The Growing Profile of Non-Degree Credentials: Diving Deeper into ‘Education Credentials Come of Age’ — from evolllution.com by Sean Gallagher
Higher education is entering a “golden age” of lifelong learning and that will mean a spike in demand for credentials. If postsecondary institutions want to compete in a crowded market, they need to change fast.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

One of the first levels of opportunity is simply embedding the skills that are demanded in the job market into educational programs. Education certainly has its own merits independent of professional outcomes. But critics of higher education who suggest graduates aren’t prepared for the workforce have a point in terms of the opportunity for greater job market alignment, and less of an “ivory tower” mentality at many institutions. Importantly, this does not mean that there isn’t value in the liberal arts and in broader ways of thinking—problem solving, leadership, critical thinking, analysis, and writing are among the very top skills demanded by employers across all educational levels. These are foundational and independent of technical skills.

The second opportunity is building an ecosystem for better documentation and sharing of skills—in a sense what investor Ryan Craig has termed a “competency marketplace.” Employers’ reliance on college degrees as relatively blunt signals of skill and ability is partly driven by the fact that there aren’t many strong alternatives. Technology—and the growth of platforms like LinkedIn, ePortfolios and online assessments—is changing the game. One example is digital badges, which were originally often positioned as substitutes to degrees or certificates.

Instead, I believe digital badges are a supplement to degrees and we’re increasingly seeing badges—short microcredentials that discretely and digitally document competency—woven into degree programs, from the community college to the graduate degree level.

 

However, it is becoming increasingly clear that the market is demanding more “agile” and shorter-form approaches to education. Many institutions are making this a strategic priority, especially as we read the evolution of trends in the global job market and soon enter the 2020s.

Online education—which in all its forms continues to slowly and steadily grow its market share in terms of all higher ed instruction—is certainly an enabler of this vision, given what we know about pedagogy and the ability to digitally document outcomes.

 

In addition, 64 percent of the HR leaders we surveyed said that the need for ongoing lifelong learning will demand higher levels of education and more credentials in the future.

 

Along these lines of online-based collaboration and learning,
go to the 34 minute mark of this video:

 

From DSC:
The various pieces are coming together to build the next generation learning platform. Although no one has all of the pieces yet, the needs/trends/signals are definitely there.

 

Daniel Christian-- Learning from the Living Class Room

 

Addendums on 4/20/19:

 

 

Educational Web Tools to Empower Students Voice in Class — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

At the core of progressive pedagogy is the empowerment of students by giving them a voice in class and making them part of the decision making. Unlike traditional instruction where  students are viewed as passive receivers of  pre-designed knowledge, a progressive instruction is primarily student-centered and dialogic in nature. It views students as subjects with a sense of agency capable of co-constructing their own knowledge. This pedagogical stance is especially popularized by educationists such as John Dewy, Paulo Freire, Maxine Greene, and Vygotsky. For these theorists, learning is driven by curiosity, inquiry and self-discovery, processes which involve students in their own learning and makes their learning meaningful.

With the help of web technologies, you can use a wide variety of web tools with students to provide them with an outlet through which they can express their voices. Here are some examples to try …

 

 

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:

 

From DSC:
First of all, an article:

The four definitive use cases for AR and VR in retail — from forbes.com by Nikki Baird

AR in retail

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

AR is the go-to engagement method of choice when it comes to product and category exploration. A label on a product on a shelf can only do so much to convey product and brand information, vs. AR, which can easily tap into a wealth of digital information online and bring it to life as an overlay on a product or on the label itself.

 

From DSC:
Applying this concept to the academic world…what might this mean for a student in a chemistry class who has a mobile device and/or a pair of smart goggles on and is working with an Erlenmeyer flask? A burette? A Bunsen burner?

Along these lines...what if all of those confused students — like *I* was struggling through chem lab — could see how an experiment was *supposed to be done!?*

That is, if there’s only 30 minutes of lab time left, the professor or TA could “flip a switch” to turn on the AR cloud within the laboratory space to allow those struggling students to see how to do their experiment.

I can’t tell you how many times I was just trying to get through the lab — not knowing what I was doing, and getting zero help from any professor or TA. I hardly learned a thing that stuck with me…except the names of a few devices and the abbreviations of a few chemicals. For the most part, it was a waste of money. How many students experience this as well and feel like I did?

Will the terms “blended learning” and/or “hybrid learning” take on whole new dimensions with the onset of AR, MR, and VR-related learning experiences?

#IntelligentTutoring #IntelligentSystems #LearningExperiences
#AR #VR #MR #XR #ARCloud #AssistiveTechnologies
#Chemistry #BlendedLearning #HybridLearning #DigitalLearning

 

Also see:

 

“It is conceivable that we’re going to be moving into a world without screens, a world where [glasses are] your screen. You don’t need any more form factor than [that].”

(AT&T CEO)

 

 

Check out the top 10:

1) Alphabet (Google); Internet
2) Facebook; Internet
3) Amazon; Internet
4) Salesforce; Internet
5) Deloitte; Management Consulting
6) Uber; Internet
7) Apple; Consumer Electronics
8) Airbnb; Internet
9) Oracle; Information Technology & Services
10) Dell Technologies; Information Technology & Services

 

Cambridge library installation gives readers control of their sensory space — from cambridge.wickedlocal.com by Hannah Schoenbaum

Excerpts:

A luminous igloo-shaped structure in the front room of the Cambridge Public Library beckoned curious library visitors during the snowy first weekend of March, inviting them to explore a space engineered for everyone, yet uniquely their own.

Called “Alterspace” and developed by Harvard’s metaLAB and Library Innovation Lab, this experiment in adaptive architecture granted the individual control over the sensory elements in his or her space. A user enters the LED-illuminated dome to find headphones, chairs and an iPad on a library cart, which displays six modes: Relax, Read, Meditate, Focus, Create and W3!Rd.

From the cool blues and greens of Relax mode to a rainbow overload of excitement in the W3!Rd mode, Alterspace is engineered to transform its lights, sounds and colors into the ideal environment for a particular action.

 

 

From DSC:
This brings me back to the question/reflection…in the future, will students using VR headsets be able to study by a brook? An ocean? In a very quiet library (i.e., the headset would come with solid noise cancellation capabilities build into it)?  This type of room/capability would really be helpful for our daughter…who is easily distracted and doesn’t like noise.

 

 

Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technologies Impacting Higher Ed in 2019 — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

  • Artificial intelligence conversational interfaces. Gartner defines these as “a subset of conversational user interfaces (CUIs), in which user and machine interactions occur in the user’s spoken or written natural language.” The benefit for higher ed insitutions: “CUIs place responsibility on the machine interface to learn what the user wants, rather than the user having to learn the software, saving user time, increasing student satisfaction, and being available to use 24/7.”
  • Smart campus. This is “a physical or digital environment in which humans and technology-enabled systems interact to create more immersive and automated experiences for university stakeholders.” While smart campus initiatives are still in the early stages, there has been a rising interest across higher ed institutions, according to Gartner. “The smart campus will drive growth in markets like robotic process automation solutions and augmented and virtual reality in the higher education space. Campus efficiency will be enhanced and student learning will be enriched with the new capabilities they bring. It’s a win all-around, except for the data security implications that come with most technology initiatives today,” said Morgan.
  • Digital credentialing technologies. “Students, faculty and the higher education institutions they are a part of are starting to expect the ability to quickly and freely exchange credentials to enhance the verification and recruitment process,” noted Gartner. Technologies such as blockchain and data encryption are driving change in this area. “In many ways, credentials issued by an education institution are the only tangible evidence of higher education. They should be considered the currency of the education ecosystem,” said Morgan. “These technologies really enable universities to leverage technology to improve the student experience by giving them more control over their information. The only hurdle is a general lack of understanding of digital credentialing technologies and risk-averseness in the high-stakes nature of the higher education market.”

 

 

Map of fundamental technologies in legal services — from remakinglawfirms.com by Michelle Mahoney

Excerpt:
The Map is designed to help make sense of the trends we are observing:

  • an increasing number of legal technology offerings;
  • the increasing effectiveness of legal technologies;
  • emerging new categories of legal technology;
  • the layering and combining of fundamental technology capabilities; and
  • the maturation of machine learning, natural language processing and deep learning artificial intelligence.

Given the exponential nature of the technologies, the Fundamental Technologies Map can only depict the landscape at the current point in time.

 

Information processing in legal services (PDF file)

 

Also see:
Delta Model Update: The Most Important Area of Lawyer Competency — Personal Effectiveness Skills — from legalexecutiveinstitute.comby Natalie Runyon

Excerpt:

Many legal experts say the legal industry is at an inflection point because the pace of change is being driven by many factors — technology, client demand, disaggregation of matter workflow, the rise of Millennials approaching mid-career status, and the faster pace of business in general.

The fact that technology spend by law firms continues to be a primary area of investment underscores the fact that the pace of change is continuing to accelerate with the ongoing rise of big data and workflow technology that are greatly influencing how lawyering gets done. Moreover, combined with big unstructured data, artificial intelligence (AI) is creating opportunities to analyze siloed data sets to gain insights in numerous new ways.

 

 

A Chinese subway is experimenting with facial recognition to pay for fares — from theverge.com by Shannon Liao

Excerpt:

Scanning your face on a screen to get into the subway might not be that far off in the future. In China’s tech capital, Shenzhen, a local subway operator is testing facial recognition subway access, powered by a 5G network, as spotted by the South China Morning Post.

The trial is limited to a single station thus far, and it’s not immediately clear how this will work for twins or lookalikes. People entering the station can scan their faces on the screen where they would normally have tapped their phones or subway cards. Their fare then gets automatically deducted from their linked accounts. They will need to have registered their facial data beforehand and linked a payment method to their subway account.

 

 

From DSC:
I don’t want this type of thing here in the United States. But…now what do I do? What about you? What can we do? What paths are open to us to stop this?

I would argue that the new, developing, technological “Wild Wests” in many societies throughout the globe could be dangerous to our futures. Why? Because the pace of change has changed. And these new Wild Wests now have emerging, powerful, ever-more invasive (i.e., privacy-stealing) technologies to deal with — the likes of which the world has never seen or encountered before. With this new, rapid pace of change, societies aren’t able to keep up.

And who is going to use the data? Governments? Large tech companies? Other?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m generally pro-technology. But this new pace of change could wreak havoc on us. We need time to weigh in on these emerging techs.

 

Addendum on 3/20/19:

  • Chinese Facial Recognition Database Exposes 2.5 Million People — from futurumresearch.com by Shelly Kramer
    Excerpt:
    An artificial intelligence company operating a facial recognition system in China recently left its database exposed online, leaving the personal information of some 2.5 million Chinese citizens vulnerable. Considering how much the Chinese government relies on facial recognition technology, this is a big deal—for both the Chinese government and Chinese citizens.

 

 

 

From DSC:
Our family uses AT&T for our smartphones and for our Internet access. What I would really like from AT&T is to be able to speak into an app — either located on a smartphone or have their routers morph into Alexa-type of devices — to be able to speak to what I want my router to do:

“Turn off Internet access tonight from 9pm until 6am tomorrow morning.”
“Only allow Internet access for parents’ accounts.”
“Upgrade my bandwidth for the next 2 hours.”

Upon startup, the app would ask whether I wanted to setup any “admin” types of accounts…and, if so, would recognize that voice/those voices as having authority and control over the device.

Would you use this type of interface? I know I would!

P.S. I’d like to be able to speak to our
thermostat in that sort of way as well.

 

Is this South Africa’s best legal online platform using blockchain? — from techfinancials.co.za
The winners of the event, Kagiso, will progress to the second round of the contest, in which a panel of international judges will decide who attends a grand final in New York.

Excerpt:

The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiiL) and leading global law firm Baker McKenziehave announced the winners of the South African leg of Global Legal Hackathon 2019 (GLH2019).

First prize went to Kagiso, an online mediation platform that provides a cost-effective and fast alternative to lengthy court processes for civil disputes.

Kagiso uses machine learning to match cases with professional mediators who have the most relevant skill sets to be effective – such as subject matter experience or knowledge of local languages – and stores records using blockchain technology.

The second prize was awarded to Bua, a voice-recognition system that allows victims of crime to record their own statements in their own language in a private “safe space” such as a kiosk or on their own phone.

The majority of crimes in South Africa’s go unreported or prosecutions fail, and a leading reason is that victims don’t feel comfortable giving statements in open police stations, and statements are often badly or wilfully mistranslated.

 

 

The Global Legal Hackathon is a non-profit organization that organizes law schools, law firms and in-house departments, legal technology companies, governments, and service providers to innovation in the legal industry – across the globe. It brings together the best thinkers, doers and practitioners in law in support of a unified vision: rapid development of solutions to improve the legal industry, world-wide.

 

 

From DSC:
Glancing through the awards likely shows where the future of the legal field is going…at least in part.

 

Also see:

 

 

Police across the US are training crime-predicting AIs on falsified data — from technologyreview.com by Karen Hao
A new report shows how supposedly objective systems can perpetuate corrupt policing practices.

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Despite the disturbing findings, the city entered a secret partnership only a year later with data-mining firm Palantir to deploy a predictive policing system. The system used historical data, including arrest records and electronic police reports, to forecast crime and help shape public safety strategies, according to company and city government materials. At no point did those materials suggest any effort to clean or amend the data to address the violations revealed by the DOJ. In all likelihood, the corrupted data was fed directly into the system, reinforcing the department’s discriminatory practices.


But new research suggests it’s not just New Orleans that has trained these systems with “dirty data.” In a paper released today, to be published in the NYU Law Review, researchers at the AI Now Institute, a research center that studies the social impact of artificial intelligence, found the problem to be pervasive among the jurisdictions it studied. This has significant implications for the efficacy of predictive policing and other algorithms used in the criminal justice system.

“Your system is only as good as the data that you use to train it on,” says Kate Crawford, cofounder and co-director of AI Now and an author on the study.

 

How AI is enhancing wearables — from techopedia.com by Claudio Butticev
Takeaway: Wearable devices have been helping people for years now, but the addition of AI to these wearables is giving them capabilities beyond anything seen before.

Excerpt:

Restoring Lost Sight and Hearing – Is That Really Possible?
People with sight or hearing loss must face a lot of challenges every day to perform many basic activities. From crossing the street to ordering food on the phone, even the simplest chore can quickly become a struggle. Things may change for these struggling with sight or hearing loss, however, as some companies have started developing machine learning-based systems to help the blind and visually impaired find their way across cities, and the deaf and hearing impaired enjoy some good music.

German AI company AiServe combined computer vision and wearable hardware (camera, microphone and earphones) with AI and location services to design a system that is able to acquire data over time to help people navigate through neighborhoods and city blocks. Sort of like a car navigation system, but in a much more adaptable form which can “learn how to walk like a human” by identifying all the visual cues needed to avoid common obstacles such as light posts, curbs, benches and parked cars.

 

From DSC:
So once again we see the pluses and minuses of a given emerging technology. In fact, most technologies can be used for good or for ill. But I’m left with asking the following questions:

  • As citizens, what do we do if we don’t like a direction that’s being taken on a given technology or on a given set of technologies? Or on a particular feature, use, process, or development involved with an emerging technology?

One other reflection here…it’s the combination of some of these emerging technologies that will be really interesting to see what happens in the future…again, for good or for ill. 

The question is:
How can we weigh in?

 

Also relevant/see:

AI Now Report 2018 — from ainowinstitute.org, December 2018

Excerpt:

University AI programs should expand beyond computer science and engineering disciplines. AI began as an interdisciplinary field, but over the decades has narrowed to become a technical discipline. With the increasing application of AI systems to social domains, it needs to expand its disciplinary orientation. That means centering forms of expertise from the social and humanistic disciplines. AI efforts that genuinely wish to address social implications cannot stay solely within computer science and engineering departments, where faculty and students are not trained to research the social world. Expanding the disciplinary orientation of AI research will ensure deeper attention to social contexts, and more focus on potential hazards when these systems are applied to human populations.

