staying relevant

The future of work in America — from mckinsey.com by Jacques Bughin, James Manyika. and Jonathan Woetzel | July 2019

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Local economies across the country have been on diverging trajectories for years, and ***they are entering the automation age from different starting points.*** Our view incorporates the current state of local labor markets as well as the jobs that could be lost and gained in the decade ahead.

The US labor market looks markedly different today than it did two decades ago. It has been reshaped by dramatic events like the Great Recession but also by a quieter ongoing evolution in the mix and location of jobs. In the decade ahead, the next wave of technology may accelerate the pace of change. Millions of jobs could be phased out even as new ones are created. More broadly, the day-to-day nature of work could change for nearly everyone as intelligent machines become fixtures in the American workplace.
…
The labor market could become even more polarized. Workers with a high school degree or less are four times as likely as those with a bachelor’s degree to be displaced by automation. Reflecting more limited access to education, Hispanic workers are most at risk of displacement, followed by African Americans. Jobs held by nearly 15 million workers ages 18–34 may be automated, so young people will need new career paths to gain an initial foothold in the working world. Roughly 11.5 million workers over age 50 could also be displaced and face the challenge of making late-career moves. The hollowing out of middle wage work could continue.
…
The future of work is not just about how many jobs could be lost and gained. Technology is altering the day-to-day mix of activities associated with more and more jobs over time. The occupational mix of the economy is changing, and the demand for skills is changing along with it. Employers will need to manage large-scale workforce transformations that could involve redefining business processes and workforce needs, retraining and moving some people into new roles, and creating programs for continuous learning. This could be an opportunity to upgrade jobs and make them more rewarding. The choices that employers make will ripple through the communities in which they operate.

The need for a next gen learning platform is quickly approaching us!
Either that, or colleges and universities better get FAR more
responsive/nimble, and focus FAR more on lifelong learning.
This is not a joke.
This is not just text on a web page.
This is a future that’s barreling at us at amazingly fast speeds.
A new chapter is coming at us quickly.

DC: Again, the need for a next gen learning platform is quickly approaching us: "A central challenge in the automation age will be connecting millions of displaced workers to new, growing jobs." #lifelonglearning #reinvent #learning #platforms https://t.co/QDPZtG2jFk

— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) July 16, 2019

Amazon pledges $700 million to teach its workers to code [Matsakis]

On 07/11/2019, in Amazon, career development, computer science, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, data related items, pace of change, platforms, programming, reinvent, robotics, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Amazon pledges $700 million to teach its workers to code — from wired.com by Louise Matsakis

Excerpt:

Amazon announced Thursday that it will spend up to $700 million over the next six years retraining 100,000 of its US employees, mostly in technical skills like software engineering and IT support. Amazon is already one of the largest employers in the country, with almost 300,000 workers (and many more contractors) and it’s particularly hungry for more new talent. The company currently has more than 20,000 vacant US roles, over half of which are at its headquarters in Seattle. Meanwhile, the US economy is booming, and there are now more open jobs than there are unemployed people who can fill them, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Against that backdrop, Amazon’s jobs skills efforts provide some reassurance that—in theory at least—you could be retrained into a new role when the robots arrive.

From the announcement:

Based on a review of its workforce and analysis of U.S. hiring, Amazon’s fastest growing highly skilled jobs over the last five years include data mapping specialist, data scientist, solutions architect and business analyst, as well as logistics coordinator, process improvement manager and transportation specialist within our customer fulfillment network.

Also see:

Amazon to Invest $700M to Retrain 100,000 Workers for New Jobs — from pcmag.com by Michael Kan Icon
‘There is a greater need for technical skills in the workplace than ever before. Amazon is no exception,’ the company said. The goal is to ‘upskill’ one third of Amazon’s total work force by 2025 through free retraining programs.

Reflections on “Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale” [Christian]

On 07/06/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Cost of legal services - including access, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, Google, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, open courseware and systems, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, telecommunications, tools, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, vendors, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Clay Shirky on Mega-Universities and Scale — from philonedtech.com by Clay Shirky
[This was a guest post by Clay Shirky that grew out of a conversation that Clay and Phil had about IPEDS enrollment data. Most of the graphs are provided by Phil.]

Excerpts:

Were half a dozen institutions to dominate the online learning landscape with no end to their expansion, or shift what Americans seek in a college degree, that would indeed be one of the greatest transformations in the history of American higher education. The available data, however, casts doubt on that idea.

Though much of the conversation around mega-universities is speculative, we already know what a mega-university actually looks like, one much larger than any university today. It looks like the University of Phoenix, or rather it looked like Phoenix at the beginning of this decade, when it had 470,000 students, the majority of whom took some or all of their classes online. Phoenix back then was six times the size of the next-largest school, Kaplan, with 78,000 students, and nearly five times the size of any university operating today.

From that high-water mark, Phoenix has lost an average of 40,000 students every year of this decade.

From DSC:
First of all, I greatly appreciate both Clay’s and Phil’s thought leadership and their respective contributions to education and learning through the years. I value their perspectives and their work. Clay and Phil offer up a great article here — one worth your time to read.

The article made me reflect on what I’ve been building upon and tracking for the last decade — a next generation ***PLATFORM*** that I believe will represent a powerful piece of a global learning ecosystem. I call this vision, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.” Though the artificial intelligence-backed platform that I’m envisioning doesn’t yet fully exist — this new era and type of learning-based platform ARE coming. The emerging signs, technologies, trends — and “fingerprints”of it, if you will — are beginning to develop all over the place.

Such a platform will:

Be aimed at the lifelong learner.
Offer up major opportunities to stay relevant and up-to-date with one’s skills.
Offer access to the program offerings from many organizations — including the mega-universities, but also, from many other organizations that are not nearly as large as the mega-universities.
Be reliant upon human teachers, professors, trainers, subject matter experts, but will be backed up by powerful AI-based technologies/tools. For example, AI-based tools will pulse-check the open job descriptions and the needs of business and present the top ___ areas to go into (how long those areas/jobs last is anyone’s guess, given the exponential pace of technological change).

…

Below are some quotes that I want to comment on:

Not nothing, but not the kind of environment that will produce an educational Amazon either, especially since the top 30 actually shrank by 0.2% a year.

Instead of an “Amazon vs. the rest” dynamic, online education is turning into something much more widely adopted, where the biggest schools are simply the upper end of a continuum, not so different from their competitors, and not worth treating as members of a separate category.

Since the founding of William and Mary, the country’s second college, higher education in the U.S. hasn’t been a winner-take-all market, and it isn’t one today. We are not entering a world where the largest university operates at outsized scale, we’re leaving that world;

From DSC:
I don’t see us leaving that world at all…but that’s not my main reflection here. Instead, I’m not focusing on how large the mega-universities will become. When I speak of a forthcoming Walmart of Education or Amazon of Education, what I have in mind is a platform…not one particular organization.

Consider that the vast majority of Amazon’s revenues come from products that other organizations produce. They are a platform, if you will. And in the world of platforms (i.e., software), it IS a winner take all market.

Bill Gates reflects on this as well in this recent article from The Verge:

“In the software world, particularly for platforms, these are winner-take-all markets.

So it’s all about a forthcoming platform — or platforms. (It could be more than one platform. Consider Apple. Consider Microsoft. Consider Google. Consider Facebook.)

But then the question becomes…would a large amount of universities (and other types of organizations) be willing to offer up their courses on a platform? Well, consider what’s ALREADY happening with FutureLearn:

Finally…one more excerpt from Clay’s article:

Eventually the new ideas lose their power to shock, and end up being widely copied. Institutional transformation starts as heresy and ends as a section in the faculty handbook.

From DSC:
This is a great point. Reminds me of this tweet from Fred Steube (and I added a piece about Western Telegraph):

Why would anyone need a telephone when we already have the telegraph? [Western Telegraph] https://t.co/s6Rm67NAB0

— Daniel Christian (@dchristian5) May 23, 2019

Some things to reflect upon…for sure.

What’s the future of law? 26 experts share their insights [Mire]

On 06/30/2019, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, law schools, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, pace of change, reinvent, society, staying relevant, trends, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

There’s no crystal ball for the legal industry, just as there’s none for life. That said, industry trends don’t arise out of the ether — they develop over time. These trends collectively form the basis for estimations about what the future of the legal industry will look like.

These industry insiders have studied the trends, and they lent us their insights into the future of law. Take a look:

#AI #legaloperations #legal #lawfirms #lawyers #lawschools #legaltech #disruption #paceofchange

From DSC:
In looking through these perspectives, one can often see the topics of emerging technologies, changing client expectations, and changing business models.

Addendum on 7/1/19:

What Does 2019 Hold for Legal AI? — from law.com by Emily Foges
What developments can we expect in the next year? Where and in what new ways will AI tools be deployed?

Just as accountants no longer imagine life without excel, lawyers will soon be unable to imagine their day-to-day without AI.
…
Technology should be seen to work seamlessly in tandem with the lawyers, surfacing relevant and pertinent information which the lawyer then decides to act on.

‘Robots’ Are Not ‘Coming for Your Job’—Management Is — from gizmodo.com by Brian Merchant; with a special thanks going out to Keesa Johnson for her posting this out on LinkedIn

A robot is not ‘coming for’, or ‘stealing’ or ‘killing’ or ‘threatening’ to take away your job. Management is.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

At first glance, this might like a nitpicky semantic complaint, but I assure you it’s not—this phrasing helps, and has historically helped, mask the agency behind the *decision* to automate jobs. And this decision is not made by ‘robots,’ but management. It is a decision most often made with the intention of saving a company or institution money by reducing human labor costs (though it is also made in the interests of bolstering efficiency and improving operations and safety). It is a human decision that ultimately eliminates the job.

From DSC:
I’ve often said that if all the C-Suite cares about is maximizing profits — instead of thinking about their fellow humankind and society as a whole — we’re in big trouble.

If the thinking goes, “Heh — it’s just business!” <– Again, then we’re in big trouble here.

Just because we can, should we? Many people should be reflecting upon this question…and not just members of the C-Suite.

Online directory of college alternatives launches [Schwartz]

On 05/24/2019, in adjunct faculty, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, higher education, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online media, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, trends, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Online directory of college alternatives launches — from educationdive.com by Natalie Schwartz

Excerpt / Dive Brief:

Prospective students interested in nondegree credentials can look to a new online directory of more than 200 companies and other organizations providing apprenticeships, boot camps, short-term online courses and other credentials.
Called Alternatives to College, the directory was launched as a joint effort between leaders at higher ed investment firm University Ventures and WhatsBestForMe, a platform for applicants to connect with postsecondary education providers.
“The last-mile training sector moves quickly,” said Cassidy Leventhal, a vice president at University Ventures, in the announcement, adding that the directory will provide an “online ‘home'” for nondegree options.

Introduction: Leading the social enterprise—Reinvent with a human focus
2019 Global Human Capital Trends — from deloitte.com by Volini?, Schwartz? ?, Roy?, Hauptmann, Van Durme, Denny, and Bersin

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Learning in the flow of life. The number-one trend for 2019 is the need for organizations to change the way people learn; 86 percent of respondents cited this as an important or very important issue. It’s not hard to understand why. Evolving work demands and skills requirements are creating an enormous demand for new skills and capabilities, while a tight labor market is making it challenging for organizations to hire people from outside. Within this context, we see three broader trends in how learning is evolving: It is becoming more integrated with work; it is becoming more personal; and it is shifting—slowly—toward lifelong models. Effective reinvention along these lines requires a culture that supports continuous learning, incentives that motivate people to take advantage of learning opportunities, and a focus on helping individuals identify and develop new, needed skills.

What if the future of work starts with high school [McGowan]

On 05/03/2019, in 21st century, career development, education, future, heutagogy, ideas, K-12 related, lifelong learning, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technology (general), workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

What if the future of work starts with high school — from gettingsmart.com by Heather McGowan
The work of the future will require a robust system of lifelong learning and high school may just be the fulcrum in that system, best positioned to make the necessary profound changes across the system.

Excerpts:

Many have approached the challenge of rethinking high school and the imperative to do so continues to grow. There are a number of efforts now underway that look promising because they are not simply about what is taught but how. These efforts put the student at the center with the responsibility for his or her own learning.
…
Whatever we decide to call it, to thrive in this fourth industrial revolution, where technology can assume many of our routine cognitive tasks, we need a robust system of life-long learning that begins with a reimagined high school to establish a strong foundation of learning agility and adaptability.

From DSC:
The following item is especially meant for students as well as those who haven’t tried to find a job in recent years.

Job search in the age of artificial intelligence – 5 practical tips — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

Excerpt:

If you haven’t searched for a job in recent years, things have changed significantly and will continue to evolve thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). According to a Korn Ferry Global survey, 63% of respondents said AI had altered the way recruiting happens in their organization. Not only do candidates have to get past human gatekeepers when they are searching for a new job, but they also have to pass the screening of artificial intelligence that continues to become more sophisticated. Recruiting and hiring new employees is an expensive endeavor for organizations, so they want to do all that’s possible to find candidates who will make valuable long-term employees for a good return on their recruitment investment.

Coursera raises $103 million to prepare online learners for the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ — from venturebeat.com by Paul Sawers

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Founded in 2012, Coursera is one of a number of well-funded MOOCs — massive open online courses — to emerge. Coursera partners with universities and other educational institutions to deliver online courses to 40 million students, covering subjects like technology, business, science, and even autonomous cars.
…
“The fourth industrial revolution, marked by advancements in automation and artificial intelligence, is dramatically reshaping our lives, businesses, and jobs,” noted Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda. “Coursera is at the forefront of preparing individuals, companies, and governments to meet that challenge head-on and turn this disruption into opportunity. The additional funding gives us the resources and flexibility to further expand internationally and to accelerate the development of a learning platform that currently serves 40 million learners, 1,800 businesses, and over 150 top universities.”

Through the legal looking glass [LOD & Jordan Furlong]

On 04/13/2019, in 21st century, career development, change, future, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, staying relevant, UK, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Through the legal looking glass — from lodlaw.com by Lawyers On Demand (LOD) & Jordan Furlong

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

But here’s the thing: Even though most lawyers’ career paths have twisted and turned and looped back in unexpected directions, the landscape over which they’ve zig-zagged these past few decades has been pretty smooth, sedate and predictable. The course of these lawyers’ careers might not have been foreseeable, but for the most part, the course of the legal profession was, and that made the twists and turns easier to navigate.

Today’s lawyers, or anyone who enters the legal profession in the coming years, probably won’t be as fortunate. The fundamental landscape of the law is being remade as we speak, and the next two decades in particular will feature upheavals and disruptions at a pace and on a scale we’ve not seen before — following and matching similar tribulations in the wider world. This report is meant to advise you of the likeliest (but by no means certain) nature and direction of the fault lines along which the legal career landscape will fracture and remake itself in the coming years. Our hope is to help you anticipate these developments and adjust your own career plans in response, on the fly if necessary.

So, before you proceed any further into this report — before you draw closer to answering the question, “Will I still want to be a lawyer tomorrow?” — you need to think about why you’re a lawyer today.

…

Starting within the next five years or so, we should begin to see more lawyers drawn towards fulfilling the profession’s vocational or societal role, rather than choosing to pursue a private-sector commercial path. This will happen because:

generational change will bring new attitudes to the profession,
technological advances will reduce private legal work opportunities, and
a series of public crises will drive more lawyers by necessity towards societal roles.

…
It seems likely enough, in fact, that we’re leaving the era in which law was predominantly viewed as a safe, prestigious, private career, and entering one in which law is just as often considered a challenging, self-sacrificial, public career. More lawyers will find themselves grouped with teachers, police officers, and social workers — positions that pay decently but not spectacularly, that play a difficult but critical role in the civic order. We could call this the rising career path of the civic lawyer.
…
But if your primary or even sole motivation for entering the law is to become a wealthy member of the financial and political elite, then we suggest you should start looking for alternatives now. These types of careers will be fewer and farther between, and we suspect they will be increasingly at odds with the emerging spirit and character of the profession.

A prediction (which they admit can be a fool’s errand):
Amazon buys LegalZoom in the US as part of its entry into the global services sector, offering discounted legal services to Prime members. Regulators’ challenges will fail, signalling the beginning of the end of lawyer control of the legal market.

Reflections on “Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist” [Gorbis]

On 04/11/2019, in blogs / blogging / vlogging, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, microlearning, organizational change, pace of change, reinvent, RSS, society, sociology, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technology (general), tools, trends, universities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist — from er.educause.edu by Marina Gorbis

Excerpt:

In 2018 we celebrated the fifty-year anniversary of the founding of the Institute for the Future (IFTF). No other futures organization has survived for this long; we’ve actually survived our own forecasts! In these five decades we learned a lot, and we still believe—even more strongly than before—that systematic thinking about the future is absolutely essential for helping people make better choices today, whether you are an individual or a member of an educational institution or government organization. We view short-termism as the greatest threat not only to organizations but to society as a whole.

In my twenty years at the Institute, I’ve developed five core principles for futures thinking:

Forget about predictions.
Focus on signals.*
Look back to see forward.
Uncover patterns.*
Create a community.

* From DSC:
I have a follow up thought regarding those bullet points about signals and patterns. With today’s exponential pace of technological change, I have asserted for several years now that our students — and all of us really — need to be skilled in pulse-checking the relevant landscapes around us. That’s why I’m a big fan of regularly tapping into — and contributing towards — streams of content. Subscribing to RSS feeds, following organizations and/or individuals on Twitter, connecting with people on LinkedIn, etc. Doing so will help us identify trends, patterns, and the signals that Marina talks about in her article.

It reminds me of the following graphic from January 2017:

Will we see more of this bringing F2F Ss together w/ remote Ss? Could this help lower the price of obtaining a degree? [Christian]

On 04/04/2019, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, business side of he, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, distance education, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, future, future of higher education, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, innovation, internet, IT in HE, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, lifelong learning, MBA, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, platforms, smart classrooms, smart/connected TV, society, staying relevant, student-related, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, telecommunications, television, tools, traditional / tradition, training / L&D, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, videoconferencing, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
First a posting that got me to wondering about something that I’ve previously wondered about from time to time…

College of Business unveils classroom of the future — from biz.source.colostate.edu by Joe Giordano

Excerpt:

Equipped with a wall of 27 high-definition video screens as well as five high-end cameras, the newest classroom in Colorado State University’s College of Business is designed to connect on-campus and online students in a whole new way.

The College of Business unveiled on March 29 the “Room of the Future,” featuring Mosaic, an innovative technology – powered by mashme.io – that creates a blended classroom experience, connecting on-campus and online students in real time.

From DSC:
If the pedagogies could be worked out, this could be a very attractive model for many people in the future as it:

Provides convenience.
Offers more choice. More control. (Students could pick whether they want to attend the class virtually or in a physical classroom).

If the resulting increase in students could bring down the price of offering the course, will we see this model flourish in the near future?

For struggling colleges and universities, could this help increase the ROI of offering their classes on their physical campuses?

The technologies behind this are not cheap though…and that could be a show-stopper for this type of an experiment. But…thinking out loud again…what if there were a cheaper way to view a group of other people in your learning community? Perhaps there will be a solution using some form of Extended Reality (XR)…hmmm….

Also see:

mashme.io

Also see:

Bad bargain: Why we still ask kids to factor polynomials and how we fix it — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Excerpt:

OK, we cut a bad deal 20 years ago and it’s time to fix it.

Kids are still factoring polynomials and that’s just dumb. Requiring every student to pass a course on regurgitated symbol manipulation (Algebra 2) is torturous for many students and why some dropout. It’s an inequitable barrier to college and careers.

“The tragedy of high school math,” said venture investor and education advocate Ted Dintersmith (who has a Ph.D. in math modeling), “is that less than 20% of adults ever use algebra. No adult in America still does integrals and derivatives by hand – the calculus that blocks so many from career paths. It remains in the curriculum because it’s easy to test, not important to learn.”

Math educator Dan Meyer told the We’re Doing It All Wrong Podcast that algebra 2 is “arcane gibberish…not useful knowledge”…
…
Now, rather than the plug and crank of symbol manipulation, we should be teaching computational thinking. As mathematician Conrad Wolfram said, we should be teaching math as if computers existed.

Rather than a separate symbol language, Wolfram argues, math should be taught as computational thinking and integrated across the curriculum. That starts with problem finding–spotting big tough problems worth working on. Next comes understanding the problems and valuables associated–that’s algebraic reasoning. But rather than focusing on computation (including factoring those nasty polynomials), students should be building data sets and using computers to do what they’re good at–calculations.
…
To fix the problem, states that require Algebra 2 should swap it out for a course in coding and computational thinking. Colleges and college entrance exams should drop Algebra 2 requirements. They should start by asking young people about their contributions to solving big problems.

From DSC:
This posting reminded me that, just the other day, I took the picture below…it’s outside a local mall. The annotated picture below gives you some of my thoughts on this ridiculous setup.

Are some of our educational systems setup like this stop sign outside an abandoned, old store that's no longer being used?!

Learning Ecosystems

The future of work in America [McKinsey]

Through the legal looking glass [LOD & Jordan Furlong]

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