workplace

Day in the Life: Blind or Visually Impaired Professionals [Howard]

On 04/19/2022, in accessibility / UDL, assistive technologies, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), business, corporate / business world, neurodivergent/special needs, productivity / tips and tricks, tools, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Day in the Life: Blind or Visually Impaired Professionals — from inclusionhub.com by Jeffrey Howard
While blind or visually impaired professionals still encounter inaccessibility and exclusionary hiring practices, some companies are adopting more inclusive protocols including remote work options and other accommodations.

Excerpt:

“It’s the same as someone asking for a second or third monitor,” continues Preston-Watson. “I’m asking for a screen reader. You’re asking for these accommodations. I’m just asking for the tools to do my job. People in different roles need different tools to do their jobs. And that’s the same thing for disabled workers.”

Innovative and practical applications of the metaverse — from mckinsey.com

In this episode of the At the Edge podcast, McKinsey expert Richard Ward speaks with McKinsey’s Mina Alaghband.

Excerpts:

One of the things that we’ve learned during the pandemic is that if you put these metaverse design rooms up on the internet, your clients and other expert engineers can log in remotely, and the experience takes on the quality of Zoom in 3-D, which allows a new level of engineering to happen. The beauty of it is that people are able to do highly productive engineering design work without getting on an airplane. And that has a lot of rollover value for what we’re doing long term.

One of the great lessons we’ve had from the pandemic, as horrible as it’s been, is that things that people had said were impossible for decades are now possible. Like the idea that you can’t possibly have everybody not be in the office—it’s been proven wrong.

Also relevant/see:

What is the metaverse—and what does it mean for business? — from mckinsey.com by Cathy Hackl

Making Higher Ed More Accountable for Student Job Outcomes [Koenig]

On 04/08/2022, in career development, community colleges, higher education, vocational / trades, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Making Higher Ed More Accountable for Student Job Outcomes — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

Many colleges claim to help students find good jobs—but Texas State Technical College takes that to a new level.

The multi-campus community college has a unique mission and funding structure. It’s not designed to help students study the liberal arts or transfer to four-year universities; instead, it prepares people to work as power linemen and dental hygienists. Its budget from the state of Texas depends on the employment outcomes of its students.

And that’s not simply a question of whether new graduates receive job offers. Instead, Texas State Technical College tracks how its alumni fare in the workforce for five years after graduation, calculating how much more money than minimum wage they earn during that period.

L&D is going through an identity crisis — here’s why that’s a good thing [Cai]

On 04/06/2022, in adult learning, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, skills, strategy, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

L&D is going through an identity crisis — here’s why that’s a good thing — from chieflearningofficer.com by Linda Cai
We’re in a new situation, and we need to do something different. Our employees are hungry for growth and purpose amidst the Great Reshuffle, and companies need to respond and act or risk watching their talent walk out the door.

Excerpt:

That’s why organizations need our expertise more than ever. The demand for L&D specialists increased by 94 percent between July and September of 2021 compared to the previous three month period, according to our just-released 2022 Workplace Learning Report.

At the same time, our research also revealed that we have work to do. The report reveals L&D professionals spent 35 percent less time learning than their HR colleagues in 2021. It is not surprising, since a lot of them are overwhelmed by workload, and well-being has decreased. But the L&D function is going through what might be its most consequential transformation to date, and our success depends on whether we can learn the skills that this new world of work requires of us. Are we prepared to take on this increasingly strategic role for years to come?

It will not be easy. But we can start this important work by doing two things: loosening up how we think about ourselves, and going back to why many of us got into this business — to help people do their best work and be their best selves.

Here’s a relevant quote from the 2022 Workplace Learning Report:

“It’s unsurprising that we see more and more progressive companies naming chief learning officers — as was the case with chief diversity officers when diversity was no longer an HR topic but a business advantage. Learning is not an HR topic; it’s a business topic.”

Andrew Saidy
Vice President, Global Talent, Ubisoft

“We really need to change and think about more productive and sustainable ways to help connect talent to opportunity, and our view is that that’s going to be done through a skills-based approach.”

Ryan Roslansky
CEO, LinkedIn

A Skills-First Blueprint to Better Job Outcomes [] Karin Kimbrough

On 04/06/2022, in adult learning, career development, change, reinvent, skills, staying relevant, surviving, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A Skills-First Blueprint to Better Job Outcomes — from linkedin.com by Karin Kimbrough
As Chief Economist at LinkedIn, I lead a team of economists and data scientists that unearth the most interesting insights from over 800M global members. Every month I’ll share a snapshot of key trends to help shed light on where the world of work is headed. This month, we’re looking at new findings around the shift to a skills-first talent ecosystem.

An excerpt from that last link/posting which is entitled “A Skills-First Blueprint for Better Job Outcomes”:

A few key findings:

Skills are Changing
The Pandemic Pulled the Future Forward
Skills-First Hiring Can Work for Both Job Seekers and Hiring Managers
Identifying Similar Skills Helps Workers Pivot to New Roles
Amidst the Great Reshuffle, Investing in Skills is a Key to Retention

This new organization wants to accredit career education [Seltzer]

On 03/30/2022, in accreditation, Alternatives, career development, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, higher education, United States, universities, vendors, vocational / trades, workplace, by Daniel Christian

This new organization wants to accredit career education — from highereddive.com by Rick Seltzer
The Workforce Talent Educators Association will focus its quality assurance on outcomes, says its chief accreditation officer and managing director.

Excerpt:

A new nonprofit organization, the Workforce Talent Educators Association, is attempting to use the accreditation model to push for strong career education programs and degrees — and to serve as a stamp of quality for them.

That’s no easy task. The career education space is filled with a range of traditional college degrees as well as other options like certificate programs, stackable credentials, badges and apprenticeships. Plus, data on student outcomes for programs in the space can be confusing, lagging and limited.

Also from highereddive.com see:

‘No skilled worker left behind’: Maryland drops bachelor’s degree requirements for thousands of jobs — by Caroline Colvin
Almost half of all workers in Maryland are STARs or “skilled through alternative routes.”

Announcing the 2022 AI Index Report — from hai.stanford.edu by Stanford University

Excerpt/description:

Welcome to the Fifth Edition of the AI Index

The AI Index is an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), led by the AI Index Steering Committee, an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry. The annual report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence, enabling decision-makers to take meaningful action to advance AI responsibly and ethically with humans in mind.

The 2022 AI Index report measures and evaluates the rapid rate of AI advancement from research and development to technical performance and ethics, the economy and education, AI policy and governance, and more. The latest edition includes data from a broad set of academic, private, and non-profit organizations as well as more self-collected data and original analysis than any previous editions.

Also relevant/see:

Andrew Ng predicts the next 10 years in AI — from venturebeat.com by George Anadiotis
Nvidia’s latest AI wizardry turns 2D photos into 3D scenes in milliseconds — from thenextweb.com by Thomas Macaulay
The Polaroid of the future?
Nvidia events are renowned for mixing technical bravado with splashes of showmanship — and this year’s GTC conference was no exception. The company ended a week that introduced a new enterprise GPU and an Arm-based “superchip” with a trademark flashy demo. Some 75 years after the world’s first instant photo captured the 3D world in a 2D picture…

Nvidia believes Instant NeRF could generate virtual worlds, capture video conferences in 3D, and reconstruct scenes for 3D maps.

What’s ahead for AI, VR, NFTs, and more? — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Here are some predictions for tech in 2022.

Intel plans to pump $100M into Ohio and US higher ed [Bauer-Wolf]

On 03/28/2022, in career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, funding / grants, higher education, skills, STEAM-related, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Intel plans to pump $100M into Ohio and US higher ed — from highereddive.com by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf

Dive Brief:

Technology giant Intel will provide $50 million in grants to Ohio colleges over the next decade, and it will spend another $50 million for development of STEM curricula at other two- and four-year institutions across the U.S.
The latter investment will be matched by the U.S. National Science Foundation, which is giving $50 million for research and curriculum initiatives. The entire pot of money will help establish semiconductor manufacturing education at institutions nationwide.
State leaders and the company are touting the funding as an opportunity to bolster workforce development amid a national worker shortage in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

What is ADA Website Accessibility? [boia.org]

On 03/27/2022, in accessibility / UDL, business, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, web design and production, workplace, by Daniel Christian

What is ADA Website Accessibility? — from boia.org

Excerpt:

If you’re confused about ADA website compliance, you’re not alone. According to a 2021 report from non-profit organization WebAIM (Web Accessibility In Mind), 97.4% of the top one million home pages on the internet have detectable accessibility issues — and many of those issues could be interpreted as violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Under the ADA, businesses and public agencies must provide reasonable accommodations to persons with disabilities in “places of public accommodation.” That certainly applies to websites, as the Department of Justice has repeatedly confirmed.

Addendum on 3/28/22:

Guidance on Web Accessibility and the ADA — from beta.ada.gov

The IoT is revolutionizing what your business can do — from mckinsey.com

Excerpt:

Where’s the upskilling and reskilling market headed? — from edtechreview.in by Priyanka Gupta
Upskilling and Reskilling are the new buzzwords in the edtech industry and corporate learning. With times changing at light speed, unlearning and relearning have become the norm.

Excerpt:

To understand more about the reskilling and Upskilling market, read further about:

The Need of Upskilling and Reskilling
Workforce Shift and The Upcoming Trends
The Key Element in the Future of Upskilling
The Challenges Ahead

Life of Technical Skills
Technical skills change rapidly. The industry standards for technologies and processes shift more quickly than any education system can turn out leaders. A survey by Prudential reveals that only 46% of working professionals think their skills will make them competitive in the coming ten years. Unless the skill providers speed up their initiatives or programs’ design, development and deployment, organisations and professionals will struggle to find relevancy in jobs and employees relating to skill levels with the dynamic nature of technology and related jobs.

Hybrid learning for hybrid jobs: Reskilling for the digital age [Porcaro]

On 03/13/2022, in blended learning, business, communities of practice, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, hybrid learning, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, reinvent, skills, staying relevant, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Hybrid learning for hybrid jobs: Reskilling for the digital age — from chieflearningofficer.com by David Porcaro
Just as “hybrid jobs” have become “jobs,” the old definition of “hybrid learning” that mixes in-person and online experiences is fast becoming just “learning.” It’s incumbent on employers, training providers and learners themselves to ensure that as we navigate that shift, we’re building a more meaningful and productive learning experience in the process.

What would happen if we reimagined hybrid learning as “learning that equips workers for hybrid jobs,” and built a new approach from there? That’s the question we’ve been working to answer at General Assembly, where our work with employers across a range of fields — from the tech industry to retail and manufacturing — has helped us understand what it takes for learners to be successful in the digital age. Our learning philosophy focuses on four key goals, which could form the building blocks of a new definition of hybrid learning.

Also relevant/see:

Leveraging experiential learning in a hybrid world — from chieflearningofficer.com by George Hallenbeck
The disruption brought on by the shift to hybrid work provides excellent opportunities for experiential learning. By balancing intentionality with support and maximizing the quantity, quality and diversity of learning experiences, both organizations and individual leaders can adapt and thrive in this new era of work.

The Five-Day Workweek Is Dying [Thompson] + items re: the environment and a new DNA test

On 03/11/2022, in Australia, business, corporate / business world, health, UK, United States, workplace, by Daniel Christian

My thanks to Mr. Jack Uldrich for the following three items:

The Five-Day Workweek Is Dying — from theatlantic.com by Derek Thompson
And the implications for work and cities are going to be fascinating.

Excerpt:

According to data from Kastle Systems, which tracks building access across the country, office attendance is at just 33 percent of its pre-pandemic average. That’s lower than in-person attendance in just about any other industry for which we have good data. Even movie theaters—a business sometimes written off as “doomed”—have recovered almost twice as much.

What once seemed like a hot take is becoming a stone-cold reality: For tens of millions of knowledge-economy workers, the office is never coming all the way back. The implications—for work, cities, and the geography of labor—will be fascinating.

Panama – ENVIRONMENT: 175 countries sign plastic waste treaty — from menafn.com

Excerpt:

At a meeting of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi, Kenya, 175 countries on March 2 passed a resolution on the first treaty to directly tackle the 9 billion tonnes of plastic produced since the plastic age ramped up in the 1950s. Work now begins on how to implement the treaty by 2024.

Single DNA Test for Over 50 Genetic Diseases Will Cut Diagnosis From Decades to Days — from

Excerpt:

A new DNA test, developed by researchers at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney and collaborators from Australia, UK and Israel, has been shown to identify a range of hard-to-diagnose neurological and neuromuscular genetic diseases quicker and more-accurately than existing tests.

Majority of workers who quit a job in 2021 cite low pay, no opportunities for advancement, feeling disrespected — from pewresearch.org by Kim Parker and Juliana Menasce Horowitz

Excerpt:

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that low pay, a lack of opportunities for advancement and feeling disrespected at work are the top reasons why Americans quit their jobs last year. The survey also finds that those who quit and are now employed elsewhere are more likely than not to say their current job has better pay, more opportunities for advancement and more work-life balance and flexibility.

Also relevant/see:

EDUCAUSE QuickPoll Results: The Workforce Shakeup — from by Mark McCormack
A sizable wave of staff departures is headed toward higher education. Staff cite either institutional or personal reasons for staying or leaving, suggesting a range of institutional strategies for attracting and retaining talent.

Excerpt:

Middle-managers and middle-tenure staff, in particular, may be at risk of leaving, suggesting a number of solutions institutions might deploy to help attract and retain needed talent.

Addendum on 3/13/22:

I quit — from mckinsey.com

Corporate Leaders Lag in Digital Skills; L&D Can Help — from learningsolutionsmag.com by Pamela Hogle

Excerpt:

As we move into a reality where digital skills dominate and the pandemic has pushed many organizations to accelerate their digital transitions, a yawning skills gap has become apparent: Fewer than a third of digital leaders rate themselves as “effective in digital acumen” according to the DDI Global Leadership Forecast.

But HR and leaders rank digital acumen, which is seen as “a significant predictor not only for digital transformation readiness, but also for innovation and responding to the competitive environment,” as a must-have skill, the DDI report said.

This gap is bad for business. “The world’s most digitally mature companies lead all other companies in value creation. They also have proved much more resilient during the crisis,” research by the Boston Consulting Group found.

Also from learningsolutionsmag.com see:

Learning Ecosystems

Day in the Life: Blind or Visually Impaired Professionals [Howard]

Innovative and practical applications of the metaverse [mckinsey.com]

Making Higher Ed More Accountable for Student Job Outcomes [Koenig]

L&D is going through an identity crisis — here’s why that’s a good thing [Cai]

A Skills-First Blueprint to Better Job Outcomes [] Karin Kimbrough

This new organization wants to accredit career education [Seltzer]

What is ADA Website Accessibility? [boia.org]

Where’s the upskilling and reskilling market headed? [Gupta]

Hybrid learning for hybrid jobs: Reskilling for the digital age [Porcaro]

The Five-Day Workweek Is Dying [Thompson] + items re: the environment and a new DNA test

Corporate Leaders Lag in Digital Skills; L&D Can Help [Hogle]

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