 

Furthermore, it is long overdue for technology companies to directly address the cultures of exclusion and discrimination in the workplace. The lack of diversity and ongoing tactics of harassment, exclusion, and unequal pay are not only deeply harmful to employees in these companies but also impacts the AI products they release, producing tools that perpetuate bias and discrimination.

The current structure within which AI development and deployment occurs works against meaningfully addressing these pressing issues. Those in a position to profit are incentivized to accelerate the development and application of systems without taking the time to build diverse teams, create safety guardrails, or test for disparate impacts. Those most exposed to harm from 42 these systems commonly lack the financial means and access to accountability mechanisms that would allow for redress or legal appeals. 233 This is why we are arguing for greater funding for public litigation, labor organizing, and community participation as more AI and algorithmic systems shift the balance of power across many institutions and workplaces.

 

Also relevant/see:

 

 

Google and Microsoft warn that AI may do dumb things — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Alphabet likes to position itself as a leader in AI research, but it was six months behind rival Microsoft in warning investors about the technology’s ethical risks. The AI disclosure in Google’s latest filing reads like a trimmed down version of much fuller language Microsoft put in its most recent annual SEC report, filed last August:

“AI algorithms may be flawed. Datasets may be insufficient or contain biased information. Inappropriate or controversial data practices by Microsoft or others could impair the acceptance of AI solutions. These deficiencies could undermine the decisions, predictions, or analysis AI applications produce, subjecting us to competitive harm, legal liability, and brand or reputational harm.”

 

Chinese company leaves Muslim-tracking facial recognition database exposed online — from by Catalin Cimpanu
Researcher finds one of the databases used to track Uyghur Muslim population in Xinjiang.

Excerpt:

One of the facial recognition databases that the Chinese government is using to track the Uyghur Muslim population in the Xinjiang region has been left open on the internet for months, a Dutch security researcher told ZDNet.

The database belongs to a Chinese company named SenseNets, which according to its website provides video-based crowd analysis and facial recognition technology.

The user data wasn’t just benign usernames, but highly detailed and highly sensitive information that someone would usually find on an ID card, Gevers said. The researcher saw user profiles with information such as names, ID card numbers, ID card issue date, ID card expiration date, sex, nationality, home addresses, dates of birth, photos, and employer.

Some of the descriptive names associated with the “trackers” contained terms such as “mosque,” “hotel,” “police station,” “internet cafe,” “restaurant,” and other places where public cameras would normally be found.

 

From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I’m generally pro-technology. But especially focusing in on that last article, to me, privacy is key here. For which group of people from which nation is next? Will Country A next be tracking Christians? Will Country B be tracking people of a given sexual orientation? Will Country C be tracking people with some other characteristic?

Where does it end? Who gets to decide? What will be the costs of being tracked or being a person with whatever certain characteristic one’s government is tracking? What forums are there for combating technologies or features of technologies that we don’t like or want?

We need forums/channels for raising awareness and voting on these emerging technologies. We need informed legislators, senators, lawyers, citizens…we need new laws here…asap.

 

 

 

 

C-Level View | Feature:
Technology Change: Closing the Knowledge Gap — A Q&A with Mary Grush & Daniel Christian

Excerpts:

Technology changes quickly. People change slowly. The rate of technology change often outpaces our ability to understand it.

It has caused a gap between what’s possible and what’s legal. For example, facial recognition seems to be starting to show up all around us — that’s what’s possible. But what’s legal?

The overarching questions are: What do we really want from these technologies? What kind of future do we want to live in?

Those law schools that expand their understanding of emerging technologies and lead the field in the exploration of related legal issues will achieve greater national prominence.

Daniel Christian

 

 

 

For a next gen learning platform: A Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities / educationally-related “apps” [Christian]

From DSC:
In a next generation learning system, it would be sharp/beneficial to have a Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities that you could turn on and off (at will) — as one component of your learning ecosystem that could feature a setup located in your living room or office.

For example, put a Netflix-like interface to the apps out at eduappcenter.com (i.e., using a rolling interface at first, then going to a static page/listing of apps…again…similar to Netflix).

 

A Netflix-like interface to check out potential functionalities / educationally-related apps

 

 

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian