staying relevant

To higher ed: When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. [Christian]

On 09/25/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accreditation, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, internet, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Mixed Reality (MR), more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, robotics, science, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
When the race track is going 180mph, you can’t walk or jog onto the track. What do I mean by that?

Consider this quote from an article that Jeanne Meister wrote out at Forbes entitled, “The Future of Work: Three New HR Roles in the Age of Artificial Intelligence:”*

This emphasis on learning new skills in the age of AI is reinforced by the most recent report on the future of work from McKinsey which suggests that as many as 375 million workers around the world may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills because approximately 60% of jobs will have least one-third of their work activities able to be automated.

Go scan the job openings and you will likely see many that have to do with technology, and increasingly, with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, deep learning, machine learning, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, big data, cloud-based services, robotics, automation, bots, algorithm development, blockchain, and more.

From Robert Half’s 2019 Technology Salary Guide

How many of us have those kinds of skills? Did we get that training in the community colleges, colleges, and universities that we went to? Highly unlikely — even if you graduated from one of those institutions only 5-10 years ago. And many of those institutions are often moving at the pace of a nice leisurely walk, with some moving at a jog, even fewer are sprinting. But all of them are now being asked to enter a race track that’s moving at 180mph. Higher ed — and society at large — are not used to moving at this pace.

This is why I think that higher education and its regional accrediting organizations are going to either need to up their game hugely — and go through a paradigm shift in the required thinking/programming/curricula/level of responsiveness — or watch while alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education increasingly attract their learners away from them.

This is also, why I think we’ll see an online-based, next generation learning platform take place. It will be much more nimble — able to offer up-to-the minute, in-demand skills and competencies.

The below graphic is from:
Jobs lost, jobs gained: What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages

* Three New HR Roles To Create Compelling Employee Experiences
These new HR roles include:

IBM: Vice President, Data, AI & Offering Strategy, HR
Kraft Heinz Senior Vice President Global HR, Performance and IT
SunTrust Senior Vice President Employee Wellbeing & Benefits

What do these three roles have in common? All have been created in the last three years and acknowledge the growing importance of a company’s commitment to create a compelling employee experience by using data, research, and predictive analytics to better serve the needs of employees. In each case, the employee assuming the new role also brought a new set of skills and capabilities into HR. And importantly, the new roles created in HR address a common vision: create a compelling employee experience that mirrors a company’s customer experience.

An excerpt from McKinsey Global Institute | Notes from the Frontier | Modeling the Impact of AI on the World Economy

Workers.
A widening gap may also unfold at the level of individual workers. Demand for jobs could shift away from repetitive tasks toward those that are socially and cognitively driven and others that involve activities that are hard to automate and require more digital skills.12 Job profiles characterized by repetitive tasks and activities that require low digital skills may experience the largest decline as a share of total employment, from some 40 percent to near 30 percent by 2030. The largest gain in share may be in nonrepetitive activities and those that require high digital skills, rising from some 40 percent to more than 50 percent. These shifts in employment would have an impact on wages. We simulate that around 13 percent of the total wage bill could shift to categories requiring nonrepetitive and high digital skills, where incomes could rise, while workers in the repetitive and low digital skills categories may potentially experience stagnation or even a cut in their wages. The share of the total wage bill of the latter group could decline from 33 to 20 percent.13 Direct consequences of this widening gap in employment and wages would be an intensifying war for people, particularly those skilled in developing and utilizing AI tools, and structural excess supply for a still relatively high portion of people lacking the digital and cognitive skills necessary to work with machines.

Prudenti: Law schools facing new demands for innovative education — from libn.com by A. Gail Prudenti

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Law schools have always taught the law and the practice thereof, but in the 21st century that is not nearly enough to provide students with the tools to succeed.

Clients, particularly business clients, are not only looking for an “attorney” in the customary sense, but a strategic partner equipped to deal with everything from project management to metrics to process enhancement. Those demands present law schools with both an opportunity for and expectation of innovation in legal education.

At Hofstra Law, we are in the process of establishing a new Center for Applied Legal Technology and Innovation where law students will be taught to use current and emerging technology, and to apply those skills and expertise to provide cutting-edge legal services while taking advantage of interdisciplinary opportunities.

Our goal is to teach law students how to use technology to deliver legal services and to yield graduates who combine exceptional legal acumen with the skill and ability to travel comfortably among myriad disciplines. The lawyers of today—and tomorrow—must be more than just conversant with other professionals. Rather, they need to be able to collaborate with experts in other fields to serve the myriad and intertwined interests of the client.

Also see:

Workforce of the future: The competing forces shaping 2030 — from pwc.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

We are living through a fundamental transformation in the way we work. Automation and ‘thinking machines’ are replacing human tasks and jobs, and changing the skills that organisations are looking for in their people. These momentous changes raise huge organisational, talent and HR challenges – at a time when business leaders are already wrestling with unprecedented risks, disruption and political and societal upheaval.

The pace of change is accelerating.

Graphic by DSC

Competition for the right talent is fierce. And ‘talent’ no longer means the same as ten years ago; many of the roles, skills and job titles of tomorrow are unknown to us today. How can organisations prepare for a future that few of us can define? How will your talent needs change? How can you attract, keep and motivate the people you need? And what does all this mean for HR?

This isn’t a time to sit back and wait for events to unfold. To be prepared for the future you have to understand it. In this report we look in detail at how the workplace might be shaped over the coming decade.

From DSC:

Peruse the titles of the articles in this document (that features articles from the last 1-2 years) with an eye on the topics and technologies addressed therein!

Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, drones, automation, bots, machine learning, NLP/voice recognition and personal assistants, the Internet of Things, facial recognition, data mining, and more. How these technologies roll out — and if some of them should be rolling out at all — needs to be discussed and dealt with sooner. This is due to the fact that the pace of change has changed. If you can look at those articles — with an eye on the last 500-1000 years or so to compare things to — and say that we aren’t living in times where the trajectory of technological change is exponential, then either you or I don’t know the meaning of that word.

The ABA and law schools need to be much more responsive and innovative — or society will end up suffering the consequences.

Daniel Christian

Aligning the business model of college with student needs: How WGU is disrupting higher education [Dunagan]

On 09/15/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, business side of he, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, cost of getting a degree, digital learning, disruption, education, education technology, elearning, faculty, higher education, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, society, staying relevant, student-related, teaching online, tools, United States, universities, using teams, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Aligning the business model of college with student needs: How WGU is disrupting higher education — from christenseninstitute.org by Alana Dunagan

Excerpt:

Since its inception, Western Governors University (WGU) has aimed to serve learners otherwise shut out of the traditional system. Now, the groundbreaking institution has both graduated 100,000 students and has over 100,000 students currently enrolled. These milestones demonstrate WGU’s ability to scale its high-quality, low-cost model, signaling a momentous shift in the higher education landscape.

In the mid-1990s, governors of 19 states across the western United States were concerned about bringing accessible college education to rural populations, especially working adults.These governors, led by Utah Governor Mike Leavitt, decided to explore building a new university to address the challenge. As the memorandum of understanding between those governors that officially marked the founding of WGU stated, “The strength and well-being of our states and the nation depend increasingly on a strong higher education system that helps individuals adapt to our rapidly changing economy and society. States must look to telecommunications and information technologies to provide greater access and choice to a population that increasingly must have affordable education and training opportunities and the certification of competency throughout their lives.”

Now in its third decade, WGU has students in every U.S. state and has over 100,000 enrolled students—a 230% increase since 2011.

Excerpts from their paper:

The potential of competency-based education
Competency-based education is an approach to learning that allows students to determine the pace of their learning and move ahead once they demonstrate mastery in a concept. As described by Clayton Christensen and Michelle Weise:

Competency-based programs have no time-based unit. Learning is fixed, and time is variable; pacing is flexible. Students cannot move on until they have demonstrated proficiency and mastery of each competency but are encouraged to try as many times as necessary to demonstrate their proficiency. Although skeptics may question the “rigor” behind an experience that allows students to keep trying until they have mastered a competency, this model is actually far more rigorous than the traditional model, as students are not able to flunk or get away with a merely average understanding of the material; they must demonstrate mastery—and therefore dedicated work toward gaining mastery—in any competency.

Competency-based education first took hold in the K-12 education system, but it is also growing in higher education. As of fall 2015, roughly 600 institutions were using or exploring competency-based programs in higher education.13 However, only a handful of institutions are using competency-based education exclusively and have designed their business models around it.

…

WGU offers programs across four industry areas: education, business, information technology, and healthcare. All of these programs are offered online; unlike most higher education institutions, WGU has no physical campus. Instead, it has invested heavily in a technology platform that allows it to deliver curriculum asynchronously, to wherever students are. In addition to its online platform, another unique aspect of WGU’s resources is its approach to faculty. In traditional institutions, faculty are responsible for academic research, course development, teaching, assessment, and advising students. Alternatively, WGU’s model unbundles the faculty role into component parts, with specialists in each role.

Try before you buy: “Education Up” colleges & universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down”

On 09/07/2018, in 21st century, business, career development, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, future of higher education, higher education, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, trends, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Try before you buy — from universityventures.com

Excerpts:

There are two reasons why the skills gap persists in a full-employment economy. On the student or candidate side, there is “Education Friction.” Education Friction is why individuals fail to upskill themselves with the skills demanded by employers. This is a result of the time required to upskill, the cost, and – most important – the uncertainty of a positive employment outcome. The second and often overlooked contributor to the skills gap is “Hiring Friction” on the part of employers; employers are increasingly reluctant to hire candidates without exact relevant experience. The cost of a bad hire is higher than ever, as is employee churn, as is the cost of replacing terminated employees – all of which have contributed to an increase in experience requirements for positions that should be (and once were) entry level.

…

From time immemorial, all serious education, training, and workforce efforts to close the skills gap have started by identifying missing skills, developing curriculum, and delivering programs. These “Education Up” models are logical, but also easy. The hardest part of the skills gap is not identifying skills or skill building, but rather building the bridge to employers.

…

The urgent need to reduce Hiring Friction, coupled with the regulatory barrier to utilizing assessments at the top of the hiring funnel, is giving rise to new models that are the antithesis of “Education Up.” These new “Employer Down” models start with employers and the entry-level positions they need to fill, and eliminate Hiring Friction by allowing employers to try before they buy. Staffing and business services companies are hiring candidates themselves, providing Last-Mile Training, and placing newly-trained talent at the service of employers so they can try before they buy. Some Employer Down models add a new “emerging talent” product to an existing talent business (i.e., staffing or placement). Others establish outsourced apprenticeship programs to add a talent dimension to an existing business service, which can boost pricing power, increase market share, and accelerate growth. What they have in common is that candidates are hired and trained by the provider and then, while remaining employed by the provider, perform work for clients; clients convert candidates to full-time employees only when they’re good and ready. Here’s what else they have in common: scalable business models built around the provision of proven entry-level talent.

“Education Up” colleges and universities are ill-prepared for the coming of “Employer Down.”

Is higher ed shooting itself in the foot? [Christian]

On 08/22/2018, in 21st century, adult learning, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, face-to-face, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, heutagogy, higher education, ideas, informal learning, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, pace of change, platforms, real-world assignments, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, training / L&D, trends, universities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

15 more companies that no longer require a degree — apply now — from glassdoor.com

Excerpt:

With college tuition soaring nationwide, many Americans don’t have the time or money to earn a college degree. However, that doesn’t mean your job prospects are diminished. Increasingly, there are many companies offering well-paying jobs to those with non-traditional education or a high-school diploma.
…
Google and Ernest & Young are just two of the champion companies who realize that book smarts don’t necessarily equal strong work ethic, grit and talent. Whether you have your GED and are looking for a new opportunity or charting your own path beyond the traditional four-year college route, here are 15 companies that have said they do not require a college diploma for some of their top jobs.

From DSC:
Several years ago when gas prices were sky high, I couldn’t help but think that some industries — though they were able to grab some significant profits in the short term — were actually shooting themselves in the foot for the longer term. Sure enough, as time went by, people started looking for less expensive alternatives. For example, they started buying more hybrid vehicles, more electric cars, and the sales of smaller cars and lighter trucks increased. The average fuel economy of vehicles went up (example). The goal was to reduce or outright eliminate the number of trips to the gas station that people were required to make.

These days…I wonder if the same kind of thing is happening — or about to happen — with traditional institutions of higher education*? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

Traditional institutions of higher education better find ways to adapt, and to change their game (so to speak), before the alternatives to those organizations gain some major steam. There is danger in the status quo. Count on it. The saying, “Adapt or die” has now come to apply to higher ed as well.

Faculty, staff, and administrators within higher ed are beginning to experience what the corporate world has been experiencing for decades.

Faculty can’t just teach what they want to teach. They can’t just develop courses that they are interested in. The demand for courses that aren’t attractive career-wise will likely continue to decrease. Sure, it can be argued that many of those same courses — especially from the liberal arts colleges — are still valuable…and I would agree with some of those arguments. But the burden of proof continues to be shifted to the shoulders of those proposing such curricula.

Also, the costs of obtaining a degree needs to come down or:

The gorillas of debt on peoples’ backs will become a negative word of mouth that will be hard to compete against or adequately address as time goes by
The angst towards higher ed will continue to build
People will bolt for those promising alternatives to traditional higher ed where the graduates (badge earners, or whatever they’re going to be called) of those programs are hired and shown to be effective employees
I hope that this isn’t the case and that it’s not too late to change…but history will likely show that higher ed shot itself in the foot. The warning signs were all over the place.

The current trends are paving the way for a next generation learning platform that will serve someone from cradle to grave.

* I realize that many in higher ed would immediately dispute that their organizations are out to grab short term profits, that they don’t operate like a business, that they don’t operate under the same motivations as the corporate world, etc. And I can see some of these folks’ points, no doubt. I may even agree with some of the folks who represent organizations who freely share information with other organizations and have motivations other than making tons of money. But for those folks who staunchly hold to the belief that higher ed isn’t a business at all — well, for me, that’s taking things way too far. I do not agree with that perspective at all. One has to have their eyes (and minds) closed to cling to that perspective anymore. Just don’t ask those folks to tell you how much their presidents make (along with other higher-level members of their administrations), the salaries of the top football coaches, or how many millions of dollars many universities’ receive for their television contracts and/or their ticket sales, or how much revenue research universities bring in from patents and so on and so forth.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter

2. Facebook Goes Back to College (emphasis DSC)
TechCrunch report on how digital giants are buying into Last-Mile Training by partnering with Pathstream to deliver necessary digital skills to community college students.
Most good first jobs specifically require one or more technologies like Facebook or Unity — technologies that colleges and universities aren’t teaching. If Pathstream is able to realize its vision of integrating industry-relevant software training into degree programs in a big way, colleges and universities have a shot at maintaining their stranglehold as the sole pathway to successful careers. If Pathstream’s impact is more limited, watch for millions of students to sidestep traditional colleges, and enroll in emerging faster and cheaper alternative pathways to good first jobs — alternative pathways that will almost certainly integrate the kind of last-mile training being pioneered by Pathstream.

America’s colleges and universities could learn a thing or two from Leo, because they continue to resist teaching students the practical things they’ll need to know as soon as they graduate; for instance, to get jobs that will allow them to make student loan payments. Digital skills head this list, specifically experience with the high-powered software they’ll be required to use every day in entry-level positions.

But talk to a college president or provost about the importance of Marketo, HubSpot, Pardot, Tableau, Adobe and Autodesk for their graduates, and they’re at a loss for how to integrate last-mile training into their degree programs in order prepare students to work on these essential software platforms.

Enter a new company, Pathstream, which just announced a partnership with tech leader Unity and previously partnered with Facebook. Pathstream supports the delivery of career-critical software skill training in VR/AR and digital marketing at colleges and universities.

Addendum on 8/24, per University Ventures e-newsletter
3. Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College
Inside Higher Education Q&A on upcoming book A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College.
Last-mile training is the inevitable by-product of two crises, one generally understood, the other less so. The crisis everyone understands is affordability and unsustainable levels of student loan debt. The other crisis is employability. Nearly half of all college graduates are underemployed in their first job. And we know that underemployment is pernicious and lasting. According to the recent report from Strada’s Institute for the Future of Work, two-thirds of underemployed graduates remain underemployed five years later, and half remain underemployed a decade later. So today’s students no longer buy that tired college line that “we prepare you for your fifth job, not your first job.” They know that if they don’t get a good first job, they’re probably not going to get a good fifth job. As a result, today’s students are laser-focused on getting a good first job in a growing sector of the economy.

50 Twitter accounts lawyers should follow — from postali.com

Excerpt:

Running a successful law practice is about much more than being an excellent attorney. A law firm is a business, and those who stay informed on trends in legal marketing, business development and technology are primed to run their practice more efficiently.

Law firms are a competitive business. In order to stay successful, you need to stay informed. The industry trends can often move at lightning speed, and you want to be ahead of them.

Twitter is a great place for busy attorneys to stay informed. Many thought leaders in the legal industry are eager and willing to share their knowledge in digestible, 280-character tweets that lawyers on-the-go can follow.

We’ve rounded up some of the best Twitter accounts for lawyers (in no particular order.) To save you even more time, we’ve also added all of these account to a Twitter List that you can follow with one click. (You can use some of the time you’ll save to follow Postali on Twitter as well.)

Click here to view the Twitter List of Legal Influencers.

From DSC:
I find Twitter to be an excellent source of learning, and it is one of the key parts of my own learning ecosystem. I’m not the only one. Check out these areas of Jane Hart’s annual top tools for learning.

Also see/relevant:

Prudenti: Law schools facing new demands for innovative education— from libn.com
Excerpt:
Law schools have always taught the law and the practice thereof, but in the 21st century that is not nearly enough to provide students with the tools to succeed. Clients, particularly business clients, are not only looking for an “attorney” in the customary sense, but a strategic partner equipped to deal with everything from project management to metrics to process enhancement. Those demands present law schools with both an opportunity for and expectation of innovation in legal education.

What is a learning ecosystem? And how does it support corporate strategy? [Eudy]

On 07/24/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, adjunct faculty, blended learning, business, career development, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, face-to-face, faculty, flipping -- inverted learning, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, hybrid learning, ideas, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, library / librarians, lifelong learning, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, professional development, project-based learning, relationships, RSS, simulations, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, social media, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, universities, virtual tutoring, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

What is a learning ecosystem? And how does it support corporate strategy? — from ej4.com by Ryan Eudy

Excerpt:

A learning ecosystem is a system of people, content, technology, culture, and strategy, existing both within and outside of an organization, all of which has an impact on both the formal and informal learning that goes on in that organization.

The word “ecosystem” is worth paying attention to here. It’s not just there to make the term sound fancy or scientific. A learning ecosystem is the L&D equivalent of an ecosystem out in the wild. Just as a living ecosystem has many interacting species, environments, and the complex relationships among them, a learning ecosystem has many people and pieces of content, in different roles and learning contexts, and complex relationships.

Just like a living ecosystem, a learning ecosystem can be healthy or sick, nurtured or threatened, self-sustaining or endangered. Achieving your development goals, then, requires an organization to be aware of its own ecosystem, including its parts and the internal and external forces that shape them.

From DSC:
Yes, to me, the concept/idea of a learning ecosystem IS important. Very important. So much so, I named this blog after it.

Each of us as individuals have a learning ecosystem, whether we officially recognize it or not. So do the organizations that we work for. And, like an ecosystem out in nature, a learning ecosystem is constantly morphing, constantly changing.

We each have people in our lives that help us learn and grow, and the people that were in our learning ecosystems 10 years ago may or may not still be in our current learning ecosystems. Many of us use technologies and tools to help us learn and grow. Then there are the spaces where we learn — both physical and virtual spaces. Then there are the processes and procedures we follow, formally and/or informally. Any content that helps us learn and grow is a part of that ecosystem. Where we get that content can change, but obtaining up-to-date content is a part of our learning ecosystems. I really appreciate streams of content in this regard — and tapping into blogs/websites, especially via RSS feeds and Feedly (an RSS aggregator that took off when Google Reader left the scene).

The article brings up a good point when it states that a learning ecosystem can be “healthy or sick, nurtured or threatened, self-sustaining or endangered.” That’s why I urge folks to be intentional about maintaining and, better yet, consistently enhancing their learning ecosystems. In this day and age where lifelong learning is now a requirement to remain in the workforce, each of us needs to be intentional in this regard.

20 ways to prepare yourself for modern workplace learning — from modernworkplacelearning.com by Jane Hart

Excerpt:

Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem

On 06/20/2018, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, lifelong learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, passions, platforms, professional development, reinvent, society, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem — from edu2030.agorize.com
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

Excerpts:

The problem
Technology is rapidly transforming the way we live, learn, and work. Entirely new jobs are emerging as others are lost to automation. People are living longer, yet switching jobs more often. These dramatic shifts call for a reimagining of the way we prepare for work and life—specifically, how we learn new skills and adapt to a changing economic landscape.

The changes ahead are likely to hurt most those who can least afford to manage them: low-income and first generation learners already ill-served by our existing postsecondary education system. Our current system stifles economic mobility and widens income and achievement gaps; we must act now to ensure that we have an educational ecosystem flexible and fair enough to help all people live purposeful and economically stable lives. And if we are to design solutions proportionate to this problem, new technologies must be called on to scale approaches that reach the millions of vulnerable people across the country.

The challenge
How might we empower people to design their own learning journeys so they can lead purposeful and economically stable lives?

The Challenge—Reimagining the Higher Education Ecosystem—seeks bold ideas for how our postsecondary education system could be reimagined to foster equity and encourage learner agency and resilience. We seek specific pilots to move us toward a future in which all learners can achieve economic stability and lead purposeful lives. This Challenge invites participants to articulate a vision and then design pilot projects for a future ecosystem that has the following characteristics:

Expands access: The educational system must ensure that all people—including low-income learners who are disproportionately underserved by the current higher education system—can leverage education to live meaningful and economically stable lives.

Draws on a broad postsecondary ecosystem: While college and universities play a vital role in educating students, there is a much larger ecosystem in which students learn. This ecosystem includes non-traditional “classes” or alternative learning providers, such as MOOCs, bootcamps, and online courses as well as on-the-job training and informal learning. Our future learning system must value the learning that happens in many different environments and enable seamless transitions between learning, work, and life.

From DSC:
This is where I could see a vision similar to Learning from the Living [Class] Room come into play. It would provide a highly affordable, accessible platform, that would offer more choice, and more control to learners of all ages. It would be available 24×7 and would be a platform that supports lifelong learning. It would combine a variety of AI-enabled functionalities with human expertise, teaching, training, motivation, and creativity.

It could be that what comes out of this challenge will lay the groundwork for a future, massive new learning platform.

Also see:

Office of Edtech Wants Help Making Sense of All Those Higher Ed Providers — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Mary Meeker’s Annual “Internet Trends Report” — the 2018 Edition is now out!

On 06/04/2018, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, bots, business, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, data related items, digital video, economics, emerging technologies, Europe, Facebook / Meta Platforms, global / globalization, Google, ideas, innovation, internet, learning, lifelong learning, Microsoft, mobile technologies, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, presentations, programming, reinvent, research, society, sociology, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Below are some excerpted slides from her presentation…

Also see:

20 important takeaways for learning world from Mary Meeker’s brilliant tech trends – from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark
Excerpt:
Mary Meeker’s slide deck has a reputation of being the Delphic Oracle of tech. But, at 294 slides it’s a lot to take in. Don’t worry, I’ve been through them all. It has tons on economic stuff that is of marginal interest to education and training but there’s plenty to to get our teeth into. We’re not immune to tech trends, indeed we tend to follow in lock-step, just a bit later than everyone else. Among the data are lots of fascinating insights that point the way forward in terms of what we’re likely to be doing over the next decade. So here’s a really quick, top-end summary for folk in the learning game.

“Educational content usage online is ramping fast” with over 1 billion daily educational videos watched. There is evidence that use of the Internet for informal and formal learning is taking off.

Here’s Mary Meeker’s essential 2018 Internet Trends report — from techcrunch.com by Josh Constine

10 Big Takeaways From Mary Meeker’s Widely-Read Internet Report — from fortune.com by Leena Rao

Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce — from mckinsey.com by Jacques Bughin, Eric Hazan, Susan Lund, Peter Dahlström, Anna Wiesinger, and Amresh Subramaniam
Demand for technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills will rise by 2030. How will workers and organizations adapt?

Excerpt:

Skill shifts have accompanied the introduction of new technologies in the workplace since at least the Industrial Revolution, but adoption of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will mark an acceleration over the shifts of even the recent past. The need for some skills, such as technological as well as social and emotional skills, will rise, even as the demand for others, including physical and manual skills, will fall. These changes will require workers everywhere to deepen their existing skill sets or acquire new ones. Companies, too, will need to rethink how work is organized within their organizations.

This briefing, part of our ongoing research on the impact of technology on the economy, business, and society, quantifies time spent on 25 core workplace skills today and in the future for five European countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom—and the United States and examines the implications of those shifts.

Topics include:
How will demand for workforce skills change with automation?
Shifting skill requirements in five sectors
How will organizations adapt?
Building the workforce of the future

Incumbents Strike Back: Insights from the Global C-suite Study [IBM Institute for Business Value]

On 04/20/2018, in 21st century, business, corporate / business world, future, global / globalization, IBM, ideas, innovation, leadership, platforms, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Incumbents Strike Back: Insights from the Global C-suite Study — by the IBM Institute for Business Value

Excerpts:

Dancing with disruption
Incumbents hit their stride
We explore the forces at play in shaping the current competitive environment, the opportunities emerging, and how a balance between stability and dynamism favors the Reinventors.

Trust in the journey
The path to personalization
Here we show how the Reinventors as design thinkers are testing their assumptions and re-orienting their organizations to engage their customers and create bonds based on trust.

Orchestrating the future
The pull of platform business models
This section reveals the step change in capability that occurs as organizations scale their partner networks in new ways. We chart how organizations will need to reconsider their value propositions and allocation of resources to own or participate in platforms.

Innovation in motion
Agility for the enterprise
We delineate how leaders are liberating their employees to experiment and innovate, get up close to customers and thrive in an ever-evolving ecosystem of dynamic teams and partnerships.

From DSC:
How do we best help folks impacted by these changes reinvent themselves? And to what? What adjustments to our educational systems do we need to make in order to help people stay marketable and employed?

Given the pace of change and the need for lifelong learning, we need to practice some serious design thinking on our new reality.

The amount of retail space closing in 2018 is on pace to break a record — from cnbc.com by Lauren Thomas

Bon-Ton’s more than 200 stores encompass roughly 24 million square feet.
CoStar Group has calculated already more than 90 million square feet of retail space (including Bon-Ton) is set to close in 2018.
That’s easily on track to surpass a record 105 million square feet of space shuttered in 2017.

Transforming the Postsecondary Professional Education Experience — from by Mary Grush & Thomas Finholt

Excerpt:

So, among other factors currently influencing change, those are the predominate ones. I’ll sum it up this way: The tried-and-true residential model has worked so far, but a number of factors are forcing transformation: emerging technologies, new expectations about when learning will occur in a student’s lifespan, and the introduction of a whole new population of students that had never been imagined before.
…
Grush: What are your latest efforts or experiments in new professional education offerings that you see as part of this transformation? When did you make a start and what impacts do you see so far?
Finholt: The biggest transformation for us to date has been our entry into the MOOC space. That movement began with a few small trials, but it’s now rapidly expanding and may include, ultimately, full degree offerings. I would describe our period of experimentation with MOOCs to have started in 2013, gaining especially significant momentum in the past two years. Over the next couple of years, our efforts will expand even more dramatically, if we elect to offer fully online degrees. As a measure of the magnitude of impact of MOOCs so far, one of our MOOC specializations in the Python programming language is among the most popular offerings on Coursera — I believe that it has reached more than a million learners at this point. A significant fraction of those learners have opted to sit for an exam to get a certificate in Python programming.

One is, as announced at the March 6th Coursera meeting, that we have joined in a partnership with Coursera and the University of Michigan’s Office of Academic Innovation to design and get approved, a brand-new online master’s degree in Applied Data Science.

From DSC:
Mary and Thomas’ solid article reminds me of a graphic I put together a while back:

“The process of obtaining postgraduate credentials is becoming something that one works on over the entire span of one’s career… Working professionals will have an array of punctuated intervals, if you will — periods of time when they work intensively to update their credentials.” (source)

Students are being prepared for jobs that no longer exist. Here’s how that could change. — from nbcnews.com by Sarah Gonser, The Hechinger Report
As automation disrupts the labor market and good middle-class jobs disappear, schools are struggling to equip students with future-proof skills.

Excerpts:

In many ways, the future of Lowell, once the largest textile manufacturing hub in the United States, is tied to the success of students like Ben Lara. Like many cities across America, Lowell is struggling to find its economic footing as millions of blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, construction and transportation disappear, subject to offshoring and automation.

The jobs that once kept the city prosperous are being replaced by skilled jobs in service sectors such as health care, finance and information technology — positions that require more education than just a high-school diploma, thus squeezing out many of those blue-collar, traditionally middle-class workers.

As emerging technologies rapidly and thoroughly transform the workplace, some experts predict that by 2030 400 million to 800 million people worldwide could be displaced and need to find new jobs. The ability to adapt and quickly acquire new skills will become a necessity for survival.

“We’re preparing kids for these jobs of tomorrow, but we really don’t even know what they are,” said Amy McLeod, the school’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. “It’s almost like we’re doing this with blinders on. … We’re doing all we can to give them the finite skills, the computer languages, the programming, but technology is expanding so rapidly, we almost can’t keep up.”

For students like Amber, who would rather do just about anything but go to school, the Pathways program serves another function: It makes learning engaging, maybe even fun, and possibly keeps her in school and on track to graduate.

“I think we’re turning kids off to learning in this country by putting them in rows and giving them multiple-choice tests — the compliance model,” McLeod said. “But my hope is that in the pathways courses, we’re teaching them to love learning. And they’re learning about options in the field — there’s plenty of options for kids to try here.”

Learning Ecosystems

Incumbents Strike Back: Insights from the Global C-suite Study [IBM Institute for Business Value]

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