t always allow for the new investments, programs, and/or experiments to occur. But who knows? When institutions of traditional higher education have their backs pressed up against the walls, perhaps such institutions and the people within them will be forced to change. There are innovative individuals and institutions out there. (I’m just not sure how much they’ve been listened to in many cases.)

To help students truly succeed means to change one’s core products/services — one’s story. But higher ed loves to play around the edges…rarely letting the core products/services get touched. 

To me, student success includes having students pay far less and, while still getting a solid liberal arts education/foundation, can get solid jobs immediately upon graduation. At least that’s my hope as we head into 2022. 

But what student success looks like may be different in the future.

Perhaps in 5 years, we will have moved much more towards a lifelong learning situation. Individuals may have joined a global, next-generation learning platform whereby one teaches for X minutes of the day, and learns for Y minutes of that same day. AI-based dashboards let people know which skills are in high demand, and then offer a menu of choices for how to acquire those skills.

A couple of lasts comments:

  • Being data-driven won’t save an institution. Vision might. But being data-driven has its limits.
  • The digital transformations being talked about within institutions of traditional higher education may be too little, too late. This conversation should have taken place a decade or more ago. (I think I just heard an “Amen!” from some folks who used to work at Blockbuster. They didn’t think a transformation was necessary either….but they learned their lesson the hard way. We should have learned from their situation…a long time ago. And I’m sure that you can think of other examples as well.)

 

Teaching in the ‘Metaverse’? Roblox Looks to Make It a Reality — from edweek.org by Benjamin Herold
With millions in new grants to STEM organizations like Project Lead the Way, the gaming platform is moving into K-12 education.

Excerpts:

Hoping to expand its presence in K-12 schools, gaming company Roblox announced this month a new $10 million fund to support the creation of online learning experiences that take advantage of its platform’s unique way of letting users play, explore, and socialize in an endlessly evolving virtual world.

Roblox aims to play a major role in the emerging metaverse. Expanding into classroom education is a key vehicle for making that happen, Kantar told investors at a November conference. The company’s stated goal is to reach 100 million students worldwide by the end of the decade.

Making such inroads with K-12 schools, however, is no sure bet.

Also see:

Roblox Education

 

No Textbooks, No Lectures, and No Right Answers. Is This What Higher Education Needs? — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
From DSC: Though this was back from 2/10/19, Beth recently linked to it on The Chronicle and it caught my eye due to it’s focus on solving real-world issues and problems.

Excerpts:

Tackling big problems is the point of JMU X-Labs, a four-year-old experiment in undergraduate education. Through a blend of interdisciplinary collaboration, project-based learning, and unscripted, open-ended research, each course takes students through the long and often aggravating process of developing new ways of thinking about complex problems.

They might design drones to help with environmental problems, tackle foreign-policy challenges, build autonomous vehicles, or develop medical innovations to help with the opioid crisis.

 

Top Resources For Students To Discover Real World Problems and Issues

Top Resources For Students To Discover Real World Problems & Issues — from edtechreview.in by Saniya Khan

Are you looking for ways to help students learn about world issues: climate change, cultural diversity, biodiversity, education, water crisis, [homelessness] and more to build awareness about global issues and develop global competence?

 

VRJAM -- the metaverse platform for music

The VRJAM metaverse platform is coming to transform the world of live entertainment 

VRJAM, the UK’s leading creator of live music experiences in virtual reality, today teased the launch of the VRJAM platform, a revolutionary new metaverse events platform and NFT creation solution. 

To bring the VRJAM metaverse platform to life, VRJAM has partnered with market leading NFT software developer Enjin.io to launch a rich virtual reality world that offers a host of new solutions for artists to render and monetize their music and live shows in amazing new ways using NFT’s, blockchain and immersive technology.  

The VRJAM platform promises to open up completely new ways for both fans and artist to experience live music events and represents the next step in the evolution of live music. 

Ownership of this virtual world will be shared by a guild of globally recognised artists and record labels who will cooperate to create value and define new possibilities for music inside the metaverse. 

VRJAM’s metaverse platform offers solutions for true live performance using technology that is years ahead of other similar platforms. It provides unsurpassed user experience and offers fans, artists and labels an array of unique features:

VRJAM's metaverse -- a vivid virtual world built for music

At the heart of the VRJAM metaverse platform is a blockchain based trading and finance system, VRJAM Coin. This revolutionary new cryptocurrency will create ways for both artists and fans to earn money inside the metaverse and promises to create entirely new business models for artists, venues and labels at a time when their traditional ways of making money have been turned upside down by the Covid 19 pandemic. 

The VRJAM cryptocurrency is backed by investment from 5 of the world’s leading blockchain specialist investment and venture capital firms, demonstrating the exciting potential of VRJAM’s tech.

The VRJAM platform is scheduled to go live in early 2022, follow on social media to stay up to date.


From DSC:
Hmmmmm….might this type of thing spill over into the worlds of teaching and learning? More direct-to-consumer (learner) types of offerings? Will this open up the doors for new methods of earning a living or for  those interested in building a teaching & learning-based brand?

Alternatively, will this impact what actors, actresses, and comedians will be able to do?


Addendum on 12/2/21:


 

EduMAX 2021 recap: Together for student success around the globe — from blog.adobe.com by Sebastian Distefano

Excerpt:

University CIOs, deans, provosts, faculty and staff from more than 100 institutions convened online for the Adobe EduMAX 2021 conference, where academic leaders shared how they are transforming teaching and learning practices across their campuses. Key discussion points included:

  • How digital literacy increases engagement to bring faculty and students together, whether they are in-person, online or in a hybrid environment.
  • How digital literacy closes the skills gap in higher education and industry by fostering critical essential skills that employers value.
  • How faculty can integrate digital literacy across the curriculum for all students.
 

Ohio State U. Unveils a Plan for All Students to Graduate Debt-Free — from chronicle.com by Eric Kelderman

Excerpt:

Nearly half of all undergraduates at Ohio State University take out loans to help pay the costs of attending college, borrowing an average of more than $27,000. Kristina M. Johnson, the new president of the land-grant university, wants to reduce that proportion to zero.

Johnson announced a plan on Friday, at her investiture, to reach that goal within a decade.

Instead of offering students federal direct loans as part of their financial-aid packages, the university will use a combination of grants, internships, and opportunities to assist with research.

“People without family means, which includes many of the country’s minority students, start their adult lives in a financial hole,” Johnson said during her investiture speech. “I want all of our graduates to be free to say yes to every great opportunity that comes their way.”

 

 

Can Higher Ed Help Early Ed Grow Up? — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

“We know how important it is to cultivate a next generation of educators that is really reflective of educators and the communities they serve,” DeHaas says.

It’s an example of the strategies some colleges are using to help train more people to provide high-quality early childhood education. A new report from the National Association for the Education of Young Children explores how to make schooling and care for infants, toddlers and children through age eight a bigger priority at colleges and universities—and assesses what the barriers are to making that happen.

Much of what has held early childhood education back at colleges comes down to money: low pay for workers, a dearth of dollars for research and high tuition costs for students. Evans Allvin is hopeful that federal proposals for investing in the sector will make it a bigger priority for higher education.

 

Writing Multiple Choice Questions For Higher Order Thinking — from theelearningcoach.com by Connie Malamed

Excerpt:

One of the biggest criticisms of multiple choice questions is that they only test factual knowledge. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can also use multiple choice questions to assess higher-order thinking.

Higher Order Thinking in a Nutshell
Higher order thinking goes beyond memorizing and recalling facts and data. It even goes beyond comprehension. Higher-order thinking refers to cognitive processes that involve analytical, critical and creative thinking. The concept is based on various learning taxonomies, such as application, analysis, evaluation, creation, problem-solving, connecting ideas and making decisions. Keep in mind that many of these cognitive tasks, including the recall of information, appear to occur simultaneously. See Alternatives to Bloom’s Taxonomy for criticisms of the hierarchical classifications.

Because test items must be aligned with performance objectives, you’ll need to include higher-order thinking skills from the start. And yes, these may be better measured through open ended questions, essays and discussions. But if you find yourself needing to use multiple choice tests, you can make the best of this situation with these three approaches.

 

How digital twins could transform healthcare — from raconteur.com by Rich McEachran
Digital twins could have life-changing effects, impacting everything from clinical trials to bed management. However, there are challenges ahead for the virtual technology.

Excerpt:

Digital twins are well known in engineering and manufacturing. However, scientists are now deploying the technology in the medical realm, modelling the effectiveness of existing drugs against new diseases.

Scientists and medical researchers often seek to treat patients by examining the efficacy of existing drugs. That’s what happened when Covid-19 first arrived. Global analytics company Elsevier and ExactCure, a startup providing software solutions to reduce the impact of inaccurate medication, came together in April 2020 to build a digital twin that could model patient reactions to 20 approved drugs.

But what is a digital twin? In essence, they’re virtual representations and simulations of a physical asset or entity. For example, pharmaceutical giant GSK has piloted a replica of its vaccine production process to improve operations and future vaccine development.

 

 

IAALS’ Comment to the Michigan Supreme Court on Virtual Proceedings and Lessons Learned from the Pandemic — from legaltechmonitor.com by Broke Meyer and Natalie Anne Knowlton

Excerpt:

IAALS, a nonpartisan, non-profit research organization, looks at ways to improve the legal system, specifically in the areas of civil justice, family justice, the judiciary, legal education, and the legal profession. IAALS has been monitoring court practices around the country as it relates to policies around virtual proceedings. As part of our Paths to Justice Summit Series, IAALS has held several virtual convenings with a diverse group of experts and stakeholders across the justice systems. From those convenings, IAALS published two issue papers, “Learning from this Nationwide Pilot Project—Reducing the Costs and Delays of Civil Litigation” and “Learning from this Nationwide Pilot Project—Ensuring Access to Justice in High-Volume Cases.” Both papers focus on lessons learned, upcoming challenges, and areas for further research. In this spirit, we hope to provide a broad perspective on the importance of retaining some of the virtual proceeding processes put in place during the pandemic.

After many years of urging reform in these cases, we have witnessed incredible innovation and adaptability in the Michigan court system during a crisis. IAALS and other leaders in civil justice reform have urged many of these reforms—such as remote hearings—for years, and we have now seen these innovations happen on the ground. Michigan should capitalize on the unique opportunity to evaluate and learn from these changes to improve access to justice.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian