ideas

“Many—perhaps millions—will need quick, job-focused upskilling and reskilling.” [OpportunityAmerica]

On 06/27/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, career development, change, community colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, elearning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, online tutoring, open courseware and systems, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, remote teaching and learning, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, telepresence, television, training / L&D, trends, United States, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, by Daniel Christian

“Many—perhaps millions—will need quick, job-focused upskilling and reskilling.”

— from The Indispensable Institution | Reimagining Community College
by Opportunity America

From DSC:
This is exactly the need that I’ve been getting at here. Many people don’t have the time — and now, the $$ — to take 4 years to get a college degree. Even 2 years is too long for many people these days. They need to be able to quickly reinvent themselves. As such, we need to tap into — and contribute to — streams of content. All. The. Time.

And do so, efficiently, safely, securely — and inexpensively!

Wrongfully accused by an algorithm [Kashmir Hill; New York Times]

On 06/25/2020, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, ethics, ideas, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, Michigan, platforms, policy, society, sociology, tools, United States, by Daniel Christian

Wrongfully accused by an algorithm — from nytimes.com by Kashmir Hill

Excerpt:

On a Thursday afternoon in January, Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was in his office at an automotive supply company when he got a call from the Detroit Police Department telling him to come to the station to be arrested. He thought at first that it was a prank.

An hour later, when he pulled into his driveway in a quiet subdivision in Farmington Hills, Mich., a police car pulled up behind, blocking him in. Two officers got out and handcuffed Mr. Williams on his front lawn, in front of his wife and two young daughters, who were distraught. The police wouldn’t say why he was being arrested, only showing him a piece of paper with his photo and the words “felony warrant” and “larceny.”

His wife, Melissa, asked where he was being taken. “Google it,” she recalls an officer replying.
…
“Is this you?” asked the detective.

The second piece of paper was a close-up. The photo was blurry, but it was clearly not Mr. Williams. He picked up the image and held it next to his face.

“No, this is not me,” Mr. Williams said. “You think all black men look alike?”

Also relevant/see:

Boston Lawmakers Vote To Ban Use Of Facial Recognition Technology By The City — from npr.org by Ally Jarmanning
‘Coded bias’ connects A.I. to racism in a way you have never seen — inverse.com by Mike Brown
It’s time for D.C. to regulate police surveillance technology — an opinion piece from washingtonpost.com by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson
What a machine learning tool that turns Obama white can (and can’t) tell us about AI bias — from theverge.com by James Vincent
A striking image that only hints at a much bigger problem

The “new normal” paradox: What COVID-19 has revealed about higher education [Crow]

On 06/25/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Augmented Reality (AR), business side of he, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, IT in HE, leadership, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, lifelong learning, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, society, sociology, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

The “new normal” paradox: What COVID-19 has revealed about higher education — from bigthink.com by Dr. Michael Crow, President of ASU

Excerpt:

Third, it is abundantly apparent that universities must leverage technology to increase educational quality and access. The rapid shift to delivering an education that complies with social distancing guidelines speaks volumes about the adaptability of higher education institutions, but this transition has also posed unique difficulties for colleges and universities that had been slow to adopt digital education. The last decade has shown that online education, implemented effectively, can meet or even surpass the quality of in-person instruction.

Digital instruction, broadly defined, leverages online capabilities and integrates adaptive learning methodologies, predictive analytics, and innovations in instructional design to enable increased student engagement, personalized learning experiences, and improved learning outcomes. The ability of these technologies to transcend geographic barriers and to shrink the marginal cost of educating additional students makes them essential for delivering education at scale.

Far too many higher education outcomes are determined by a student’s family income, and in the context of COVID-19 this means that lower-income students, first-generation students and students of color will be disproportionately afflicted. And without new designs, we can expect post-secondary success for these same students to be as elusive in the new normal, as it was in the old normal.
…
This is not just because some universities fail to sufficiently recognize and engage the promise of diversity, this is because few universities have been designed from the outset to effectively serve the unique needs of lower-income students, first-generation students and students of color.

Just-in-time online tutoring: Supporting learning anywhere, anytime — from er.educause.edu by Stefan Hrastinski

Excerpt:

What if learning could be supported anywhere, anytime, based on the needs of learners? This is a question that has been explored in different ways in research and teaching. Although an abundance of digital education resources are available online, learners have questions and need guidance when they are studying. Just-in-time online tutoring attempts to meet this need. It also has great potential as a complement to scheduled education.

Just-in-time learning has been defined as “anywhere, anytime learning that is just enough, just for me and just in time.”

Law on trial — What the legal industry can do to defend it [Cohen]

On 06/18/2020, in ideas, innovation, law schools, leadership, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, society, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Law on trial — What the legal industry can do to defend it — from forbes.com by Mark Cohen

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

How can the legal industry help to restore the rule of law and public confidence in the legal system?

Some Recommendations
The profession must align with the industry to restore public confidence in the legal system. That means, among other things, that lawyers must recognize—as physicians do—that “it takes a village” to battle a crisis. Here are some recommendations how to do it.

1. Acknowledge the problem
2. Collaborate
3. Focus on the Vast, Underserved Retail Market Segment
4. Embrace Diversity
5. Modernize Legal Education and Training
6 Reimagine Courts
7. Think Globally
8. Use Influence to Create Just Laws and Enforce them Equally

YouTube Contest, “With Justice for All,” Seeks Submissions from Students About the Effect of Covid-19 and Recent Tragedies on Their Educational Experience

Prizes include 11 scholarships for students who best address the question, “How has your school delivered on the promise of equal access and educational excellence, particularly during these challenging times?”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Center for Education Reform (CER), in partnership with the Freedom Coalition for Charter Schools, the Children’s Scholarship Fund, and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, today launched “With Justice for All,” a national YouTube contest for students.

Over the last few months, students and schools have faced significant challenges from distance learning and national tragedies. Times like these highlight how a great education is the most important asset a student has to effectively change the world.

So CER decided to ask students directly: Has your school delivered on the promise of equal access and educational excellence, particularly during these challenging times? Tell us how well your school did — or didn’t do — in providing you a great education.

“We want you to be able to take charge of your education,” said Jeanne Allen, CER’s founder and chief executive. “We want to assist you in writing the next chapter of your education story. Tell us your story, and we’ll tell everybody who needs to know, especially those in power.”

Videos must be shorter than three minutes, hashtagged with #MyEducationVideo, and submitted to MyEducationVideo.com by 11:59 PM EDT on July 4, 2020. Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of celebrity judges. Awards include 10 $2,500 scholarships — and one $20,000 scholarship — to the high school or college of a student’s choice. Winners will be announced during a live-streamed ceremony (date and time T.B.D.), and their videos may be shown to delegates at both of the 2020 national conventions this summer.

“We’ve designed this contest for students ages 13 and older, because we know it can be hard to get your ideas about education heard when you’re a kid,” said Allen.

For more information, visit MyEducationVideo.com.

Also see:

The New Normal: Don’t Leave Equity Behind (video) — from er.educause.edu by Nani Jackins Park

“If we are not centering equitable student success, we’re gonna be put back decades and decades. And we’re already trying to retrofit.”

Blockchain Can Disrupt Higher Education Today, Global Labor Market Tomorrow [Singer]

On 06/15/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Blockchain, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, emerging technologies, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Blockchain Can Disrupt Higher Education Today, Global Labor Market Tomorrow — from cointelegraph.com by Andrew Singer
Blockchain can play its part in the education sector — record-keeping in 2–3 years and then adoption by the labor market?

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In the post-pandemic world, individuals will need to seize ownership and control of their educational credentials — documents like degrees and transcripts — from schools, universities and governments. That notion received key support last week from the American Council on Education in a study funded by the United States Department of Education focusing on the use of blockchain in higher education.

“Blockchain, in particular, holds promise to create more efficient, durable connections between education and work,” wrote Ted Mitchell, the president of ACE, in the foreword to the study published on June 8, adding: “In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, learners will be more mobile, moving in and out of formal education as their job, health, and family situations change.”

A key theme of the report is personal data agency — i.e., how “distributed ledger technologies [DLT] can ‘democratize’ data and empower individuals with agency over their personal information.”

Blockchain has been described as a hammer in search of a nail. If so, academic credentialing appears to be as obvious a nail as one can find. The current international trade in fake academic degrees, after all, is “staggering,” as the BBC reported, and with a global labor market increasingly mobile, the world could badly use a decentralized, borderless, tamper-free ledger of verifiable credentials — both for education and the broader labor market.

Below is a snapshot from a video that Kim O’Leary, Professor at the WMU-Cooley Law School did regarding the topic of giving (and receiving) individualized feedback.

As a relevant aside here, I want to send a shout out to Kim, as she is incredibly devoted to the craft of teaching and learning and to developing solid, competent learners and lawyers. She is a fantastic professor, as well as a caring, hard-working person — an excellent colleague whom I’m very grateful to have the privilege of working alongside.

Daniel: Do our learning environments and systems promote our students' self-motivation? I don't think so. No way.

When I saw this quote from Thomas Friedman, I wondered…

Are our school systems creating students who are self-motivated?

Sorry…but my answer (based on what my own learning experiences in K-16 were like as well as from having observed the learning experiences of our three kids) was, “No way…at least not yet.” And the ramifications of this are getting increasingly serious as our kids need to be able to navigate an often chaotic, quickly-changing world from here on out.

We don’t offer nearly enough learner agency.
We create gameplayers who only focus on grades.
We tell students what to learn.
We don’t offer nearly enough choice and control to students.

Remote collaboration and virtual conferences, the future of work [Fink]

On 06/12/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Apple, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), collaboration, creativity, digital learning, distance education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Microsoft, Mixed Reality (MR), motivation, online learning, online media, online tutoring, tools, training / L&D, vendors, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, webinars, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Remote collaboration and virtual conferences, the future of work — from forces.com by Charlie Fink

Excerpts:

Ten weeks ago, Jesse Damiani, writing on Forbes.com, told the story of a college professor who turned his course about XR into a research project about remote collaboration and virtual conferences.
…
He and his students reimagined the course as an eight-week research sprint exploring how XR tools will contribute to the future of remote work—and the final product will be a book, tentatively titled, Remote Collaboration & Virtual Conferences: The End of Distance and the Future of Work.”

This is a chapter of that book. It will be available on June 15.

The thing everyone wants is not a technology, it’s engagement. The same kind of engagement that you would have in real life, but better, faster, cheaper *and safer* than it was before.

Also see:

Apple Files Patent For Mixed Reality Headset That Projects Images On Your Eyeballs — from vrscout.com

From DSC:
After reading the following item from Jeremy Caplan’s most recent e-newsletter entitled, “Tiny Stuff I Love“…

Alfred = Saves me time on copying and pasting
If you copy and paste stuff frequently, get a clipboard manager. I use Alfred throughout every workday. It keeps the last 100+ things I’ve copied in a neat list so I can paste anything I’ve used recently into a browser, document, or wherever else.

This is super-handy when I’m copying and pasting things repeatedly from one place to another. Sometimes I’m moving a bunch of stuff from a document into an email. Or putting several links or notes into a Zoom chat window.

Lots of tools do something similar. I also like the Copied App, $8 on the Mac App store. It has a companion iPhone app.

…I instantly thought of how useful this type of tool would be for teachers, professors, and perhaps trainers as well — especially when grading!

From this page (emphasis DSC):

What Does a Clipboard Manager Do?
The default clipboard in Windows works well, but it’s quite basic. The biggest limitation is that it can only hold one item at a time. If you copy a piece of text, forget to use it, then copy an image later, the text will be gone. Another hassle is that you can’t view what you’ve copied without pasting it.

For anyone who copies and pastes all the time, these are big problems. Thankfully, this is where clipboard managers come in. They greatly expand the functionality of your clipboard by remembering dozens of entries, allowing you to pin frequently used snippets for easy access, and much more.

Readers of this blog might also be interested in some of the other tools that Jeremy mentions, including:

Toby = Save and share my browser tabs

WEDNESDAY | 6.3 | Law Insights with Bob Ambrogi and Daniel Linna, Director of Law and Technology Initiatives, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

Notes (emphasis DSC):

Trying to build community, collaborate, work together
How do you manage a team remotely? How build community online?
Spontaneous interactions still needed
In what ways does the online ecosystem ADD to what we are doing?
Jury trial – online; equalizer for those involved in trial; “all in same space on the screen”
Start with some basic/smaller things – landlord/tenant
Racism going on heavily this week – a second pandemic
Developing a quality movement in law (Linna)
We need quality metrics and we need to measure the value being provided. What makes something effective, high-quality, and valuable? Now apply that thinking to the delivery of legal services.
Project mgmt / quality movement – less defects, etc. in 1980’s / lean thinking / 6 sigma in GE / but haven’t seen this in the area of law
Empiricism in law – 100 years ago medicine and law were in the same spot; since then medicine started more testing, empirical work, data-driven practices; but law didn’t
Daniel Linna’s blog – https://www.legaltechlever.com/
Can we come up with metrics?
Dan worked with a lawyer-assisted program in Lansing, MI – what happened? What was duration of cases? Data-driven thinking; measure; make it more of a science
Bob asked isn’t law less scientific and perhaps more art than a science?
What kinds of metrics are we talking about in litigation?
Contracts – can we figure out what adds value and what makes a contract “better?” (Insert from DSC: Better for whom though?)
What actually matters to the client? Clauses that lawyers think that are important, businesspeople don’t think are important. Risk mitigation is not all the client thinks about.
Incomprehensible contracts – too hard to understand
Natural language generation – what inputs do we need? We don’t want many contracts to be the dataset that an algorithm gets trained on.
(Insert from DSC: Daniel relayed some information that reminded me of Clayton Christensen’s disruptive thinking: 80% of impoverished folks get NOTHING. Totally disconnected. Perhaps we don’t need perfection, but even something is much better than nothing. For example, provide an online legal aid booklet to those who are trying to represent themselves.)
Go for low-hanging fruit for more empirical
Ambrogi: How does the work you are doing impact access to justice (#A2J)? How could quality movement impact police procedures? Is there applicability in terms of what you are writing about?
Human-Centered Design – uncovering biases. Why would people TRUST the criminal system if they can’t trust the CIVIL system? Perhaps if landlords thought differently. Disconnected.
Innovate, improve, project management;
Way decisions are made vary greatly; need more open data from our courts; lack of transparency from courts.
Leadership – commitment to resolve issues. Lacking vision. What do we want our legal systems to look like/act like?

