disruption

DC: What can higher ed learn from this? “Big corporations — giant retailers & health insurance companies — are teaming up to become your doctor.”

On 04/07/2018, in colleges, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, health, higher education, ideas, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, new business models, strategy, universities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
What can higher ed learn from this? Eventually, people will seek alternatives if what’s being offered isn’t acceptable to them anymore.

The Disappearing Doctor: How Mega-Mergers Are Changing the Business of Medical Care — from nytimes.com by Reed Ableson and Julie Creswell
Big corporations — giant retailers and health insurance companies — are teaming up to become your doctor.

Excerpt:

Is the doctor in?

In this new medical age of urgent care centers and retail clinics, that’s not a simple question. Nor does it have a simple answer, as primary care doctors become increasingly scarce.

“You call the doctor’s office to book an appointment,” said Matt Feit, a 45-year-old screenwriter in Los Angeles who visited an urgent care center eight times last year. “They’re only open Monday through Friday from these hours to those hours, and, generally, they’re not the hours I’m free or I have to take time off from my job.

“I can go just about anytime to urgent care,” he continued, “and my co-pay is exactly the same as if I went to my primary doctor.”

That’s one reason big players like CVS Health, the drugstore chain, and most recently Walmart, the giant retailer, are eyeing deals with Aetna and Humana, respectively, to use their stores to deliver medical care.

People are flocking to retail clinics and urgent care centers in strip malls or shopping centers, where simple health needs can usually be tended to by health professionals like nurse practitioners or physician assistants much more cheaply than in a doctor’s office. Some 12,000 are already scattered across the country, according to Merchant Medicine, a consulting firm.

From MIT Technology Review on 4-2-2018

*Only* 14 percent of the world has to worry about robots taking their jobs. Yay?
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has released a major report analyzing the impact of automation on jobs in 32 countries.

Clashing views: In 2016, the OECD said only 9 percent of US and worldwide jobs face a “high degree of automobility.” That was a contradiction of one of the most widely cited reports on jobs and automation, by Oxford researchers Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, who in 2013 said that 47 percent of US jobs were at high risk of being consumed by automation.

What’s new: The OECD’s latest report says that across the countries analyzed, 14 percent of jobs are highly automatable, meaning they have over a 70 percent likelihood of automation. In the US, the study concludes that 10 percent of jobs will likely be lost to automation. An additional 32 percent of global jobs will be transformed and require significant worker retraining.

The big “but”: As the gap between the OECD report and Frey and Osborne’s estimates illustrate, predictions like these aren’t known for their accuracy. In fact, when we compiled all of the studies we could on the subject, we found there are about as many predictions as there are experts.

Also see:

Automation, skills use and training — from oecd-ilibrary.org by Ljubica Nedelkoska and Glenda Quintini

Excerpts:

Here are the study’s key findings.
Across the 32 countries, close to one in two jobs are likely to be significantly affected by automation, based on the tasks they involve. But the degree of risk varies.
…
The variance in automatability across countries is large: 33% of all jobs in Slovakia are highly automatable, while this is only the case with 6% of the jobs in Norway.
…
The cross-country variation in automatability, contrary to expectations, is better explained by the differences in the organisation of job tasks within economic sectors, than by the differences in the sectoral structure of economies.
…
There are upside and downside risks to the figures obtained in this paper. On the upside, it is important to keep in mind that these estimates refer to technological possibilities, abstracting from the speed of diffusion and likelihood of adoption of such technologies….But there are risks on the downside too. First, the estimates are based on the fact that, given the current state of knowledge, tasks related to social intelligence, cognitive intelligence and perception and manipulation cannot be automated. However, progress is being made very rapidly, particularly in the latter two categories.
…
Most importantly, the risk of automation is not distributed equally among workers. Automation is found to mainly affect jobs in the manufacturing industry and agriculture, although a number of service sectors, such as postal and courier services, land transport and food services are also found to be highly automatable.
…
Overall, despite recurrent arguments that automation may start to adversely affect selected highly skilled occupations, this prediction is not supported by the Frey and Osborne (2013) framework of engineering bottlenecks used in this study. If anything, Artificial Intelligence puts more low-skilled jobs at risk than previous waves of technological progress…
…

A striking novel finding is that the risk of automation is the highest among teenage jobs. The relationship between automation and age is U-shaped, but the peak in automatability among youth jobs is far more pronounced than the peak among senior workers.

…
This unequal distribution of the risk of automation raises the stakes involved in policies to prepare workers for the new job requirements. In this context, adult learning is a crucial policy instrument for the re-training and up-skilling of workers whose jobs are being affected by technology. Unfortunately, evidence from this study suggests that a lot needs to be done to facilitate participation by the groups most affected by automation.
…
An analysis of German data suggests that training is used to move to jobs at lower risk of automation.

235 emerging technology trends that will influence business, government, education, media & society in the coming year. [Future Today Institute]

On 03/20/2018, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), Blockchain, bots, business, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, disruption, economics, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, health, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, leadership, legislatures / government / legal, media/film, Mixed Reality (MR), mobile technologies, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), organizational change, pace of change, platforms, political science, programming, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, technology (general), tools, training / L&D, trends, universities, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, wearables, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

2018 TECH TRENDS REPORT — from the Future Today Institute
Emerging technology trends that will influence business, government, education, media and society in the coming year.

Description:

The Future Today Institute’s 11th annual Tech Trends Report identifies 235 tantalizing advancements in emerging technologies—artificial intelligence, biotech, autonomous robots, green energy and space travel—that will begin to enter the mainstream and fundamentally disrupt business, geopolitics and everyday life around the world. Our annual report has garnered more than six million cumulative views, and this edition is our largest to date.

Helping organizations see change early and calculate the impact of new trends is why we publish our annual Emerging Tech Trends Report, which focuses on mid- to late-stage emerging technologies that are on a growth trajectory.

In this edition of the FTI Tech Trends Report, we’ve included several new features and sections:

a list and map of the world’s smartest cities
a calendar of events that will shape technology this year
detailed near-future scenarios for several of the technologies
a new framework to help organizations decide when to take action on trends
an interactive table of contents, which will allow you to more easily navigate the report from the bookmarks bar in your PDF reader

01 How does this trend impact our industry and all of its parts?
02 How might global events — politics, climate change, economic shifts – impact this trend, and as a result, our organization?
03 What are the second, third, fourth, and fifth-order implications of this trend as it evolves, both in our organization and our industry?
04 What are the consequences if our organization fails to take action on this trend?
05 Does this trend signal emerging disruption to our traditional business practices and cherished beliefs?
06 Does this trend indicate a future disruption to the established roles and responsibilities within our organization? If so, how do we reverse-engineer that disruption and deal with it in the present day?
07 How are the organizations in adjacent spaces addressing this trend? What can we learn from their failures and best practices?
08 How will the wants, needs and expectations of our consumers/ constituents change as a result of this trend?
09 Where does this trend create potential new partners or collaborators for us?
10 How does this trend inspire us to think about the future of our organization?

Reflections on “Michelle Weise: We Need to Design the Learning Ecosystem of the Future”

On 02/23/2018, in colleges, community colleges, digital learning, disruption, education reform, education technology, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, leadership, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, lifelong learning, marketplaces, microlearning, mobile learning, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, online tutoring, open courseware and systems, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, platforms, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, virtual tutoring, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Michelle Weise: ‘We Need to Design the Learning Ecosystem of the Future’ — from edsurge.com by Michelle Weise

Excerpts:

These days, education reformers, evangelists and foundations pay a lot of lip service to the notion of lifelong learning, but we do little to invest in the systems, architecture and infrastructure needed to facilitate seamless movements in and out of learning and work.

Talk of lifelong learning doesn’t translate into action. In fact, resources and funding are often geared toward the traditional 17- to 22-year-old college-going population and less often to working adults, our growing new-traditional student population.

We’ll need a different investment thesis: For most adults, taking time off work to attend classes at a local, brick-and-mortar community college or a four-year institution will not be the answer. The opportunity costs will be too high. Our current system of traditional higher education is ill-suited to facilitate flexible, seamless cost-effective learning pathways for these students to keep up with the emergent demands of the workforce.

…

Many adults may have no interest in coming back to college. Out of the 37 million Americans with some college and no degree, many have already failed one or twice before and will be wholly uninterested in experiencing more educational trauma.We can’t just say, “Here’s a MOOC, or here’s an online degree, or a 6- to 12-week immersive bootcamp.”

We have to do better. Let’s begin seeding the foundational elements of a learning ecosystem of the future—flexible enough for adults to move consistently in and out of learning and work. Enough talk about lifelong learning: Let’s build the foundations of that learning ecosystem of the future.

From DSC:
I couldn’t agree more with Michelle that we need a new learning ecosystem of the future. In fact, I have been calling such an effort “Learning from the Living [Class] Room — and it outlines a next generation learning platform that aims to deliver everything Michelle talks about in her solid article out at edsurge.com.

Along these lines…I just saw that Amazon is building out more cashierless stores (and Walmart is also at work on introducing more cashierless stores.) Now, let’s say that you are currently a cashier. 2-5 years from now (depending upon where you’re currently working and which stores are in your community), what are you going to do? The opportunities for such a position will be fewer and fewer. Who can help you do what Michelle mentioned here:

Working learners will also need help articulating their learning goals and envisioning a future for themselves. People don’t know how to translate their skills from one industry to another. How does a student begin to understand that 30% of what they already know could be channeled into a totally different and potentially promising pathway they never even knew was within reach?

And that cashier may have had a tough time with K-12 education and/or with higher education. As Michelle writes:

Many adults may have no interest in coming back to college. Out of the 37 million Americans with some college and no degree, many have already failed one or twice before and will be wholly uninterested in experiencing more educational trauma. We can’t just say, “Here’s a MOOC, or here’s an online degree, or a 6- to 12-week immersive bootcamp.”

And like the cashier in this example…we are quickly approaching an era where, I believe, many of us will need to reinvent ourselves in order to:

stay marketable
keep bread and butter on the table
continue to have a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives

Higher ed, if it wants to remain relevant, must pick up the pace of experimentation and increase the willingness to innovate, and to develop new business models — to develop new “learning channels” so to speak. Such channels need to be:

Up-to-date
Serving relevant data and information– especially regarding the job market and which jobs appear to be safe for the next 5-10 years
Inexpensive/affordable
Highly convenient

Oh…that should be no problem for people. Just master these 5 peak performance zones.

On 02/23/2018, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, computer science, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, platforms, programming, reinvent, robotics, society, staying relevant, surviving, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
My comments below are not meant to bash anyone at the Institute for the Future (which I really respect) nor at MIT Technology Review, in fact I recently posted an item from the latter organization that I thought was great. But looking at the list below, I can’t help but think, “Oh…that should be no problem! Geez that’s easy! ………NOT!”

As people lose their jobs to AI, robots, bots, algorithms, automation and the like — and try to reinvent themselves — many people won’t have the skills, interests, aptitudes, funding, background/prior knowledge, etc. to carve out their niches, to find out how to build teams that utilize robots and AI, and to make sense of complex systems. How many of us truly understand the world we’re living in these days? No one does.

Again, no problem on mastering these 5 peak performance zones. Easy peazy lemon squeezy. Geeez. (Please hear the intense sarcasm dripping off my comments.)

How unrealistic can we get? It’s like saying, “Everyone can learn to code. No problem.” That’s not true at all, especially given the current state of computer programming. Many (most?) people simply don’t think that way. That’s why programmers are always in demand and they are often highly paid. Why? Because most people don’t want to do it, can’t do it, or choose not to do it.

Please, let’s get realistic.

From the 2/22/18 e-newsletter from MIT Technology Review

The five skills you need for jobs of the future

The Palo Alto-based think tank Institute for the Future partnered with software company Cornerstone OnDemand to produce a report that identifies 15 skills that workers need to succeed in the workplace of tomorrow. They fall into five main buckets:

Make yourself known through reputation management: Carve out your niche and brand across a variety of platforms to distinguish yourself from the crowd.
Master human and machine collaboration: Know how to build teams that utilize robots and AI, as well as humans.
Build your tribe: Personal networks and social connections will take you to the next level in a tech-focused world.
Make sense of complex systems: The ability to be creative and connect the dots between different industries and organizations will be rewarded.
Build resilience in extreme environments: Learn to thrive in more a risk prone society and build yourself new safety nets.

“To be fit for this future, you need to master five peak performance zones. These are the basics of future fitness for everyone. No matter what your own personal mission in life is, these are the workout zones that will get you ready to face whatever comes next.”

Mapping the Trends on Our Doorstep: The Pace of Change Has Changed [Christian; evoLLLution.com]

On 02/19/2018, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, leadership, organizational change, pace of change, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, trends, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Mapping the Trends on Our Doorstep: The Pace of Change Has Changed — from an article that I did out at — and with — evoLLLution.com [where LLL stands for lifelong learning]; my thanks to Mr. Amrit Ahluwalia, Managing Editor out at evolllution.com and to his staff as well!
The higher education industry has changed significantly over the past decade, and given the pace and significance of change hitting other industries as a result of technological advances, it’s fair to say the postsecondary space is ripe for further transformation.

From DSC:
From the perspective of those of us working within higher education, we see massive changes occurring in the corporate world, and we see innovations and changes also occurring in the world of K-12. Higher education should also be adapting, changing, questioning, and reflecting upon how we can best prepare our students for a rapidly changing workplace.

Below is another interesting item that I believe gives credence to the idea that we are now on an exponential pace of change. Companies are coming and going on the S&P Index…at an ever faster pace.

The 33-year average tenure of companies on the S&P 500 in 1964 narrowed to 24 years by 2016 and is forecast to shrink to just 12 years by 2027 (Chart 1).

Here is the video:

This is the transcript with the original graphs in it.

This is a nice PDF file from evoLLLution.com with the transcript, with some different graphics and some other

DC: Will Amazon get into delivering education/degrees? Is it working on developing a next gen learning platform that could highly disrupt higher ed?

On 01/31/2018, in Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, business side of he, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, distance education, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, personalized/customized learning, platforms, streams of content, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, training / L&D, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, vendors, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
DC: Will Amazon get into delivering education/degrees? Is is working on a next generation learning platform that could highly disrupt the world of higher education? Hmmm…time will tell.

But Amazon has a way of getting into entirely new industries. From its roots as an online bookseller, it has branched off into numerous other arenas. It has the infrastructure, talent, and the deep pockets to bring about the next generation learning platform that I’ve been tracking for years. It is only one of a handful of companies that could pull this type of endeavor off.

And now, we see articles like these:

Amazon Snags a Higher Ed Superstar — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman
Candace Thille, a pioneer in the science of learning, takes a leave from Stanford to help the ambitious retailer better train its workers, with implications that could extend far beyond the company.

Excerpt:

A major force in the higher education technology and learning space has quietly begun working with a major corporate force in — well, in almost everything else.

Candace Thille, a pioneer in learning science and open educational delivery, has taken a leave of absence from Stanford University for a position at Amazon, the massive (and getting bigger by the day) retailer.

Thille’s title, as confirmed by an Amazon spokeswoman: director of learning science and engineering. In that capacity, the spokeswoman said, Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon.”

No further details were forthcoming, and Thille herself said she was “taking time away” from Stanford to work on a project she was “not really at liberty to discuss.”

Amazon is quietly becoming its own university — from qz.com by Amy Wang

Excerpt:

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon empire—which recently dabbled in home security, opened artificial intelligence-powered grocery stores, and started planning a second headquarters (and manufactured a vicious national competition out of it)—has not been idle in 2018.

The e-commerce/retail/food/books/cloud-computing/etc company made another move this week that, while nowhere near as flashy as the above efforts, tells of curious things to come. Amazon has hired Candace Thille, a leader in learning science, cognitive science, and open education at Stanford University, to be “director of learning science and engineering.” A spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon”; Thille herself said she is “not really at liberty to discuss” her new project.

What could Amazon want with a higher education expert? The company already has footholds in the learning market, running several educational resource platforms. But Thille is famous specifically for her data-driven work, conducted at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University, on nontraditional ways of learning, teaching, and training—all of which are perfect, perhaps even necessary, for the education of employees.

From DSC:
It could just be that Amazon is simply building its own corporate university and will stay focused on developing its own employees and its own corporate learning platform/offerings — and/or perhaps license their new platform to other corporations.

But from my perspective, Amazon continues to work on pieces of a powerful puzzle, one that could eventually involve providing learning experiences to lifelong learners:

Personal assistants
Voice recognition / Natural Language Processing (NLP)
The development of “skills” at an incredible pace
Personalized recommendation engines
Cloud computing and more

If Alexa were to get integrated into a AI-based platform for personalized learning — one that features up-to-date recommendation engines that can identify and personalize/point out the relevant critical needs in the workplace for learners — better look out higher ed! Better look out if such a platform could interactively deliver (and assess) the bulk of the content that essentially does the heavy initial lifting of someone learning about a particular topic.

Amazon will be able to deliver a cloud-based platform, with cloud-based learner profiles and blockchain-based technologies, at a greatly reduced cost. Think about it. No physical footprints to build and maintain, no lawns to mow, no heating bills to pay, no coaches making $X million a year, etc. AI-driven recommendations for digital playlists. Links to the most in demand jobs — accompanied by job descriptions, required skills & qualifications, and courses/modules to take in order to master those jobs.

Such a solution would still need professors, instructional designers, multimedia specialists, copyright experts, etc., but they’ll be able to deliver up-to-date content at greatly reduced costs. That’s my bet. And that’s why I now call this potential development The New Amazon.com of Higher Education.

[Microsoft — with their purchase of Linked In (who had previously
purchased Lynda.com) — is another such potential contender.]

DC: The next generation learning platform will likely offer us such virtual reality-enabled learning experiences such as this “flight simulator for teachers.”

On 12/22/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, adult learning, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, bots, business, business side of he, career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, convergence, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, languages and translation, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), online learning, participation, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, second screen apps, simulations, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), television, tools, training / L&D, transmedia, TVs, ubiquitous learning, universities, user experience (UX), virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Virtual reality simulates classroom environment for aspiring teachers — from phys.org by Charles Anzalone, University at Buffalo

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Two University at Buffalo education researchers have teamed up to create an interactive classroom environment in which state-of-the-art virtual reality simulates difficult student behavior, a training method its designers compare to a “flight simulator for teachers.”

The new program, already earning endorsements from teachers and administrators in an inner-city Buffalo school, ties into State University of New York Chancellor Nancy L. Zimpher’s call for innovative teaching experiences and “immersive” clinical experiences and teacher preparation.
…
The training simulator Lamb compared to a teacher flight simulator uses an emerging computer technology known as virtual reality. Becoming more popular and accessible commercially, virtual reality immerses the subject in what Lamb calls “three-dimensional environments in such a way where that environment is continuous around them.” An important characteristic of the best virtual reality environments is a convincing and powerful representation of the imaginary setting.

Also related/see:

How Virtual Reality Is Helping Train New Teachers — from edweek.org by Liana Loewus

TeachLive.org
TLE TeachLivE™ is a mixed-reality classroom with simulated students that provides teachers the opportunity to develop their pedagogical practice in a safe environment that doesn’t place real students at risk. This lab is currently the only one in the country using a mixed reality environment to prepare or retrain pre-service and in-service teachers. The use of TLE TeachLivE™ Lab has also been instrumental in developing transition skills for students with significant disabilities, providing immediate feedback through bug-in-ear technology to pre-service teachers, developing discrete trial skills in pre-service and in-service teachers, and preparing teachers in the use of STEM-related instructional strategies.

Virtual reality lessons can help students become better real-life teachers — from news.psu.edu by Jim Carlson

10 amazing virtual museum tours — from virtualiteach.com

Classroom Simulator at University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education

This start-up uses virtual reality to get your kids excited about learning chemistry — from Lora Kolodny and Erin Black

MEL Science raised $2.2 million in venture funding to bring virtual reality chemistry lessons to schools in the U.S.
Eighty-two percent of science teachers surveyed in the U.S. believe virtual reality content can help their students master their subjects.

This start-up uses virtual reality to get your kids excited about learning chemistry from CNBC.

From DSC:
It will be interesting to see all the “places” we will be able to go and interact within — all from the comfort of our living rooms! Next generation simulators should be something else for teaching/learning & training-related purposes!!!

The next gen learning platform will likely offer such virtual reality-enabled learning experiences, along with voice recognition/translation services and a slew of other technologies — such as AI, blockchain*, chatbots, data mining/analytics, web-based learner profiles, an online-based marketplace supported by the work of learning-based free agents, and others — running in the background. All of these elements will work to offer us personalized, up-to-date learning experiences — helping each of us stay relevant in the marketplace as well as simply enabling us to enjoy learning about new things.

But the potentially disruptive piece of all of this is that this next generation learning platform could create an Amazon.com of what we now refer to as “higher education.” It could just as easily serve as a platform for offering learning experiences for learners in K-12 as well as the corporate learning & development space.

I’m tracking these developments at:
http://danielschristian.com/thelivingclassroom/

* Also see:

Blockchain, Bitcoin and the Tokenization of Learning — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In 2014, Kings College in New York became the first university in the U.S. to accept Bitcoin for tuition payments, a move that seemed more of a PR stunt than the start of some new movement. Much has changed since then, including the value of Bitcoin itself, which skyrocketed to more than $19,000 earlier this month, catapulting cryptocurrencies into the mainstream.

A handful of other universities (and even preschools) now accept Bitcoin for tuition, but that’s hardly the extent of how blockchains and tokens are weaving their way into education: Educators and edtech entrepreneurs are now testing out everything from issuing degrees on the blockchain to paying people in cryptocurrency for their teaching.

Keep an eye on these blockchain startups throughout 2018 [Stark]; DC: Consultants, trainers, profs, & teachers may want to keep some of these co’s on their radars!

On 12/19/2017, in Blockchain, business, corporate / business world, disruption, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, future, innovation, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Keep an eye on these blockchain startups throughout 2018 — from forbes.com by Harold Stark

Excerpt:

In the nine years that bitcoin came to this world, it went from being a humble startup to a worldwide phenomenon that boasts as many as twelve thousand average transactions per hour. This translates to over 99,000 BTC or 1,492,424,505 USD per hour, with each transaction worth an average 6 BTC. When it comes to the world of cryptocurrencies, things progress at a dizzying pace. And speaking of cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin is hardly the only one. Here are a few blockchain startups, each with their own cryptocurrency, that you need to keep an eye on in 2018.

…

Experty

A voice and video-calling application not unlike Skype or Viber, Experty intends to take its cryptocurrency mainstream by allowing talented individuals, “experts”, to be paid safely and securely via its blockchain platform for the time spend on each call. Instead of becoming a knowledge marketplace with a searchable database of its own, Experty allows individual experts to embed and share their user profiles wherever they want to market themselves. Users seeking advice from these experts will be able to use the application to make a call and pay for the time spent via tokens. Curious? Head on to their website.

From DSC:
I wonder how this might play into how people will learn — and pay for their learning — in the future…?

Along these lines, see:

Odem

Obtaining good quality higher education is an expensive affair in the states, which is why, Odem wants to harness the power of blockchain to create an online education platform where professors and students can interact directly to exchange knowledge without the need for intermediaries. Every transaction is handled through smart contracts, making the platform a secure way for knowledge-givers and knowledge-takers to interact with each other. The token sale goes live in February 2018.

From DSC:
In this video, I look at how the pace of change has changed and I also provide some examples that back up this assertion. I end with a series of relevant questions, especially for those of us working within higher education.

What are we doing to get ready for the massive change that’s heading our way?

WE ARE NOT READY FOR THIS! Per Forrester Research: In US, a net loss of 7% of jobs to automation — in 2018!

On 11/13/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, adult learning, Amazon, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, bots, business, Canada, career development, change, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, disruption, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, Europe, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, heutagogy, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, legislatures / government / legal, lifelong learning, microlearning, Microsoft, more voice more choice more control, online learning, organizational change, pace of change, platforms, professional development, reinvent, research, robotics, second screen apps, society, staying relevant, strategy, streams of content, surviving, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Forrester predicts that AI-enabled automation will eliminate 9% of US jobs in 2018 — from forbes.com by Gil Press

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A new Forrester Research report, Predictions 2018: Automation Alters The Global Workforce, outlines 10 predictions about the impact of AI and automation on jobs, work processes and tasks, business success and failure, and software development, cybersecurity, and regulatory compliance.

We will see a surge in white-collar automation, half a million new digital workers (bots) in the US, and a shift from manual to automated IT and data management. “Companies that master automation will dominate their industries,” Forrester says. Here’s my summary of what Forrester predicts will be the impact of automation in 2018:

Automation will eliminate 9% of US jobs but will create 2% more.
In 2018, 9% of US jobs will be lost to automation, partly offset by a 2% growth in jobs supporting the “automation economy.” Specifically impacted will be back-office and administrative, sales, and call center employees. A wide range of technologies, from robotic process automation and AI to customer self-service and physical robots will impact hiring and staffing strategies as well as create a need for new skills.

Your next entry-level compliance staffer will be a robot.

From DSC:

**Are we ready for a net loss of 7% of jobs in our workforce due to automation — next year? Last I checked, it was November 2017, and 2018 will be here before we know it.**

Are we ready for this?!

AS OF TODAY, can we reinvent ourselves fast enough given our current educational systems, offerings, infrastructures, and methods of learning?

My answer: No, we can’t. But we need to be able to — and very soon!

There are all kinds of major issues and ramifications when people lose their jobs — especially this many people and jobs! The ripple effects will be enormous and very negative unless we introduce new ways for how people can learn new things — and quickly!

That’s why I’m big on trying to establish a next generation learning platform, such as the one that I’ve been tracking and proposing out at Learning from the Living [Class] Room. It’s meant to provide societies around the globe with a powerful, next generation learning platform — one that can help people reinvent themselves quickly, cost-effectively, conveniently, & consistently! It involves providing, relevant, up-to-date streams of content that people can subscribe to — and drop at any time. It involves working in conjunction with subject matter experts who work with teams of specialists, backed up by suites of powerful technologies. It involves learning with others, at any time, from any place, at any pace. It involves more choice, more control. It involves blockchain-based technologies to feed cloud-based learner profiles and more.

But likely, bringing such a vision to fruition will require a significant amount of collaboration. In my mind, some of the organizations that should be at the table here include:

Some of the largest players in the tech world, such as Amazon, Google, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and/or Facebook
Some of the vendors that already operate within the higher ed space — such as Salesforce.com, Ellucian, and/or Blackboard
Some of the most innovative institutions of higher education — including their faculty members, instructional technologists, instructional designers, members of administration, librarians, A/V specialists, and more
The U.S. Federal Government — for additional funding and the development of policies to make this vision a reality

10 really hard decisions coming our way — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Things are about to get interesting. You’ve likely heard that Google’s DeepMind recently beat the world’s best Go player. But in far more practical and pervasive ways, artificial intelligence (AI) is creeping into every aspect of life–every screen you view, every search, every purchase, and every customer service contact.

What’s happening? It’s the confluence of several technologies–Moore’s law made storage, computing, and access devices almost free.

This Venn diagram illustrates how deep learning is a subset of AI and how, when combined with big data, can inform enabling technologies in many sectors. For examples, to AI and big data add:

Robotics, and you have industry 4.0.
Cameras and sensor package, and you have self-driving cars.
Sensors and bioinformatic maps, and you have precision medicine.

While there is lots of good news here–diseases will be eradicated and clean energy will be produced–we have a problem: this stuff is moving faster than civic infrastructure can handle. Innovation is outpacing public policy on all fronts. The following are 10 examples of issues coming at us fast that we (in the US in particular) are not ready to deal with.

Unemployment.
Income inequality.
Privacy
Algorithmic bias.
Access.
Machine ethics.
Weaponization.
Humanity.
Genome editing.
Bad AI.

From DSC:
Readers of this blog will know that I’m big on pulse-checking the pace of technological change — because it has enormous ramifications for societies throughout the globe, as well as for individuals, workforces, corporations, jobs, education, training, higher education and more. Readers of this blog will again hear me say that the pace of change has changed. We’re now on an exponential pace/trajectory (vs. a slow, steady, linear path).

“Innovation is outpacing public policy on all fronts.”

How true this is. Our society doesn’t know how to deal with this new pace of change. How shall we tackle this thorny issue?

Reflections on “Six reasons why disruption is coming to learning departments” [feathercap.net]

On 09/25/2017, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, career development, CMS/LMS, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, disruption, emerging technologies, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, reinvent, social learning / networks, staying relevant, surviving, tools, training / L&D, TVs, vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

Six reasons why disruption is coming to learning departments — from feathercap.net, with thanks to Mr. Tim Seager for this resource

Excerpts:

Training materials and interactions will not just be pre-built courses but any structured or unstructured content available to the organization.
Curation of all learning, employee or any useful organizational content will become a whole lot easier.
The learning department won’t have to build it all themselves.
Learning bots and voice enabled learning.
Current workplace learning systems and LMSs will go through a big transition or they will lose relevancy.
Learning departments will go beyond onboarding, compliance training and leadership training and move to training everyone in the company on all job skills.

A successful example of this is Amazon.com. As a shopper on their site we have access to millions of book and product SKUs. Amazon uses a combination of all three techniques to position the right book or product based on our behavior, peer experiences as well as having a semantic understanding of the product page we’re viewing. There’s no reason we can’t have the same experience on workplace learning systems where all viable learning content/ company content could be organized and disseminated to each learner for the right time and circumstance.

From DSC:
Several items of what Feathercap is saying in their solid posting remind me of a vision of a next generation learning platform:

Contributing to — and tapping into — streams of content
Lifelong learning and reinventing oneself
Artificial intelligence, including Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the use of voice to drive systems/functionality
Learning agents/bots
24×7 access
Structured and unstructured learning
Socially-based means of learning
…and more

Reflections on “Report: Student loan debt reaches $1.4 trillion” [Bolkan]

On 08/29/2017, in 21st century, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, higher education, new business models, parents/guardians, student-related, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Report: Student loan debt reaches $1.4 trillion — from campustechnology.com by Joshua Bolkan

Excerpt:

Student loan debt in the United States has grown 149 percent over the last decade to reach $1.4 trillion, according to a new report from Experian. Over the same period, the average student loan debt per person went up 62 percent.

Held by 13.4 percent of Americans, student loan debt is the fastest growing debt segment and the largest non-household debt. But, counter-intuitively, fewer people make late payments on this type of debt than on other loans. In fact, the percentage of late payments on student debt has decreased 10.1 percent since 2009.

Other key findings of the report include…

From DSC:
The thing that makes this soooo difficult is that faculty members, staff, and members of administrations often don’t see this crushing development. It’s invisible to many of them! The growing, heavy gorillas on the backs of our graduates aren’t seen on campus. Students graduate and move on. But the realities and implications of those debts can be felt for decades!

Several major events in our graduates lives are likely to be increasingly postponed, such as:

Starting a family
Purchasing a new home
Investing in — or saving for — their retirement

The current models and methods of higher education must change! Prices MUST come down. If the traditional institutions of higher education don’t change, don’t be surprised when the alternatives keep picking up steam and eventually — and majorly — disrupt higher education.

This is a social justice issue for me.

Artificial intelligence will transform universities. Here’s how. — from weforum.org by Mark Dodgson & David Gann

Excerpt:

The most innovative AI breakthroughs, and the companies that promote them – such as DeepMind, Magic Pony, Aysadi, Wolfram Alpha and Improbable – have their origins in universities. Now AI will transform universities.

We believe AI is a new scientific infrastructure for research and learning that universities will need to embrace and lead, otherwise they will become increasingly irrelevant and eventually redundant.

Through their own brilliant discoveries, universities have sown the seeds of their own disruption. How they respond to this AI revolution will profoundly reshape science, innovation, education – and society itself.
…
As AI gets more powerful, it will not only combine knowledge and data as instructed, but will search for combinations autonomously. It can also assist collaboration between universities and external parties, such as between medical research and clinical practice in the health sector.

The implications of AI for university research extend beyond science and technology.
…
When it comes to AI in teaching and learning, many of the more routine academic tasks (and least rewarding for lecturers), such as grading assignments, can be automated. Chatbots, intelligent agents using natural language, are being developed by universities such as the Technical University of Berlin; these will answer questions from students to help plan their course of studies.

Virtual assistants can tutor and guide more personalized learning. As part of its Open Learning Initiative (OLI), Carnegie Mellon University has been working on AI-based cognitive tutors for a number of years. It found that its OLI statistics course, run with minimal instructor contact, resulted in comparable learning outcomes for students with fewer hours of study. In one course at the Georgia Institute of Technology, students could not tell the difference between feedback from a human being and a bot.

Also see:

Digital audio assistants in teaching and learning — from blog.blackboard.com by Szymon Machajewski

Excerpts:

I built an Amazon Alexa skill called Introduction to Computing Flashcards. In using the skill, or Amazon Alexa app, students are able to listen to Alexa and then answer questions. Alexa helps students prepare for an exam by speaking definitions and then waiting for their identification. In addition to quizzing the student, Alexa is also keeping track of the correct answers. If a student answers five questions correctly, Alexa shares a game code, which is worth class experience points in the course gamification My Game app.

…

Certainly, exam preparation apps are one way to use digital assistants in education. As development and publishing of Amazon Alexa skills becomes easier, faculty will be able to produce such skills just as easily as they now create PowerPoints. Given the basic code available through Amazon tutorials, it takes 20 minutes to create a new exam preparation app. Basic voice experience Amazon Alexa skills can take as much as five minutes to complete.

Universities can publish their campus news through the Alexa Flash Briefing. This type of a skill can publish news, success stories, and other events associated with the campus.

…

If you are a faculty member, how can you develop your first Amazon Alexa skill? You can use any of the tutorials already available. You can also participate in an Amazon Alexa classroom training provided by Alexa Dev Days. It is possible that schools or maker spaces near you offer in-person developer sessions. You can use meetup.com to track these opportunities.

Learning Ecosystems

DC: What can higher ed learn from this? “Big corporations — giant retailers & health insurance companies — are teaming up to become your doctor.”

Keep an eye on these blockchain startups throughout 2018 [Stark]; DC: Consultants, trainers, profs, & teachers may want to keep some of these co’s on their radars!

Categories

Tags

Are we ready for a net loss of 7% of jobs in our workforce due to automation — *next year*? Last I checked, it was November 2017, and 2018 will be here before we know it.

***Are we ready for this?! ***

AS OF TODAY, can we reinvent ourselves fast enough given our current educational systems, offerings, infrastructures, and methods of learning?

My answer: No, we can’t. But we need to be able to — and very soon!

Categories

Tags

**Are we ready for a net loss of 7% of jobs in our workforce due to automation — next year? Last I checked, it was November 2017, and 2018 will be here before we know it.**

Are we ready for this?!