The Work-From-Anywhere War Is Beginning — from wired.com by Bruce Daisley
Forget return-to-office mandates. The most sought-after talent want ultimate flexibility. Their bosses need to get on board.

Excerpt:

Who calls the shots on how many days you end up working in the office? It has gradually dawned on bosses that it isn’t them. The real power holders? The elusive “top talent” that every firm is trying to attract.

Top talent doesn’t just want hybrid work, they want to work from wherever they want. “There are two kinds of companies,” Choudhury explains. “One is going to embrace work-from-anywhere, and the second is in denial—I feel those companies will lose their workforce.” He argues that the “companies that are trying to drag back time will lose some of their best talent, and that dynamic will force these companies to catch up.”

 
 

The Art of Active Listening | The Harvard Business Review Guide — from Harvard Business Review out on YouTube.com by Amy Gallo; with thanks to Roberto Ferraro for this resource

 

Top challenges for L&D leaders in 2023 — from chieflearningofficer.com by Ken Blanchard

Excerpts:

From an HR perspective, survey respondents reported that the biggest challenges they expect as HR and L&D leaders in 2023, in ranked order, are:

  1. Capacity and resources
  2. Turnover and attrition
  3. Improving engagement and experience
  4. Adapting to a hybrid culture

From DSC:
I wonder if many in higher education might respond similarly…? Perhaps some even in the K-12 space as well.

Also see:

This posting from William Kennedy-Long (re: instructional design) out on LinkedIn:

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

I read Clark Quinn’s outstanding article which I highly recommend reading, entitled Performance Focus For Deeper Learning Design.

Immediately, I was captivated by what it and he had to say, such that I wrote a short piece to follow up on it.

What are on-ramps? Here’s how to build them for all adult learners to reach their academic potential — from chieflearningofficer.com by Michelle Westfort

Excerpt:

This may come as a surprise — adult learners over 25 make up nearly 40 percent of today’s U.S. undergraduate population at colleges and universities. However, these learners often find themselves treated as outliers by institutions designed for traditional students, which leads to poorer learner outcomes and, as a result, barriers to social mobility.

To ensure adult learners can meaningfully participate in your workforce education program, organizations can build on-ramps capable of accommodating all learners.

On-ramps provide employees access to high-quality academic programs, enable them to continue their educational journey toward a degree or certification by meeting them where they are, and hold a key role in paving the way for successful learner outcomes.

Leveraging 2022’s future-forward lessons to improve L&D — from chieflearningofficer.com by Keith Keating

Excerpts:

Top 4 future-forward lessons from 2022:

  1. The world changes rapidly — prepare for it
  2. Anticipate trends, events and the skills you’ll need in the future
  3. Continuously adopt new capabilities and expand your knowledge
  4. Use tech to your advantage
 
 

How AI And 5G Could Lead The Next Phase Of The Industrial Revolution — from swisscognitive.ch

Some use cases of the convergence of AI and 5G are:

  • Metaverse: AI is a key technology that helps bring Metaverse to life and now with the addition of 5G, streaming experiences would become enjoyable and maintaining connectivity without any disruption of external factors like geographical locations would be eliminated.
  • Digital assistants in the form of chatbots and virtual avatars: Digital assistants today use AI to replicate the human brain and converse with people in human language by understanding intent. With 5G the speed at which the speech is converted to text will improve drastically.
  • Education: AI and 5G are helping bring education to students’ doorstep through virtual reality and is making this available, efficiently as in real-world classrooms. Solving queries is possible quickly without any restrictions. Betty in Archie Comics attending her classes virtually is a reality due to these technologies.
  • Healthcare: AI and 5G in healthcare are proliferating an accurate diagnosis of diseases, real-time monitoring, and quick treatment facilities. This has become possible with the right use of data- collection, transmission, and analysis.
  • Automotive: AI and 5G together is making vehicles smarter and reducing the risk of mishaps on roads by employing various data-powered safety and driving efficiency measures in vehicles.

