leadership

Reflections on “Digital Ivy: Harvard Business School’s Next Online Program” [Corcoran]

On 08/08/2017, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, higher education, innovation, leadership, MBA, online learning, platforms, strategy, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Digital Ivy: Harvard Business School’s Next Online Program — from edsurge.com by Betsy Corcoran

Excerpts:

A triad of Harvard institutions—its business School, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the department of statistics—are teaming up with Maryland-based digital education company, 2U, to offer an online executive education certificate in business analytics.
…
Orchestrating a cross-disciplinary program is no small feat, particularly at Harvard. “This was really hard [for Harvard] to pull off,” Paucek says. “It’s an intense, cross-disciplinary new offering from a school founded in 1636. The field is new, the offering of a complex blended certificate is new, and it’s being done with HBS, SEAS and the faculty, all blessed by the central administration. And it’s powered by an outside company that’s only 10 years old.”

The bottom line: HBS, Harvard SEAS and FAS faculty all want to put their imprint on the topic that is mesmerizing nearly every type of organization.

Also see:

Andrew Ng spreads the gospel of AI with a new online school — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Andrew Ng a soft-spoken AI researcher whose online postings talk loudly.

A March blog post in which the Stanford professor announced he was leaving Chinese search engine Baidu temporarily wiped more than a billion dollars off the company’s value. A June tweet about a new Ng website, Deeplearning.ai, triggered a wave of industry and media speculation about his next project.

Today that speculation is over. Deeplearning.ai is home to a series of online courses Ng says will help spread the benefits of recent advances in machine learning far beyond big tech companies such as Google and Baidu. The courses offers coders without an AI background training in how to use deep learning, the technique behind the current frenzy of investment in AI.

From DSC:
For those of you who shun online learning and think such programs will dilute your face-to-face based brands — whether individual colleges, universities, faculty members, provosts, deans, IT-based personnel, administrators, members of the board of trustees, and/or other leaders and strategists within higher education — you might want to intentionally consider what kind of future you have without a strong, solid online presence. Because if one of the top — arguably thee top — universities in the United States is moving forward forcefully with online learning, what’s your story/excuse?

And if one of the top thinkers in artificial intelligence backs online learning, again…what’s your story/excuse?

If Amazon.com dominates and Sears (and related retail stores who were powerhouses just years ago) are now closing…you are likely heading for major trouble as the world continues down the digital/virtual tracks — and you aren’t sending any (or very few) cars down those tracks. You won’t have any credibility in the future — at least not in the digital/virtual/online-based realms. Oh, and by the way, you might want to set some more funding aside for the mental and physical health of your admissions/enrollment teams in such situations…as their jobs are going to be increasingly stressful and difficult in order to meet their target numbers.

Also see:

Could Georgia Tech Use Online to Shave Time Off Bachelor’s Degrees? — from insidehighered.com by Mark Lieberman
University uses model from closely observed master’s in computer science on undergraduates for first time, finds notable success and sees path to shaving a year or more off in-person instruction.

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education [Chou]

On 08/04/2017, in career development, computer science, ethics, leadership, liberal arts, morals/values, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, society, strategy, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education — from qz.com by Tracy Chou

Excerpts:

I was no longer operating in a world circumscribed by lesson plans, problem sets and programming assignments, and intended course outcomes. I also wasn’t coding to specs, because there were no specs. As my teammates and I were building the product, we were also simultaneously defining what it should be, whom it would serve, what behaviors we wanted to incentivize amongst our users, what kind of community it would become, and what kind of value we hoped to create in the world.

I still loved immersing myself in code and falling into a state of flow—those hours-long intensive coding sessions where I could put everything else aside and focus solely on the engineering tasks at hand. But I also came to realize that such disengagement from reality and societal context could only be temporary.
…
At Quora, and later at Pinterest, I also worked on the algorithms powering their respective homefeeds: the streams of content presented to users upon initial login, the default views we pushed to users. It seems simple enough to want to show users “good” content when they open up an app. But what makes for good content? Is the goal to help users to discover new ideas and expand their intellectual and creative horizons? To show them exactly the sort of content that they know they already like? Or, most easily measurable, to show them the content they’re most likely to click on and share, and that will make them spend the most time on the service?

Ruefully—and with some embarrassment at my younger self’s condescending attitude toward the humanities—I now wish that I had strived for a proper liberal arts education. That I’d learned how to think critically about the world we live in and how to engage with it. That I’d absorbed lessons about how to identify and interrogate privilege, power structures, structural inequality, and injustice. That I’d had opportunities to debate my peers and develop informed opinions on philosophy and morality. And even more than all of that, I wish I’d even realized that these were worthwhile thoughts to fill my mind with—that all of my engineering work would be contextualized by such subjects.

It worries me that so many of the builders of technology today are people like me; people haven’t spent anywhere near enough time thinking about these larger questions of what it is that we are building, and what the implications are for the world.

Also see:

Why We Need the Liberal Arts in Technology’s Age of Distraction — from time.com by Tim Bajarin

Excerpt:

In a recent Harvard Business Review piece titled “Liberal Arts in the Data Age,” author JM Olejarz writes about the importance of reconnecting a lateral, liberal arts mindset with the sort of rote engineering approach that can lead to myopic creativity. Today’s engineers have been so focused on creating new technologies that their short term goals risk obscuring unintended longterm outcomes. While a few companies, say Intel, are forward-thinking enough to include ethics professionals on staff, they remain exceptions. At this point all tech companies serious about ethical grounding need to be hiring folks with backgrounds in areas like anthropology, psychology and philosophy.

Radically open: Tom Friedman on jobs, learning, and the future of work — from dupress.delotte.com by Tom Friedman, Cathy Engelbert, and John Hagel

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Tom Friedman: My thoughts on the future of work are very influenced by my friend, a business strategist, Heather McGowan. She really describes that what’s going on is that work is being disconnected from jobs, and jobs and work are being disconnected from companies, which are increasingly becoming platforms. That’s Heather’s argument, and that is what I definitely see.

[A good] example is what’s happened to the cab business. In Bethesda, we have a [local] cab company that owns cars and has employees who have a job; they drive those cars. They’re competing now with Uber, which owns no cars, has no employees, and just provides a platform of work that brings together ride-needers—myself—and ride-providers. And I do think that the Uber platform model, and the way it is turning a job into work and monetizing work, is the future of work.

And that will have a huge impact on the future of learning. Because if work is being extracted from jobs, and if jobs and work are being extracted from companies—and because, as you and I have both written, we’re now in a world of flows — then learning has to become lifelong. We have to provide both the learning tools and the learning resources for lifelong learning when your job becomes work and your company becomes a platform.

So I’m not sure what the work of the future is, but I know that the future of companies is to be hiring people and constantly training people to be prepared for a job that has not been invented yet. If you, as a company, are not providing both the resources and the opportunity for lifelong learning, [you’re sunk], because you simply cannot be a lifelong employee anymore unless you are a lifelong learner. If you’re training people for a job that’s already been invented, or if you’re going to school in preparation for a job that’s already been invented, I would suggest that you’re going to have problems somewhere down the road.

…
CE: In a recent report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, some leading labor economists did an analysis of net new employment in the United States between 2005 and 2015, and found that about 94 percent of that net new employment was from alternative work arrangements—everything from gig to freelance and off-balance-sheet kinds of work.
…
I think that’s why we need to teach filtering, literally, to our students. There should be Filtering 101, Filtering 102, Filtering 103. How do I filter information so I get enough of it to advance, but not so much that I’m overwhelmed? How do I filter news?

…it seems to me that rule number one is you want to be radically open. And that’s a really hard sell right now, because it feels so counterintuitive, and everyone’s putting up walls right when you want to be, actually, radically open. Why do you want to be radically open? Because you’ll get more flows; you’ll get the signals first, and you will attract more flow-minded people, which I would call high-IQ risk-takers. That’s from a country point of view, but I have to believe that’s also right from a company point of view: that you want to be plugged into as many discussions, as many places, and as many flow generators as possible, because you’ll simply get the signals first in order to understand where the work of the future is coming from.

[GE] offered $20,000 in prize money — 7,000 to the winner, and the rest split up among the other finalists. Well, within six weeks, they got over 600 responses. The 10 finalists were all tested by GE engineers, and they picked the winner. None of the 10 finalists was an American, and none was an aeronautical engineer, and the winner was a 21-year-old from Indonesia who was not an aeronautical engineer, and he took more than 80 percent of the weight out of this fastener.
…
No, let’s actually create jump balls and access all the talent wherever it is.

And what did the best artisans do? They brought so much personal value-add, so much unique extra, to what they did that they carved their initials into their work at the end of the day. So always do your job [in a way that] you bring so much empathy to it, so much unique, personal value-add, that it cannot be automated, digitized, or outsourced, and that you want to carve your initials into it at the end of the day.

From DSC:
If what Tom, Cathy, and John discuss here is true, think of what that means for our students. Our students need to be digitally literate, online, adaptable, lifelong learners, and they need to be highly comfortable with change. They need to be tapped into the “flows” that the authors describe (what they refer to as flows, I call “streams of content” — if I’m understanding their perspective correctly). They need to think entrepreneurially, as Friedman asserts.

Also, they discuss three new social contracts that need to evolve:

There are three new social contracts that have to evolve here. Government has to incentivize companies to create these lifelong learning opportunities. Companies have to create the platforms for employees to afford to be able to take these courses. And the employee has to have a new social contract with themselves: “I have to do this on my own time; I have to be more self-motivated.” More is on you.

…and thus enters my vision that I call Learning from the Living [Class] Room. A global, powerful, next generation learning platform — meant to help people reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, conveniently, & consistently.

But there is no more important survival skill than learning to love learning.

…because you simply cannot be a lifelong employee anymore unless you are a lifelong learner.

Always think of yourself as if you need to be reengineered, retooled, relearned, retaught constantly. Never think of yourself as “finished”; otherwise you really will be finished.

The Rose-Colored Glasses Come Off: a Survey of Business Officers — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman & Rick Seltzer

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The reality of higher education’s financial challenges is sinking in among college and university business officers.

Now the question is what they’re doing about it — and whether they’re willing to do enough.

Chief business officers increasingly agree that higher education is in the midst of a financial crisis, according to the 2017 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Business Officers. Some are also starting to lose faith in the idea that they can overcome revenue shortfalls using the often-cited strategy of increasing enrollment.

Many respondents were open or supportive of the idea of consolidating programs or academic operations with other institutions. Yet survey results reflected a greater skepticism about their likelihood of actually merging with other colleges or universities in the near future. Business officers were also generally leery of addressing their budget issues in ways that would require them to ask faculty members to change. So although business officers are increasingly recognizing the financial threats they face, experts wondered whether they are being realistic about the kind of strategies they will have to pursue to chart a course forward.

Also see:

Business Officers and Learning Innovators — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim
Why maybe we should talk less about learning, and more about money.

I’d like to make a modest proposal.

What if for 2018 all of us involved in postsecondary learning innovation – edtech and CTL and library folks – spent the entire calendar year learning about the business of higher education?

— Per Joshua Kim

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point [Aldridge, Christian, Kelly, Powell, & Ventimiglia]

On 07/31/2017, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), bots, change, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, maker movement, robotics, society, student-related, tools, trends, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
Four higher ed IT leaders weigh in on the current state of education technology and what’s ahead.

This article includes some perspectives shared from the following 4 IT leaders:

Susan Aldridge, Senior Vice President for Online Learning, Drexel University (PA); President, Drexel University Online
Daniel Christian, Adjunct Faculty Member, Calvin College
Marci Powell, CEO/President, Marci Powell & Associates; Chair Emerita and Past President, United States Distance Learning Association
Phil Ventimiglia, Chief Innovation Officer, Georgia State University

Also see:

Higher ed forges ahead on immersive tech integration – from educationdive.com by Pat Donachie

Major Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business — from campustechnology.com by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

In a surprising turn of events, two major coding bootcamps, within the span of about a week, have announced they are shutting down all operations.

Most recently, after a four-year run, South Carolina-based The Iron Yard (TIY) revealed last Friday it would close its 15 campuses, including locations like Atlanta, Austin, Houston and Charleston where other coding bootcamps are flourishing.
…
Similarly, Dev Bootcamp (DBC) on July 12 announced via Facebook that it would shutdown operations at all six locations — Austin, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and New York — by the end of the summer.

From DSC:
I can almost hear the snickering from a variety of people within higher education about this situation. If gloating had an audible sound associated with it, I’d likely have to go find some earplugs. But I have a message for those who are snickering and gloating right now — saying something along the lines of, “Ha! So much for these alternatives to traditional higher education! They’re nothing, and they’ll come to nothing!”

That may be so. Such relatively new alternatives to traditional institutions of higher education may come to nothing. But you know what? At least those organizations are trying to be much more responsive than many institutions of traditional higher education are being! They’ve recognized that there are unmet needs — gaps, if you will — arising from our current systems. Gaps in either the content that we’re providing and/or the manner in which we’re providing it. Gaps that thousands of students have signed up for in a relatively short time. Those gaps should be cause for action within traditional institutions of higher education. They should be cause for realizing that we aren’t responding nearly fast enough to today’s new pace of change.

The pace of change has changed. It is lightning fast these days. Don’t believe me? Go check out some of the descriptions for the hot jobs out there these days. Seriously. Go do it. Go find out which skills you need to get your foot in the door to acquire those types of positions. It’ll blow your mind!

And there are ramifications to this.

If our accreditation systems need to change, than so be it. Let’s identify those necessary changes and make ’em happen!

Because:

WE have some serious responsibility for the educations that we are providing to this next generation!!!
WE need to prepare them for what they’ll need to be marketable in the future — so that they can put bread and butter on their tables throughout their careers.
WE need to act!
WE need to be responsive!

This is not a time for gloating. Rather, this is a time for some serious action.

Addendums on 8/2/17 and 8/3/17:

Jobs Report: 97 Percent of Flatiron School Graduates Land Jobs — from by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

While two major coding bootcamps shut down earlier this week, another released its latest jobs report and says it had the strongest student outcomes to date.

The Flatiron School based in New York, NY has released an independently verified jobs report every year since 2014 — “pioneering the concept of outcomes reporting and setting a standard of transparency in educational outcomes,” the latest report reads. It’s the company’s commitment to accessibility and transparency that have allowed its programs to stay open for five years now, says Adam Enbar, co-founder of the Flatiron School.

More bootcamps are quietly coming to a university near you — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In the last two years, a surge of nonprofit, four-year institutions have hopped on the bootcamp bandwagon. These programs, often on skills such as software development or data analytics, have arrived in a number of ways—from universities partnering with local for-profit bootcamps, or colleges creating their own intensive training programs completely in-house.But while bootcamps are often associated with tech skills, it seems that traditional universities trying out the model are interested in more than just coding. An increasing number of traditional higher-ed institutions are now applying bootcamp trainings to other fields, such as healthcare, accounting and even civics and political science.

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure [Petrone]

On 07/20/2017, in adult learning, business, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, experimentation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, strategy, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure — from learning.linkedin.com by Paul Petrone

Excerpt:

Six questions that determine how your company really feels about failure
It’s great to say your company welcomes people experimenting and failing. But does that actually happen in practice?

To assess how your company really feels about failure, Andreatta suggests asking yourself these six questions about your culture:

Do people admit when they don’t know something or ask for help?
What happens when someone makes a mistake or fails? Are they teased or shamed or are they encouraged to look at what happened and try again?
When people make mistakes or challenge ideas, do they ultimately get sidelined, demoted or red?
Do people admit their mistakes and take responsibility for fixing them or do they blame others?
Do managers and leaders share stories of how they took risks or recovered from a failure?

“All of the amazing training programs in the world won’t help if people don’t feel safe enough to stretch and grow,” Andreatta said.

Career Pathways: Five Ways to Connect College and Careers calls for states to help students, their families, and employers unpack the meaning of postsecondary credentials and assess their value in the labor market.

Excerpt:

If students are investing more to go to college, they need to have answers to basic questions about the value of postsecondary education. They need better information to make decisions that have lifelong economic consequences.

Getting a college education is one of the biggest investments people will make in their lives, but the growing complexity of today’s economy makes it difficult for higher education to deliver efficiency and consistent quality. Today’s economy is more intricate than those of decades past.

From this press release:

It’s Time to Fix Higher Education’s Tower of Babel, Says Georgetown University Report
The lack of transparency around college and careers leads to costly, uninformed decisions

(Washington, D.C., July 11, 2017) — A new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (Georgetown Center), Career Pathways: Five Ways to Connect College and Careers, calls for states to help students, their families, and employers unpack the meaning of postsecondary credentials and assess their value in the labor market.

Back when a high school-educated worker could find a good job with decent wages, the question was simply whether or not to go to college. That is no longer the case in today’s economy, which requires at least some college to enter the middle class. The study finds that:

The number of postsecondary programs of study more than quintupled between 1985 and 2010 — from 410 to 2,260;
The number of colleges and universities more than doubled from 1,850 to 4,720 between 1950 and 2014; and
The number of occupations grew from 270 in 1950 to 840 in 2010.

The variety of postsecondary credentials, providers, and online delivery mechanisms has also multiplied rapidly in recent years, underscoring the need for common, measurable outcomes.

College graduates are also showing buyer’s remorse. While they are generally happy with their decision to attend college, more than half would choose a different major, go to a different college, or pursue a different postsecondary credential if they had a chance.

The Georgetown study points out that the lack of information drives the higher education market toward mediocrity. The report argues that postsecondary education and training needs to be more closely aligned to careers to better equip learners and workers with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century economy and close the skills gap.

The stakes couldn’t be higher for students to make the right decisions. Since 1980, tuition and fees at public four year colleges and universities have grown 19 times faster than family incomes. Students and families want — and need — to know the value they are getting for their investment.

Also see:

Trumping toward college transparency — from linkedin.com by Anthony Carnevale
The perfect storm is gathering around the need to increase transparency around college and careers. And in accordance with how public policy generally comes about, it might just happen.

How Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods highlights the hybrid, ‘omnichannel’ future of higher ed — from edsurge.com by Sean Gallagher

Excerpt:

The expectation that students can integrate their learning experiences across channels is now arriving in higher education. Online education has reached a tipping point where almost 30 percent of all students in U.S. higher education are enrolled in at least one online college course. A significant number of students are already blending their experience across online and offline channels—and numerous data points speak to the evolving value of blending online delivery with physical presence, as suggested by Amazon.

In national surveys of prospective adult students that we have conducted regularly at Northeastern University over recent years, we have consistently found that 60 percent of students prefer a blended or hybrid learning experience. In other words, the majority of the higher education student market is neglected by today’s dominant approach that focuses on offering either online or in-person programs.
…
Like Amazon, the colleges and universities that are able to deliver across channels—leveraging the combination of physical presence and online algorithms—will be uniquely positioned to take advantage of the in-demand, destination nature of studying in certain cities; the local sourcing of faculty; and proximity to key employers, industries, and job opportunities.

Over the next decade, growth and competitive success in higher education will not be a function of who is able to offer online programs. Instead, the successful institutions will be those who can symbiotically integrate their placed-based educational operations and experiences with software-driven analytics, learning science, and machine learning to create a more personalized experience. A more Amazon-like experience.

From DSC:
A few side comments here:

The future won’t be kind to those institutions who haven’t built up their “street cred” in the digital/virtual space. For example, if you are working at a traditional institution of higher education that doesn’t have online-based programs — nor does it have plans to create such programs in the future — you should get your resume up-to-date and start looking…now.
.
For data/analytics to have a significant impact and inform strategic or pedagogical decisions, one needs to collect the data. This is not hard to do online. But it’s very difficult — at least at a granular level — to do in a face-to-face environment.
.
Coursera’s MeetUps around the world — where their learners are encouraged to join study and discussion groups related to their online-only courses — make me wonder about the future of learning spaces and whether your local Starbucks might morph into a learning hub.

Online Learning—from Innovation to Adoption: Introducing the CHLOE Survey — from eduventures.com by Richard Garrett & Ron Legon

Excerpt:

It’s now more than 20 years since online learning came on the scene. At the outset, many skeptics questioned its quality and reliability. Online learning faced widespread resistance among faculty conditioned by centuries-old, classroom-based education and lacking in computer skills. There were substantial start-up costs, technical deficiencies, and regulatory uncertainty to overcome.

With all these obstacles, many doubted whether online learning would gain a permanent foothold in U.S. higher education. The former Babson Survey Research Group/Sloan-C survey of chief academic officers focused on the fundamental issues of counting online students and attitudes for or against its adoption.

Today, the number of online students is no longer a mystery, and there is wide acceptance of the delivery mode among administrators and faculty. This innovation, in the means of delivering higher education, is here to stay. It is no longer experimental, but a fixture in mainstream institutions, accounting for a large and still growing proportion of total postsecondary enrollment.
…
Online learning has changed higher education, but higher education has also shaped online learning. There is no doubt that online learning is here to stay, but what is far less clear is the balance between innovation and consolidation, transformation and integration within institutions and across the field as a whole going forward. The planned series of annual CHLOE Surveys will provide much-needed insight.

Signs of a Ceiling in Online Ed Market — from insidehighered.com by Carl Straumsheim
Report on online education landscape suggests potentially leaner times ahead for colleges hoping to profit in the market. Community colleges are already seeing it.

Excerpt:

Is the community college sector the canary in the coal mine for the online education market?

A new survey of online education administrators at 104 colleges and universities released today shows — as other studies have suggested — that public and private four-year institutions saw healthy enrollment growth in their fully online programs in spring 2016 compared to the year before, and that they are showing few signs of slowing their investments in the space.

The situation is not the same at two-year colleges. Online programs at all institutions grew on average by 9 percent year over year, but at community colleges, growth typically registered 1 to 2 percent. And while only a handful of the public or private four-year institutions surveyed said their online enrollments shrank from 2015 to 2016, findings at community colleges were mixed: 33 percent saw growth, 27 percent decline and 40 percent stability.

From DSC:
It appears that the concept of “windows of opportunity” is also true with online learning; and the key thing for all community colleges, colleges and universities to reflect upon is that these windows don’t stay open forever.

But another thing is that the world is going increasingly digital/virtual — especially in regards to the increasingly common usage of automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Our forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) continue to morph (AR, VR, Alexa and other personal assistants, etc.)

So some questions come to my mind:

If one’s institution doesn’t offer a healthy assortment of online/virtually-based courses in the future, how might that situation impact the public’s perception of that particular institution? How might that situation impact recruitment and retention?
.
What’s going to happen when online-based learning experiences provide far more personalization, customization, and efficiency than our face-to-face courses can provide? Ask any faculty member speaking to 40-250+ students if they truly know the learning preferences, academic goals, and career goals of any given student — and I’ll bet you they have no idea. There’s simply not enough time to get to that level of information in many cases, and this situation is only getting tougher to do so. Don’t get me wrong. Many people will always prefer to learn in a physical environment, surrounded by other learners. But if the innovations continue to take place in the online learning-based environments, then Clayton Christensen’s theories of disruption could prove to be spot on — especially if the most innovative institutions of the future will be able to offer degrees at significantly reduced prices.

From DSC:
Though slightly older, this article has some solid advice that I think we in higher education need to heed as well.

The Importance of Continuing Education for Digital Leaders — from strategy-business.com by Chris Curran — with thanks to tweets by Cathryn Marsh and G Athanasakopoulos

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Whether you’re a newly minted MBA or an experienced leader, you’re always honing your skills and navigating change. And technology is one discipline in which you really can’t afford to stagnate. With digital transformation so central to strategy for most companies, all executives — especially CEOs — must embrace a learning mind-set. Gone are the days you can delegate the job of keeping up with technology to the IT staff.

Chief information officers (CIOs), of course, should regularly brief the management team and the board on new developments, demoing exciting new technology, bringing in external speakers and vendors, and using other tactics that promote tech learning and engagement. But keeping up on technology trends is also the responsibility of every executive. And while that can be daunting given the vast tech landscape and seemingly limitless avenues for learning, it’s also incredibly exciting.

Indeed, the art of continuous learning itself may be the most sought-after skill for tomorrow’s workforce as well as the key to solving tomorrow’s problems.

From DSC:
Tapping into streams of content (via RSS feeds and/or with tools like Google Alerts) is key here. Developing your personal learning networks and your communities of practice are key here. The article also mentions MOOCs and online learning. which I would also add to the list of helpful tools/avenues to pursue.

Very interesting: Purdue University to Acquire Kaplan University [wsj.com’s Belkin & Korn]

On 04/28/2017, in adult learning, business side of he, changing business models, leadership, lifelong learning, new business models, online learning, strategy, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Purdue University to Acquire Kaplan University — from wsj.com by Douglas Belkin and Melissa Korn
Purdue President Mitch Daniels calls deal major push into online education

Excerpt:

Purdue University, a flagship public institution in Indiana, is jumping into online education by buying for-profit Kaplan University with the aim of creating a new, public online university.

Also see:

Purdue Buys For-Profit Kaplan University for $1 to Create New Kind of Public University — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young
Excerpt:

It’s kind of a head-spinner. Purdue University agreed today to buy one of the largest for-profit universities, Kaplan University, and turn it into a public, non-profit university in the Purdue system. Except that this new public university will apparently operate without state funding (though financial aid will be available to students).

The sale price for Kaplan University’s 15 campuses was $1, though with one important catch: The new nonprofit university operated by Purdue promised to give a percentage of its revenue back to its former owner, Kaplan, Inc., for the next 30 years.

Addendum on 5/3/17:

Purdue’s Purchase of Kaplan Is a Big Bet — and a Sign of the Times — from chronicle.com by Goldie Blumenstyk

Has cutting your way to greatness ever worked? [Reed]

On 04/20/2017, in 21st century, business side of he, change, colleges, community colleges, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, leadership, strategy, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Has cutting your way to greatness ever worked? — from insidehighered.com by Matt Reed
I can’t think of a time that it has, yet it remains a common default mode.

Excerpt:

Has cutting your way to greatness ever worked?

I can’t think of a time that it has, yet it remains a common default mode.

In places with declining enrollments and without generous external benefactors, it’s easy to fall into the trap of constant cutting. Each year is a fresh emergency, bringing another round of short-term patches and “temporary” workarounds that quickly become new baselines.

Over time, though, the cuts do damage that starts to show up in enrollments. Too many classes cancelled or calls unreturned lead to attrition, which leads to calls for still more cuts. Cut an off-campus location to save money, and whoops, you lose its enrollments, leading to a need for more cutting. Add an inexorably rising underlying cost — say, just hypothetically, health insurance — and you have the makings of a death spiral.

The task for the emerging generation of leadership isn’t just fiscal; it’s narrative.

What are the ramifications for higher education re: the massive changes beginning to take place due to AI, automation, & robotics?

On 04/13/2017, in 21st century, accreditation, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, Michigan, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, pace of change, passions, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The recent pieces below made me once again reflect on the massive changes that are quickly approaching — and in some cases are already here — for a variety of nations throughout the world.

They caused me to reflect on:

What the potential ramifications for higher education might be regarding these changes that are just starting to take place in the workplace due to artificial intelligence (i.e., the increasing use of algorithms, machine learning, and deep learning, etc.), automation, & robotics?
The need for people to reinvent themselves quickly throughout their careers (if we can still call them careers)
How should we, as a nation, prepare for these massive changes so that there isn’t civil unrest due to soaring inequality and unemployment?

As found in the April 9th, 2017 edition of our local newspaper here:

When even our local newspaper is picking up on this trend, you know it is real and has some significance to it.

Then, as I was listening to the radio a day or two after seeing the above article, I heard of another related piece on NPR. NPR is having a journalist travel across the country, trying to identify “robot-safe” jobs. Here’s the feature on this from MarketPlace.org

What changes do institutions of traditional higher education
immediately need to begin planning for? Initiating?

What changes should be planned for and begin to be initiated
in the way(s) that we accredit new programs?

Keywords/ideas that come to my mind:

Change — to society, to people, to higher ed, to the workplace
Pace of technological change — no longer linear, but exponential
Career development
Staying relevant — as institutions, as individuals in the workplace
Reinventing ourselves over time — and having to do so quickly
Adapting, being nimble, willing to innovate — as institutions, as individuals
Game-changing environment
Lifelong learning — higher ed needs to put more emphasis on microlearning, heutagogy, and delivering constant/up-to-date streams of content and learning experiences. This could happen via the addition/use of smaller learning hubs, some even makeshift learning hubs that are taking place at locations that these institutions don’t even own…like your local Starbucks.
If we don’t get this right, there could be major civil unrest as inequality and unemployment soar
Traditional institutions of higher education have not been nearly as responsive to change as they have needed to be; this opens the door to alternatives. There’s a limited (and closing) window of time left to become more nimble and responsive before these alternatives majorly disrupt the current world of higher education.

Addendum from the corporate world (emphasis DSC):

From The Impact 2017 Conference:

The Role of HR in the Future of Work – A Town Hall

Josh Bersin, Principal and Founder, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Nicola Vogel, Global Senior HR Director, Danfoss
Frank Møllerop, Chief Executive Officer, Questback
David Mallon, Head of Research, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Massive changes spurred by new technologies such as artificial intelligence, mobile platforms, sensors and social collaboration have revolutionized the way we live, work and communicate – and the pace is only accelerating. Robots and cognitive technologies are making steady advances, particularly in jobs and tasks that follow set, standardized rules and logic. This reinforces a critical challenge for business and HR leaders—namely, the need to design, source, and manage the future of work.

In this Town Hall, we will discuss the role HR can play in leading the digital transformation that is shaping the future of work in organizations worldwide. We will explore the changes we see taking place in three areas:

Digital workforce: How can organizations drive new management practices, a culture of innovation and sharing, and a set of talent practices that facilitate a new network-based organization?
Digital workplace: How can organizations design a working environment that enables productivity; uses modern communication tools (such as Slack, Workplace by Facebook, Microsoft Teams, and many others); and promotes engagement, wellness, and a sense of purpose?
Digital HR: How can organizations change the HR function itself to operate in a digital way, use digital tools and apps to deliver solutions, and continuously experiment and innovate?

Looking to build the campus of tomorrow? 5 trends you should know [Ascione]

On 04/10/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, business side of he, change, changing business models, collaboration, communications, competency-based learning/education, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, expectations, face-to-face, funding / grants, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, leadership, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, online learning, personalized/customized learning, platforms, society, student-related, surviving, trends, universities, user experience (UX), videoconferencing, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Looking to build the campus of tomorrow? 5 trends you should know — from ecampusnews.com by Laura Ascione
Today’s trends will bring about a new vision for the traditional college campus.

Excerpt:

“Innovations in physical space must be made to accommodate demands for accessibility, flexibility and affordability,” according to The State of Higher Education in 2017, a report from professional services firm Grant Thornton.
…
Changes in infrastructure are being driven by a handful of trends, including:

Digital technology is decoupling access to the classroom and information from any specific geographic location.
Learning is becoming more “modular,” credentialing specific competencies, such as certificates and badges,, rather than the model of four years to a degree via fixed-class schedules. This requires a less broad range of academic buildings on campus.
Students will engage with their coursework at their own time and pace, as they do in every other aspect of their lives.
Price pressure on colleges will create incentives for cost efficiencies, discouraging the fixed-cost commitment embodied in physical structures.
Deferred maintenance is a problem so large that it can’t be solved by most colleges within their available resources; the result may be reducing the physical plant footprint or just letting it deteriorate further.

These developments will prompt physical space transformation that will lead to a new kind of campus.

The State of Higher Education in 2017 — from grantthornton.com

Browse the report articles:

Innovative thinking will be vital to successfully moving into the future.

Learning Ecosystems

A leading Silicon Valley engineer explains why every tech worker needs a humanities education [Chou]

Reflections on “Radically open: Tom Friedman on jobs, learning, & the future of work” [Friedman, Engelbert, & Hagel]

Want to Build a Culture of Learning? You Need to Embrace Failure [Petrone]

How Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods highlights the hybrid, ‘omnichannel’ future of higher ed [Gallagher]

Introducing the Changing Landscape of Online Education (CHLOE) Survey

“Gone are the days you can delegate the job of keeping up with technology to the IT staff.”

Very interesting: Purdue University to Acquire Kaplan University [wsj.com’s Belkin & Korn]

Has cutting your way to greatness ever worked? [Reed]

Categories

Tags