Call to action:

Have or develop a quality mindset
Leadership needs to paint a vision for what the future looks like
Training around legal operations
How to measure quality and value – be more data-driven

We need disruption AND continuous improvement – not one or the other.
–Daniel Linna

Six items re: the future of higher education

On 05/31/2020, in Amazon, business, business side of he, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, higher education, ideas, innovation, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Microsoft, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, pace of change, platforms, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, traditional / tradition, trends, UK, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I saw the piece below from Graham Brown-Martin’s solid, thought-provoking posting entitled, “University as a Service (UaaS)” out at medium.com. My question is: “What happens if Professor Scott Galloway is right?!”

Excerpt:

Prof Scott Galloway predicts lucrative future partnerships between the FAANG mega-corporations and major higher education brands emerging as a result of current disruptions. Galloway wonders what a partnership between MIT and Apple would look like?

The education conveyor belt of the last century that went school to university to work and a job for life just doesn’t work in an era of rapid transformation. Suppose we truly embrace the notion of continuous or lifelong learning and apply that to the university model. It wouldn’t just stop in your twenties would it?

University as a Service (UaaS), where higher education course and degree modules are unbundled and accessed via a monthly subscription, could be a landing spot for the future of higher education and lifelong learners.

Below are some other items
regarding the future of higher education.

Also relevant/see:

Updating the Higher Education Playbook to Stay Relevant in 2020 — from info.destinysolutions.com (Note: You have to complete the form to get access to the whitepaper.)

Also relevant/see:

Shaping the Future of Post-Secondary Education — from Cherry Tree & Associates
A Time of Transformation in Post-Secondary Education and the American Workforce.

Also relevant/see:

Fast Forward: Looking to the Future Workforce and Online Learning — from evolllution.com by Joann Kozyrev (VP Design and Development, Western Governors University) and Amrit Ahluwalia
Excerpt:
With employers and students looking to close the gap in workforce skills, it’s critical for them to know what skills are in need the most. Postsecondary institutions need to be the resource to provide learners with the education the workforce needs and to make both parties understand the value of the students’ education. With the remote and online shift, it’s a new territory for institutions handle. In this interview, Joann Kozyrev discusses the impact remote learning has on an online institution, concerns about the future of online learning and how to get people back into the workforce fast and efficiently.

How colleges can help educate the 40-million-plus newly unemployed — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpts:

A need for speed in learning
Experts at conferences have been talking for years about “the future of work”—how automation and other forces will reshape the job market, and how colleges need to create new kinds of offerings that are more flexible. Barrett said that with COVID-19, “it’s kind of like the future of work just dropped down on top of us all of a sudden.”

Colleges should realize that many learners will be looking to colleges to help them accelerate their learning, she added. That includes serving new high school graduates grappling with “learning loss” from the last weeks of disrupted schooling, and also helping “new adults coming into higher education who have been out of college for a long time.”

Pandemic may (finally) push online education into teacher prep programs — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

But there’s another factor that’s impeding remote learning. Most teachers simply don’t know how to teach online. No one ever taught them how—or asked them to learn.

“To teach remotely is not something we usually teach,” McGhee says. “We are very much focused on classroom teaching.”

That’s not unique to Auburn. Few teacher preparation programs in the U.S. train future educators to teach online, experts say.

Tech conferences are going virtual, and it feels like Netflix content on demand — from .marketwatch.com by Jon Swartz

Excerpt:

Such is the new world of tech conferences in the age of COVID-19. They’ve gone all-digital, like Build and GTC Digital, and may never be the same. Absent a vaccine, the days of thousands of people herded into hotel ballrooms and convention centers like cattle, sharing cabs and eating in cramped quarters, are gone.

Far from crippling the tech industry, however, virtual shows could lead to democratization of what had once been an exclusive, pricey privilege for tech movers and shakers. In the new climate, consumers have free access to valuable technical content whenever they wish to view it.

“Last year, I paid several thousand dollars to attend, and if I was late for a session, I couldn’t rewind it. This year, I could.”

Learning Ecosystems

The “new normal” paradox: What COVID-19 has revealed about higher education [Crow]

Law on trial — What the legal industry can do to defend it [Cohen]

Remote collaboration and virtual conferences, the future of work [Fink]

Tech conferences are going virtual, and it feels like Netflix content on demand [Swartz]

Categories

Tags

Below are some other items regarding the future of higher education.

Categories

Tags

Below are some other items
regarding the future of higher education.