The future of corporate learning and development (L&D) is being profoundly reshaped by the progress we are witnessing in artificial intelligence (AI). The increasing availability of new technologies and tools is causing L&D leaders and their teams to rethink their strategy and processes, and even their team structure. The resulting shift, already gaining momentum, will soon move us toward a future where learning experiences are deeply personal, interactive, and contextually rich.
The technological advancements at the forefront of this revolution:
Allow us to create high-quality content faster and at a fraction of the cost previously experienced.
Provide us with a range of new modalities of delivery, such as chat interfaces, as well as immersive and experiential simulations and games.
Enable us to transform learning and training more and more into a journey uniquely tailored to each individual’s learning path, strengths, weaknesses, and confidence levels.
We are already seeing signs of the immediate future—one where AI will adapt not only content but the entire learner experience, on-the-fly and aligned with the needs and requirements of the learner at a specific moment of need.
AI-assisted design & development work: A dramatic shift This prediction was right. There has been a seismic shift in instructional design, and the role is evolving toward content curation, editing, and resource orchestration. Critical thinking skills are becoming more important than ever to make sure that the final learning asset is accurate. All of this is happening thanks to AI tools like:
Adobe Firefly…
ChatGPT…
Another tool, one that isn’t usually part of the L&D ecosystem, is Microsoft’s Azure AI Services…
Early estimates indicate these improvements save between 30 percent and 60 percent of development time.
As a reminder, meta-learning, in this context, refers to tools that serve up experiences to learners based on their preferences, needs, and goals. It is the superstructure behind the content assets (e.g., programs, courses, articles, videos, etc.) that assembles everything into a coherent, and purposeful, body of knowledge for the users.
You’re a teacher who wants to integrate AI into your teaching. What do you do? I often get asked how should I start with AI in my school or University. This, I think, is one answer.
Continuity with teaching
One school has got this exactly right in my opinion. Meredith Joy Morris has implemented ChatGPT into the teaching process. The teacher does their thing and the chatbot picks up where the teacher stops, augmenting and scaling the teaching and learning process, passing the baton to the learners who carry on.This gives the learner a more personalised experience, encouraging independent learning by using the undoubted engagement that 1:1 dialogue provides.
There’s no way any teacher can provide this carry on support with even a handful of students, never mind a class of 30 or a course with 100. Teaching here is ‘extended’ and ‘scaled’ by AI. The feedback from the students was extremely positive.
The transition which AI forces me to make is no longer to evaluate writings, but to evaluate writers. I am accustomed to grading essays impersonally with an objective rubric, treating the text as distinct from the author and commenting only on the features of the text. I need to transition to evaluating students a bit more holistically, as philosophers – to follow along with them in the early stages of the writing process, to ask them to present their ideas orally in conversation or in front of their peers, to push them to develop the intellectual virtues that they will need if they are not going to be mastered by the algorithms seeking to manipulate them. That’s the sort of development I’ve meant to encourage all along, not paragraph construction and citation formatting. If my grading practices incentivize outsourcing to a machine intelligence, I need to change my grading practices.
[Bryan Alexander] There’s a crying need for faculty and staff professional development about generative AI. The topic is complicated and fast moving. Already the people I know who are seriously offering such support are massively overscheduled. Digital materials are popular. Books are lagging but will gradually surface. I hope we see more academics lead more professional development offerings.
For an academic institution to take emerging AI seriously it might have to set up a new body. Present organizational nodes are not necessarily a good fit.
When Satya Nitta worked at IBM, he and a team of colleagues took on a bold assignment: Use the latest in artificial intelligence to build a new kind of personal digital tutor.
This was before ChatGPT existed, and fewer people were talking about the wonders of AI. But Nitta was working with what was perhaps the highest-profile AI system at the time, IBM’s Watson. That AI tool had pulled off some big wins, including beating humans on the Jeopardy quiz show in 2011.
Nitta says he was optimistic that Watson could power a generalized tutor, but he knew the task would be extremely difficult. “I remember telling IBM top brass that this is going to be a 25-year journey,” he recently told EdSurge.
What are the advantages of AI in education? Canva’s study found 78 percent of teachers are interested in using AI education tools, but their experience with the technology remains limited, with 93 percent indicating they know “a little” or “nothing” about it – though this lack of experience hasn’t stopped teachers quickly discovering and considering its benefits:
60 percent of teachers agree it has given them ideas to boost student productivity
59 percent of teachers agree it has cultivated more ways for their students to be creative
56 percent of teachers agree it has made their lives easier
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When looking at the ways teachers are already using generative artificial intelligence, the most common uses were:
Washington state issued new guidelines for K-12 public schools last week based on the principle of “embracing a human-centered approach to AI,” which also embraces the use of AI in the education process. The state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Chris Reykdal, commented in a letter accompanying the new guidelines:
Giving educators time back to invest in themselves and their students
Boost productivity and creativity with Duet AI: Educators can get fresh ideas and save time using generative AI across Workspace apps. With Duet AI, they can get help drafting lesson plans in Docs, creating images in Slides, building project plans in Sheets and more — all with control over their data.
The EdResearch for Action Overview Series summarizes the research on key topics to provide K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students. Authors – leading experts from across the field of education research – are charged with highlighting key findings from research that provide concrete, strategic insight on persistent challenges sourced from district and state leaders.
Today, we’re announcing the next wave of AI innovations from Microsoft Education that will help unlock productivity and personalize learning. This includes expanded Copilot for Microsoft 365 availability and Loop coming to education. We’re also sharing news about AI built for education such as Reading Coach and features designed to free up time for educators and personalize learning. As part of our continued work to build AI literacy, we’ve launched our latest course for educators and a new learning path on Microsoft Learn. And earlier this week we outlined Microsoft’s position and themes for policymakers to consider around advancing youth online safety and wellness.
With the latest AI technology, we have an opportunity to provide learners with personalized, engaging, and transformative reading experiences. Reading Coach, aLearning Acceleratornow powered by generative AI, does just that. You can sign up for a preview of Reading Coach today and try it for yourself atcoach.microsoft.com.
Last week, CETL partnered with the Department of Writing and Rhetoric to offer a second iteration of the AI Institute for Teachers to an audience of UM instructors from across disciplines. Nearly 60 faculty from 26 different departments and schools attended the three-day event. In a wide variety of interactive sessions designed by Institute leader Marc Watkins, participants examined the impact of generative AI on teaching and learning, working in small groups to consider how to approach AI in their own disciplines.
If you’re not a UM faculty member or couldn’t attend the sessions, we have good news! All the materials from the Institute are publicly available at the following links:
Rather than try to ban this technology from classrooms outright, the Learning With AI project asks if this moment offers an opportunity to introduce students to the ethical and economic questions wreaked by these new tools, as well as to experiment with progressive forms of pedagogy that can exploit them.
OpenAI on Thursday announced its first partnership with a higher education institution.
Starting in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT Enterprise and plans to use it for coursework, tutoring, research and more.
The partnership has been in the works for at least six months.
ASU plans to build a personalized AI tutor for students, allow students to create AI avatars for study help and broaden the university’s prompt engineering course.
The collaboration between ASU and OpenAI brings the advanced capabilities of ChatGPT Enterprise into higher education, setting a new precedent for how universities enhance learning, creativity and student outcomes.
“ASU recognizes that augmented and artificial intelligence systems are here to stay, and we are optimistic about their ability to become incredible tools that help students to learn, learn more quickly and understand subjects more thoroughly,” ASU President Michael M. Crow said. “Our collaboration with OpenAI reflects our philosophy and our commitment to participating directly to the responsible evolution of AI learning technologies.”
AI <> Academia — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman What might emerge from ASU’s pioneering partnership with OpenAI?
Phil’s Wish List #2: Smart Curriculum Development ChatGPT assists in creating and updating course curricula, based on both student data and emerging domain and pedagogical research on the topic.
Output: using AI it will be possible to review course content and make data-informed automate recommendations based on latest pedagogical and domain-specific research
Potential Impact: increased dynamism and relevance in course content and reduced administrative lift for academics.
Unlike traditional leadership, adaptable leadership is not bound by rigid rules and protocols. Instead, it thrives on flexibility. Adaptable leaders are willing to experiment, make course corrections, and pivot when necessary. Adaptable leadership is about flexibility, resilience and a willingness to embrace change. It embodies several key principles that redefine the role of leaders in organizations:
Embracing uncertainty
Adaptable leaders understand that uncertainty is the new norm. They do not shy away from ambiguity but instead, see it as an opportunity for growth and innovation. They encourage a culture of experimentation and learning from failure.
Empowering teams
Instead of dictating every move, adaptable leaders empower their teams to take ownership of their work. They foster an environment of trust and collaboration, enabling individuals to contribute their unique perspectives and skills.
Continuous learning
Adaptable leaders are lifelong learners. They are constantly seeking new knowledge, stay informed about industry trends and encourage their teams to do the same. They understand that knowledge is a dynamic asset that must be constantly updated.
Major AI in Education Related Developments this week — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard ASU integrates with ChatGPT, K-12 AI integrations, Agents & the Rabbit, Uruguay, Meta and AGI, Rethinking curriculum
“The greatest risk is leaving school curriculum unchanged when the entire world is changing.” Hadi Partovi, founder Code.org, Angel investor in Facebook, DropBox, AirBnb, Uber
Tutorbots in college. On a more limited scale, Georgia State University, Morgan State University, and the University of Central Florida are piloting a project using chatbots to support students in foundational math and English courses.
Pioneering AI-Driven Instructional Design in Small College Settings — from campustechnology.com by Gopu Kiron For institutions that lack the budget or staff expertise to utilize instructional design principles in online course development, generative AI may offer a way forward.
Unfortunately, smaller colleges — arguably the institutions whose students are likely to benefit the most from ID enhancements — frequently find themselves excluded from authentically engaging in the ID arena due to tight budgets, limited faculty online course design expertise, and the lack of ID-specific staff roles. Despite this, recent developments in generative AI may offer these institutions a low-cost, tactical avenue to compete with more established players.
There’s a new AI from Google DeepMind called AlphaGeometry that totally nails solving super hard geometry problems. We’re talking problems so tough only math geniuses who compete in the International Mathematical Olympiad can figure them out.
But probably the most noticeable difference is that there’s a running theme of AI throughout the guide. First, there’s a nine-page spread devoted entirely to artificial intelligence — digging into how it works, what teachers are concerned about, some really good places to go to learn more, and 12 tools whose primary function is leveraging the power of AI. In addition to that, we went through the rest of the guide and put a little AI icon on every single tool that uses AI in some way, so you can see whether the tools you already know and love have started to take advantage of what artificial intelligence has to offer.
Though college enrollment seems to be stabilizing after the pandemic disruptions, predictions for the next 15 years are grim. Colleges will be hurt financially by fewer tuition-paying students, and many will have to merge with other institutions or make significant changes to the way they operate if they want to keep their doors open.
At least 30 colleges closed their only or final campus in the first 10 months of 2023, including 14 nonprofit colleges and 16 for-profit colleges, according to an analysis of federal data by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO. Among nonprofits, this came on the heels of 2022, when 23 of them closed, along with 25 for-profit institutions. Before 2022, the greatest number of nonprofit colleges that closed in a single year was 13.
BIG RAPIDS, MI – A Michigan university is believed to be the first in the country to use artificial intelligence (AI) to create virtual students that will enroll in classes and participate in lessons and assignments.
Ferris State University, which has one of just three undergraduate AI programs in the U.S., has developed two AI students who are enrolling at Ferris State as freshmen this semester and taking classes alongside human classmates.
At first, Ann and Fry will only be able to observe the class, but the goal is for the AI students to soon be able to speak during classroom discussions and have two-way conversations with their classmates, Thompson said.
BIG RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — As Ferris State University gets ready for its spring semester, two virtual students will begin classes as part of a new artificial intelligence experiment.
Ferris State University offers one of three AI undergraduate programs in the entire country.
“We are leaders in the artificial intelligence area, and why not put us to the test?” said Dr. Kasey Thompson, special assistant to the president for innovation and entrepreneurship at Ferris State.
Students at Ferris State University in Michigan will soon be sharing the classroom with AI-powered freshman “students” who will enroll in classes alongside them, MLive reports.
And no, they won’t have humanoid robot bodies — they’ll be interacting with students via computers, microphones, and speakers.
In an experiment led by associate professor Kasey Thompson, AI students dubbed Ann and Fry will be listening — or scanning through? — lectures, work on assignments, and even actively participate in discussions with other students, per the report.
AI & “Un-Personalised” Learning — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman Exploring the full potential of AI to improve human learning, beyond the 1:1 AI tutor
In this week’s blog post we will look at AI from a different angle and ask: what are the pros and cons of using AI for personalisation? And what’s the potential impact of using AI to optimise and scale more connected, communal learning experiences?
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TL;DR: while personalised learning has some benefits for some learner outcomes, the social interaction and connected aspects of communal learning are proven to offer similar academic benefits, as well as additional socio-cultural benefits for a broader range of students.
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AI for “Un-Personalised” Learning
The next question is, of course: how could we use AI to scale the positive outcomes of “un-personalised”, communal learning?
New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to make New York the nation’s leader in artificial intelligence research and development. As part of her State of the State address on Tuesday, Hochul proposed the creation of Empire AI – a consortium of the state’s research universities and other institutions that would form an artificial intelligence computing center in upstate New York.
Empire AI would include seven founding institutions—Columbia University, Cornell University, New York University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the State University of New York (SUNY), the City University of New York (CUNY), and the Simons Foundation.
North Carolina AI Education Guidance Release — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard “A” grade in my mind; it just needs to anticipate the near future a bit more
TLDR The Guidance
*North Carolina has arguably issued the best AI guidance to date (IMHO), and I explain why below (my highlighted version is here). This is in no way a knock on the other guidance reports, as I think they offer a lot them of very important and essential guidance. I just really like how NC packages it and the emphasis they put on certain things.
Tertiary Education in the UK needs a fresh idea. What we need is an initiative on the same scale as The Open University, kicked off over 50 years ago.
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It is clear that an educational vision is needed and I think the best starting point is that outlined and executed by Paul LeBlanc at SNHU. It is substantial, well articulated and has worked in what has become the largest University in the US.
It would be based on the competence model, with a focus on skills shortages. Here’s a starter with 25 ideas, a manifesto of sorts, based on lessons learnt from other successful models:
Non-traditional students in terms of age and background
Quick and easy application process
Personalised learning using AI
Multimodal from the start
Full range of summarisation, create self-assessment, dialogue tools
1. Your own AI-powered coaching Learners can go into LinkedIn Learning and ask a question or explain a challenge they are currently facing at work (we’re focusing on areas within Leadership and Management to start). AI-powered coaching will pull from the collective knowledge of our expansive LinkedIn Learning library and, instantaneously, offer advice, examples, or feedback that is personalized to the learner’s skills, job, and career goals.
What makes us so excited about this launch is we can now take everything we as LinkedIn know about people’s careers and how they navigate them and help accelerate them with AI.
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3. Learn exactly what you need to know for your next job
When looking for a new job, it’s often the time we think about refreshing our LinkedIn profiles. It’s also a time we can refresh our skills. And with skill sets for jobs having changed by 25% since 2015 – with the number expected to increase by 65% by 2030– keeping our skills a step ahead is one of the most important things we can do to stand out.
There are a couple of ways we’re making it easier to learn exactly what you need to know for your next job:
When you set a job alert, in addition to being notified about open jobs, we’ll recommend learning courses and Professional Certificate offerings to help you build the skills needed for that role.
When you view a job, we recommend specific courses to help you build the required skills. If you have LinkedIn Learning access through your company or as part of a Premium subscription, you can follow the skills for the job, that way we can let you know when we launch new courses for those skills and recommend you content on LinkedIn that better aligns to your career goals.
2024 Edtech Predictions from Edtech Insiders — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Alex Sarlin, Ben Kornell, and Sarah Morin Omni-modal AI, edtech funding prospects, higher ed wake up calls, focus on career training, and more!
Alex: I talked to the 360 Learning folks at one point and they had this really interesting epiphany, which is basically that it’s been almost impossible for every individual company in the past to create a hierarchy of skills and a hierarchy of positions and actually organize what it looks like for people to move around and upskill within the company and get to new paths.
Until now. AI actually can do this very well. It can take not only job description data, but it can take actual performance data. It can actually look at what people do on a daily basis and back fit that to training, create automatic training based on it.
From DSC: I appreciated how they addressed K-12, higher ed, and the workforce all in one posting. Nice work. We don’t need siloes. We need more overall design thinking re: our learning ecosystems — as well as more collaborations. We need more on-ramps and pathways in a person’s learning/career journey.
Want to know how K12 schools are navigating the adoption of AI and what district-level leaders really think about GenAI EdTech tools?
Join us for this free webinar where we discussed AI technology, literacy, training, and the responsible adoption of GenAI tools in K12. Our panel explored what is working well – and not so well – across their districts from a school leader and practitioner’s perspective.
Those vastly different approaches to college writing pretty much sum up the responses to generative AI: They’re all over the map.
One year after its release, ChatGPT has pushed higher education into a liminal place. Colleges are still hammering out large-scale plans and policies governing how generative AI will be dealt with in operations, research, and academic programming. But professors have been forced more immediately to adapt their classrooms to its presence. Those adaptations vary significantly, depending on whether they see the technology as a tool that can aid learning or as a threat that inhibits it.
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Nearly 100 faculty members shared their stories. While not a representative sample, they teach at a wide range of institutions: 15 community colleges, 32 public and 24 private four-year colleges or universities, seven international institutions, and one for-profit college. They teach a variety of subjects, including animal science, statistics, computer science, history, accounting, and composition. Many spent hours learning about AI: enrolling in workshops and webinars, experimenting with the tools, and reading articles, so that they could enter the fall semester informed and prepared.
The Disruption of AI in CTE Is Real— from techlearning.com by Annie Galvin Teich An ACTE expert panel urges CTE educators to jump on the AI train as it’s already left the station
10 Best Practices for AI and CTE
Embrace AI and use it first for simple tasks to create efficiencies. Then use it to individualize instruction and for formative assessment tools aligned to standards.
Be creative and conscious of internal bias and ethics. Focus on DEI and access.
Encourage students to use apps and tools to start moving toward an integrated curriculum using AI.
Prepare students for jobs of the future by partnering with industry to solve real problems.
Where will AI make a big difference?
At Emerge, we have identified eight high-level trends — what we’re calling “engines of opportunity”. These eight “engines of opportunity” capture our ideas about how AI is being used to drive better practice and outcomes in HE, now and into the future.
They fall into two main categories:
Making learning more engaging: solutions that scale high quality pedagogy at low cost.
Making teaching more efficient: solutions that save educators and organisations time and money.
The Rise of Learning Societies — from educationnext.org by Alan Gottlieb A small experiment in rural Idaho holds big promise for student success
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The basic idea is this: Some parents who, for a variety of reasons, hesitate to send their children to a traditional brick-and-mortar school have neither the time, inclination, or temperament to homeschool or to monitor a full-time online program. Learning Societies provide an intimate environment where kids, supervised by professional educators, learn online and in small, in-person groups for six hours a day.Gem Prep leaders describe it as a sweet spot between traditional schooling and at-home online learning. It is particularly well suited to rural areas.
Learning Societies have the potential to achieve a happy medium that combines the strengths of both homeschooling (or online learning from home) and a traditional brick-and-mortar school.
Using Drawing as a Powerful Learning Tool — from edutopia.org by Selim Tlili When students draw something they’re learning about, they’re more likely to remember key details.
One of my main goals as a science teacher is to open students up to seeing all of those beautiful and interesting details. I do that by having students draw things and clearly write what they observe. Drawing something requires students to look at their subject far longer than they are accustomed. Writing what they see forces them to consciously acknowledge it. I explain to students that just as every single human is unique, so is every coin, plant, and salt crystal.