AI Timelines: What Do Experts in Artificial Intelligence Expect for the Future? — from singularityhub.com by Dr. Max Roser

Excerpt:

What I do take away from these surveys however, is that the majority of AI experts take the prospect of very powerful AI technology seriously. It is not the case that AI researchers dismiss extremely powerful AI as mere fantasy.

The huge majority thinks that in the coming decades there is an even chance that we will see AI technology which will have a transformative impact on our world. While some have long timelines, many think it is possible that we have very little time before these technologies arrive. Across the three surveys more than half think that there is a 50% chance that a human-level AI would be developed before some point in the 2060s, a time well within the lifetime of today’s young people.

Future Of Health: Top Five Digital Health Innovations For 2023 — from forbes.com by Anita Gupta

Excerpts:

  • Connected Digital Care
  • AI In Healthcare
  • Real-World Patient Engagement In Healthcare
  • Increase Security For Digital And Health Data
  • Improving Telehealth Services

Looking ahead to 2023: AI, machine learning, RTLS and robotic process automation — from healthcareitnews.com by Bill Siwicki
These advanced technologies will do more to help provider organizations with workflow optimization, staff shortages and the patient experience in the year ahead, one expert predicts.

Three reasons why NLP will go mainstream in healthcare in 2023 — from healthcareitnews.com by Bill Siwicki
A natural language processing expert explains why he feels the technology’s kinks have been ironed out, its ROI has been proven and the timing is right for healthcare to take advantage of information-extraction tools.

13 tech predictions for 2023 — from enterprisersproject.com by Katie Sanders
What can you expect in the world of IT next year? Business and IT leaders share their thoughts

Analysts Predictions About AI In 2023 — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpts:

  • Automated software development
  • Automated content and commerce
  • Enterprise governance, risk, sustainability and security
  • Consumer interactions and experiences

Top 5 Edge AI Trends to Watch in 2023 — from nvidia.com by Amanda Saunders

Excerpt:

Until now, AI has operated almost exclusively in the cloud. But increasingly diverse streams of data are being generated around the clock from sensors at the edge. These require real-time inference, which is leading more AI deployments to move to edge computing.

For airports, stores, hospitals and more, AI brings advanced efficiency, automation and even cost reduction, which is why edge AI adoption accelerated last year.

In 2023, expect to see a similarly challenging environment, which will drive the following edge AI trends.

Digital transformation: 5 trends to watch in 2023 — from enterprisersproject.com by Ritish Reddy
As enterprises continue to digitally transform, IT leaders must look toward the future. Expect to see these trends in 2023

 

Female scientists challenge stereotypes | Not the Science Type — from 3M.com
Female scientists challenge stereotypes and blaze paths for future generations in this 3M-produced docuseries

Excerpt:

STEM education has an access issue: let’s change that.

Around the world, people believe the we need more people in STEM careers. Eighty-seven percent of people believe we need to do more to encourage and retain girls in STEM education. At the same time, barriers remain – 73% of people believe underrepresented minorities often lack equal access STEM education.

Not The Science Type gets to the heart of access and gender inequity in STEM education and STEM fields. This four-part docuseries features four female scientists who are challenging stereotypes and confronting gender, racial and age discrimination as they rise to prominence.

Not The Science Type highlights four brilliant minds, showcasing women who break down boundaries within their fields – biology, engineering and science and technology-based applications.
.

Female scientists challenge stereotypes and blaze paths for future generations in this 3M-produced docuseries.

While each woman has taken a different path to pursue scientific excellence, they are bound by the common experience of feeling excluded, or “not the type” in traditionally homogenous fields.

 

How Skills Are Disrupting Work: The Transformational Power of Fast-Growing, In-Demand Skills — from burningglassinstitute.org by Nik Dawson, Alexandra Martin, Matt Sigelman, Gad Levanon, Stephanie Blochinger, Jennifer Thornton, and Janet Chen
A “State of Skills” Report from the Burning Glass Institute, the Business-Higher Education Forum, and Wiley

On average, 37% of the top 20 skills requested for the average U.S. job have changed since 2016.

Excerpt:
By analyzing hundreds of millions of recent U.S. job postings, the Burning Glass Institute and the Business–Higher Education Forum (BHEF) identified four of the fastest-growing, highest-demand emerging skill sets:

  • Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
  • Cloud Computing
  • Product Management
  • Social Media

These four skill sets serve as a laboratory for understanding what business and education leaders can do to prepare workers and students for skills disruption. To illustrate how programs can help learners and workers acquire essential skills, this report includes profiles of recent innovations from the BHEF network.

The future belongs to those who seek to understand, anticipate, and harness the power of emerging skills, rather than maintain a posture of reaction/response.

The prospect of helping all those who are challenged by skill disruption hinges on the readiness of business and higher education to engage in understanding and planning for skill disruption over the long term.

From DSC:
“On average, 37% of the top 20 skills requested for the average U.S. job have changed since 2016.” That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about the exponential pace of change. It’s hard to deal with. Our institutions of education are not used to this pace of change. Our legal system isn’t used to this pace of change. And there are other industries struggling to keep up.

Should the pace of change be an element of our design when we think about using Design Thinking to create a new lifelong learning ecosystem?

 

The talent needed to adopt mobile AR in industry — from chieflearningofficer.com by Yao Huang Ph.D.

Excerpt:

Therefore, when adopting mobile AR to improve job performance, L&D professionals need to shift their mindset from offering training with AR alone to offering performance support with AR in the middle of the workflow.

The learning director from a supply chain industry pointed out that “70 percent of the information needed to build performance support systems already exists. The problem is it is all over the place and is available on different systems.”

It is the learning and development professional’s job to design a solution with the capability of the technology and present it in a way that most benefits the end users.

All participants revealed that mobile AR adoption in L&D is still new, but growing rapidly. L&D professionals face many opportunities and challenges. Understanding the benefits, challenges and opportunities of mobile AR used in the workplace is imperative.

A brief insert from DSC:
Augmented Reality (AR) is about to hit the mainstream in the next 1-3 years. It will connect the physical world with the digital world in powerful, helpful ways (and likely in negative ways as well). I think it will be far bigger and more commonly used than Virtual Reality (VR). (By the way, I’m also including Mixed Reality (MR) within the greater AR domain.) With Artificial Intelligence (AI) making strides in object recognition, AR could be huge.

Learning & Development groups should ask for funding soon — or develop proposals for future funding as the new hardware and software products mature — in order to upskill at least some members of their groups in the near future.

As within Teaching & Learning Centers within higher education, L&D groups need to practice what they preach — and be sure to train their own people as well.

 
 

Skills, Skills, Skills Now is the time. — from by Katelyn Donnelly and Eric Scott Lavin
Skills matter more than ever.

Excerpt:

For years, the importance of building demonstrable skills has been growing. The research is clear: skills acquired through work experience increase lifetime earnings. Yet, a massive shift in how learners, educators, and employers think about skills is just beginning.

Three subtrends set the stage for a massive inflection point in how we think about skills…

Learning will be the only constant throughout a career.  Success in the modern workforce is learning experiences to build skills, and the best way to build skills is to do real-world projects.

Below is a sampling of organizations and companies pushing the boundaries. Some of these are established players with mature businesses and tested business models.

Also relevant/see:

The Job Skills of 2023 — from Coursera

The job skills of 2023 -- from Coursera

Excerpt from the Executive Summary Section

  1. The fastest-growing skills are digital skills
    The top ten overall fastest-growing skills are digital skills. The ongoing evolution of technology means employers are regularly seeking new digital competencies from potential hires while also reskilling existing workers.
  2. The fastest-growing digital skills are changing more significantly than the fastest-growing human skills
    The top ten digital skills vary significantly from last year—only two have carried over year-on-year: data visualization and user experience. The human skills in demand remain steadier, suggesting an evergreen demand for skills like change management and communication.

The job skills of 2023 -- from Coursera

 

Edtech’s brightest are struggling to pass — from techcrunch.com by Natasha Mascarenhas

Excerpts:

In the last quarter of 2022, edtech layoffs have hit venture-backed businesses including but not limited to BloomTech, Vedantu, Teachmint, Reforge, Coursera, Unacademy, Byju’s, Udacity and Brainly. Executive shifts include Quizlet CEO stepping down, Degreed’s CEO stepping aside for the founder’s return, and Invact Metaversity’s co-founder leaving after irreconcilable differences with his co-founder.

Class, an edtech company that neared unicorn status only 10 months after launching its Zoom School alternative, also conducted layoffs this year. The company raised a total of $146 million in known venture funding to date, including a SoftBank Vision Fund II check. CEO and founder Michael Chasen did not respond to a request for comment

The e-mail sent to staff was even more direct. “The truth is the layoffs in our sector are widespread for a reason,” Amir Nathoo, the co-founder of edtech unicorn Outschool, wrote in an email sent to staff. “The funding atmosphere has been dramatically impacted by the anticipation of a recession, higher interest rates and an increased need to show [return on investment] to investors.”

Addendum on 12/15/22 — and focuses on India:

  • Will Edtech See a Paradigm Shift In 2023? — from entrepreneur.com by S. Shanthi
    Higher education, phygital models, vernacular learning, re-skilling, up-skilling are some of the trends that are expected to stay attractive
 
  • From DSC:
    I continue to think about the idea of wiping the slate completely clean. If we were to design a lifelong learning ecosystem, what would it look like? How could we apply Design Thinking to this new slate/canvas?

Perhaps we could start by purposefully creating more pathways to weave in and out of the various siloes — and then come back into the “silos” with new ideas, knowledge, and experiences:

  • PreK-12
  • Higher education
  • Vocational programs
  • Business and the corporate world
  • Government
  • Communities of practice
  • Other

Integrate apprenticeships, jobs, sabbaticals, rest, purpose, passions, intrinsic motivations, other into this lifelong learning ecosystem. Take one’s new learning back to one’s former silo(s) and improve things therein. Such a design would help keep curricula and learning/training environments up-to-date and relevant.

It would also allow people more pathways through their careers — and to keep learning while doing real-world projects. It would help people — and institutions— grow in many ways.

 

From DSC:
How to retain talented staff members should be high on every administrator’s 2023 agenda.” This highlight from a recent email from The Chronicle of Higher Education linked to:

Unfortunately, this important item wasn’t high on the agenda in the majority of the years that I was working in higher education. I often thought that folks in higher education could have learned from the corporate world in this regard. Although even the corporate world hasn’t been doing a good job these days about treating their people well. But that wasn’t the case in my experience at Baxter Healthcare, Kraft Foods, and Wells Fargo from years ago.

Perhaps we should have more people “crossing over” between the silos that we seem to have established. That is, a person could work within higher education for 2-3 years, move over to a corporate environment/government/vocational space/other, and then works a few years there before coming back to higher education in a different capacity. Perhaps more pathways and tighter collaboration could exist in this manner.

Hmmm…design thinking…there’s got to be something here…

 

How to Receive Feedback With a Growth Mindset — from neuroleadership.com by the NeuroLeadership Institute

Excerpt:

A growth mindset can help us view feedback as a good thing, which ultimately makes performance reviews more effective. After all, we want to learn, grow, and improve our skills. People with a fixed mindset view criticism as an attack on their self-worth. Growth mindset, by contrast, leaves room for the possibility that we all have blind spots — and that your manager may have valuable insights on how you can hone your skills. Feedback, in other words, isn’t personal. A manager may critique our performance, but a growth mindset helps keep us from tying our performance to our identity.

The beauty of growth mindset is that it’s self-reinforcing. As you gain more confidence in your own ability to learn and grow, each feedback conversation becomes easier than the last. You become more capable of discussing high-stakes issues with honesty and transparency because neither side feels threatened.

 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian