Other relevant quotes:
Back to the Learning from the Living Class[Room] Home Page

Introducing Q-Chat, the world’s first AI tutor built with OpenAI’s ChatGPT — from quizlet.com by Lex Bayer

Excerpt:

Modeled on research demonstrating that the most effective form of learning is one-on-one tutoring1, Q-Chat offers students the experience of interacting with a personal AI tutor in an effective and conversational way. Whether they’re learning French vocabulary or Roman History, Q-Chat engages students with adaptive questions based on relevant study materials delivered through a fun chat experience. Pulling from Quizlet’s massive educational content library and using the question-based Socratic method to promote active learning, Q-Chat has the ability to test a student’s knowledge of educational content, ask in-depth questions to get at underlying concepts, test reading comprehension, help students learn a language and encourage students on healthy learning habits.

Introducing Q-Chat, the world’s first AI tutor built with OpenAI’s ChatGPT

 

Industry insight: Blockchaining to track current and potential employees’ skills — from chieflearningofficer.com by Tanya Boyd

Excerpts:

A learner who is aware of their unique strengths and development needs, as well as their preferred approach for gaining new skills, is often able to find the learning opportunities that they need more effectively and efficiently.

A global language for skills
While we might be tempted to focus within, looking for ways to address our own company’s talent challenges in isolation, this common concern invites a more global solution. We would all be better off if we could build a global language for skills. It’s at least one step toward achieving global processes for evaluating and developing them.
…
The top three challenges with skills and skill-based practices, as cited by McKinsey’s 2021 state of hiring survey, are: the ability to validate skills, sourcing job seekers with the right skills and scaling this approach.

Having a validated “chain” of skills for an employee helps not only in the selection process, but also as L&D departments seek to personalize learning. Blockchain creates a more valid approach to personalizing learning based on each employee’s competencies and skills gathered across their career, rather than just the skills they are demonstrating in their current organization and role.

Five Predictions for the Future of Learning in the Age of AI — from a16z.com by Anne Lee Skates

Excerpts:

Seeing as education is one of AI’s first consumer use cases, and programs like ChatGPT are how millions of kids, teachers, and administrators will be introduced to AI, it is critical that we pay attention to the applications of AI and its implications for our lives. Below, we explore five predictions for AI and the future of learning, knowledge, and education.

 

From DSC:
And more ChaptGPT, GPT-3, and AI!

The following links provide a sampling of the types of articles that we are seeing in early 2023. NOTE: They RELATE DIRECTLY to this vision, whereby AI will be a component of our future learning ecosystems. The pieces continue to come together for this vision!

3 Trends That May Unlock AI’s Potential for L&D in 2023 — from learningguild.com by Juan Naranjo

Excerpts:

1. Meta-learning
Meta-learning, in the context of this article, refers to AI tools that serve up experiences to learners based on their preferences, needs, and goals. It is the superstructure behind the content assets (e.g., programs, courses, articles, videos, etc.) that assembles everything in a coherent, and purposeful, body of knowledge to be accessed by the user.
...
2. AI-assisted design and development work
This is the trend most likely to have a dramatic evolution this year.
...
IDs will be doing more curation and less creation:

  • Many IDs will start pulling raw material from content generators (built using natural language processing platforms like Open AI’s GPT-3, Microsoft’s LUIS, IBM’s Watson, Google’s BERT, etc.) to obtain ideas and drafts that they can then clean up and add to the assets they are assembling. As technology advances, the output from these platforms will be more suitable to become final drafts, and the curation and clean-up tasks will be faster and easier.
  • Then, the designer can leverage a solution like DALL-E 2 (or a product developed based on it) to obtain visuals that can (or not) be modified with programs like Illustrator or Photoshop (see image below for Dall-E's “Cubist interpretation of AI and brain science.”)
  • If the asset requires a video, IDs will be able to quickly create one by leveraging existing footage, without having to go through each video in a library (using a program like Pictory) or from scratch by feeding text to a video generator (as it is the case with Lumen5).

...
3. Ultra-personalized learning

Unbundled: Designing Personalized Pathways for Every Learner — from gettingsmart.com by Nate McClennen “with contributions from the Getting Smart team and numerous friends and partners in the field”

Excerpts:

In this publication, we articulate the critical steps needed to unbundle the learning ecosystem, build core competencies, design learning experiences, curate new opportunities, and rebundle these experiences into coherent pathways.

 

Recommendations

Solutions already exist in the ecosystem and need to be combined and scaled. Funding models (like My Tech High), badging/credentialing at the competency level (like VLACS), coaching models (like Big Thought), and open ecosystems (like NH Learn Everywhere) provide an excellent foundation. Thus, building unbundled systems has already begun but needs systemic changes to become widely available and accepted.

  1. Build a robust competency-based system.
  2. Create a two-way marketplace for unbundled learning.
  3. Implement policy to support credit for out-of-system experiences.
  4. Invest in technology infrastructure for Learning and Employment Records.
  5. Design interoperable badging systems that connect to credentials.

From DSC:
ChaptGPT. ChatGPT. ChatGPT. From late 2022 and into 2023, ChatGPT has exploded onto the scene (along with other things related to Artificial Intelligence).

The following links provide a sampling of the types of articles that we are seeing. NOTE: They RELATE DIRECTLY to this vision, whereby AI will be a component of our future learning ecosystems. The pieces continue to come together for this vision!

Trend No. 7 — Blockchain (source)

Today, much of the national discussions around blockchain center on cryptocurrencies. However, this breakthrough technology creates new opportunities to reimagine credential management for the learner, institutions and organizations.

Two initiatives are underway at ASU Enterprise Technology to bring credentials into the 21st century using distributed technology, including blockchain. The first focuses on creating a network — both digital infrastructure and community — to build a validated and immutable repository of learning.

To do so, the Trusted Learner Network is working to reimagine the traditional digital credential model by placing learners and their data at the center. 

Utilizing distributed, web 3.0 semantic technologies, the Trusted Learner Network creates a durable, immutable ledger of learning that allows learners to easily view and manage their credentials. 

And in order for learners to capture their diverse records of learning as verified credentials, they need a digital wallet. Enter ASU Pocket.

The digital wallet and portfolio is being designed and developed by teams at Enterprise Technology. Learners will be able to capture evidence of their learning inside their wallet and connect their skills to future jobs.

Both ASU Pocket and the TLN were featured in the 2023 SmartReport Ecosystem Map, released by iDatafy; the map (included above) reflects a current landscape of digital wallet and learner educational records (LER).

Unschooler: Your AI Vocational Mentor -- from techacute.com by Gabriel Scharffenorth

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

AI to help realize your dream career
The Unschooler mentor helps you understand what you need to do to achieve your dream career. You can select one of six broad areas of expertise: science, people, tech, info, art, and business. The platform will then ask questions related to your future career.

It also has some other useful features. Unschooler keeps track of your skills by adding them to a skill map that’s unique to you. You can also ask it to expand on the information it has already given you. This is done by selecting the text and clicking one of four buttons: more, example, how to, explain, and a question mark icon that defines the selected text. There’s also a mobile app that analyzes text from pictures and explains tasks or concepts.

A New Generation Of Mastery-Based Learning Platforms Has Arrived — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin

Excerpt:

The $330 billion corporate training market is enormous, fragmented, and complex. For years it was dominated by Learning Management Systems (LMS) and content providers, each pioneered in the early 2000s. These systems served well, but the needs of employees and organizations moved ahead.

Today companies want not only a place to find and administer learning, they want a “Learning Platform” that creates mastery. And this market, that of “Learning Delivery Platforms,” is far more complex than you think. Let me put it straight: video-based chapter by chapter courses don’t teach you much. Companies want a solution that is expert-led, engaging, includes assignments and coaching, and connects employees to experts and peers.

Well there’s a new breed of platforms focused in this area, and I call them Capability Academy systems.

These are platforms explicitly to bring together expert teachers, AI-enabled collaboration, assignments, and coaching to drive mastery. They can train thousands of people in small cohorts, offering hands-on support for technical or PowerSkills topics. And the results are striking: these vendors achieve 90% completion rates and netPromoter scores above 60 (far above traditional content libraries).

DSC: An interesting idea and likely a component of our future learning ecosystems/platforms --> A “GPS for your career” -- FutureFit AI

An excerpt from their website:

Using AI to help workers navigate their careers
We use advanced labor market data and ethical machine learning algorithms to identify an individual’s ‘starting point’ in the labor market, recommend best fit career path ‘destinations’, and build a personalized roadmap of learning, resources, and work opportunities to successfully guide them from point A to point B in their career

Automation & Higher Ed -- from prawfsblawg.blogs.com by Orly Lobel

Excerpt:

I was delighted to see this thoughtful review of my new book The Equality Machine in Inside Higher Ed focused on some of the questions nearest and dearest to prawfs' hearts: the future of the professor and higher education as AI becomes more and more part of our learning and teaching. In The Equality Machine, I have a chapter that considers robots and automation in education but does not delve into universities and higher ed. Here's the review:

If the dream of creating high-quality/low-cost scaled online programs is ever to be realized, artificial intelligence—AI—will likely be the key enabling technology. The job of the AI in a scaled (high-enrollment) online course will be to optimally connect the instructor to the learner. The AI will determine when the human instructor should coach, encourage and engage with the learner—and when to hold back. The professor and the AI will collaborate to scale the relational model of learning that is the secret sauce of effective instructional practices.

Integrating faculty and AI to scale quality online learning is, to my knowledge, today more an idea than a reality. After reading The Equality Machine, however, I’m more hopeful than ever that this vision will come to fruition. While not focusing on higher education, the book provides enough examples of the transformative powers of digital technology to enhance human flourishing that some level of academic techno-optimism may be warranted.

Excerpt from QAA Report on Badging and Micro-Credentialing: How Education and Employment Can Benefit from Using Skills Profiles

Key report takeaways for educators and employers:

  • Skills profiles enable us to better link education to employment.
  • Accommodating badging and microcredential within formal education supports diversity both within learning and for learners.
  • Personalized learning supports a more adaptable, better-aligned workforce and enables learner-earners to perform better in education, employment, and life.

Instructure Research Reveals Higher Education’s New Directive as Students Demand Flexibility and Return on Investment — from prnewswire.com by Instructure

“We are seeing a growing group of non-traditional students that demand change in the way institutions offer courses,” said Melissa Loble, chief customer experience officer at Instructure. “Learners are looking for flexibility and an emphasis on career skills in preparation for entering the workforce. Institutions that offer holistic solutions, such as mental health resources and mentoring programs, will go a long way in ensuring student success.”

In its third year, the "State of Higher Education" research reflects a survey of over 7,500 current students, administrators and faculty from 23 countries representing a mixture of two-year, four-year, public and private higher education institutions. The report uncovered six key trends:

1. Students are demanding convenience and flexibility. Learners now expect a higher standard of online course design as part of any teaching and learning experience and want options between in-person, online, or hybrid courses.

  • Two-thirds of students (62%) want to take some courses fully online and nearly three-quarters of faculty (72%) want to teach some courses fully online.
  • As a result of the pandemic, respondents have a more positive attitude towards digital material (69%), open education resources (65%), combined in-person and online instruction (61%), online learning (59%) and online exam proctoring (51%).
  • NORAM students are likely to take online (59%) and hybrid classes (57%). NA faculty are also likely to teach online (57%) and hybrid classes (75%).

2. Career readiness is of paramount importance. Preparing students for a career path after graduation, whether they are traditional students, part-time students, or mid-career, is still the primary concern of students, faculty and administrators. However, administrators and students agree that this is the area where institutions struggle most.

  • Work/career readiness is the factor respondents say (32%) their institution struggles with most.
  • Most respondents (71%) believe work/career readiness (82%), skill competency (87%), and student advancement (83%) are the most important factors when measuring student success.
  • North America (27%) and EMEA (23%) are significantly less likely to believe their institution struggles with work/career readiness.

3. Competency-based and skills-based learning is in growing demand. 

Student Preference for Online Learning Up 220% Since Pre-Pandemic — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

According to a recent Educause survey, the number of students expressing preferences for courses that are mostly or completely online has increased 220% since the onset of the pandemic, from 9% in 2020 (before March 11) to 29% in 2022. And while many students still prefer learning mostly or completely face-to-face, that share has dropped precipitously from 65% in 2020 to 41% this year.

“These data point to student demand for online instructional elements, even for fully face-to-face courses,” Educause stated.

Also relevant/see:

  • A Surge in Young Undergrads, Fully Online — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
    Tens of thousands of 18- to 24-year-olds are now enrolling at Western Governors, Southern New Hampshire and other national online institutions. Does this represent a change in student behavior?

New Mexico College Publishes Report to Advance a National Learning and Employment Record for Skills-based Credentialing and Hiring — from prnewswire.com by Central New Mexico Community College

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — In the current job market, applicants are usually asked to provide a broad résumé that lists the basics of their qualifications including college degrees and past work experience. It’s an outdated and inefficient system and one that Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) is now helping to improve.

Thanks to a grant from Walmart, CNM produced a comprehensive report that researches several independent efforts underway in order to build a model for creating a national Learner and Employment Records (LER) infrastructure. An LER enables the exchange of skills-based digital records that facilitate more efficient pathways from learning to earning.

An LER is more efficient and secure for both employers and job-seekers because it uses blockchain technology to provide security, trust, and transparency.

From DSC:
I still am learning about how secure blockchain-based applications are — or aren’t. But this idea of a Learner and Employment Record — which I’ve referred to as a “cloud-based learner profile” — seems to hold a lot of potential as we move into the future. Especially when the focus is increasingly on which skills a position needs and which skills an individual has.

This Company Aims to Become the Amazon of Lifelong Learning — from edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The Singapore-based company Genius Group has turned some of its attention to the U.S. edtech market recently.

It’s making acquisitions, and even listed on the New York Stock Exchange in April.

In July, the company bought the for-profit University of Antelope Valley in California, saying it would incorporate it as a portal in the metaverse, part of the voguish effort to link the globe into “one big classroom.” Genius Group also partnered with NASA to help students find opportunities for start-ups to commercialize the agency’s technology patents.

If you listen to the company’s chief executive, it’s thriving because it runs a hybrid model for its entrepreneurship training programs that, the company argues, keeps it growing when a lot of edtech companies have had to struggle with the return to in-person learning. While some companies have seen layoffs, the Genius Group lifelong learning platform is growing among users at a rate of greater than 50 percent, they claim. Currently, it has 2.7 million students across 200 countries, according to its website.
...
But we decided that rather than looking to solve the problem for just some, if we could be one of the companies that was looking to solve it for all, that would be a great market opportunity for us. And at the same time, it would be something which would enable us to attract the best educators, and the best content creators from around the world as well.

[The intent was] to really tackle the full, lifelong learning journey that we're on, and to put in place a pathway, and more importantly, a platform that would enable anyone to be able to come and take their curriculum, bring it on board, and in the same way that YouTube allows anyone to be a creator.

MasterClass’s Co-Founder Takes on the Community-College Degree — from wsj.com by Lindsay Ellis
A new, online-only education model promises associate degrees via prerecorded lectures from experts at Yale, NASA and other prestigious institutions

Outlier dot org -- offering some serious team-based learning experiences and content

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

One of the founders of the celebrity-fueled, e-learning platform MasterClass is applying the same approach to the humble community-college degree—one based on virtual, highly produced lectures from experts at prestigious institutions around the country.
…
The two-year degrees—offered in applied computing, liberal studies or business administration—will be issued by Golden Gate University, a nonprofit institution in San Francisco. Golden Gate faculty and staff, not the lecturers, will be the ones to hold office hours, moderate virtual discussions and grade homework, said Outlier, which is announcing the program Wednesday and plans to start courses in the spring.

***

From DSC:
I signed up to receive some items from Outlier.org the other day. Here’s one of the emails that I recently received. It seems to me that this type of thing is going to be hard to compete against:

  • Professionally-done content
  • Created by teams of specialists, including game designers
  • Hand-picked professors/SME’s -- from all over the world
  • Evidence-based learning tools

This type of content creation and delivery could be hard to compete against

Golden Gate University and Outlier.org Reinvent Affordable College with Degrees+ — from prnewswire.com

Excerpt:

For less than one-third the price of the national average college tuition, students will earn an associate degree plus a job-ready certificate from Google, IBM, or Salesforce

NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Golden Gate University is launching Degrees+, powered by Outlier.org, with three associate degrees that reimagine the two-year degree for a rising generation of students that demand high quality education without the crushing cost. For annual tuition of $4,470 all-inclusive, students will earn a two-year degree that uniquely brings together the best of a college education with a career-relevant industry certificate.

Beginning today, students can apply to be part of the first class, which starts in Spring 2023.

***

Adobe Live is now on YouTube -- as of 9/6/22. Interesting. Per Adobe on that date (emphasis DSC):

And we’re live! Starting 9:30am pst on Adobe Live’s YouTube Channel

After years of partnering with the Creative Cloud YouTube channel to bring our community inspiration and advice, Adobe Live will be streaming to our own YouTube channel (+Behance!) starting 9/6! This gives the Adobe Live team an exciting opportunity to connect closely with YOU, our community, through tailored content, YouTube’s community tab and, of course, LIVE streams.

Adobe Live is now on YouTube -- as of 9-6-22

 

...in addition to Adobe:

EdTech Giant Unacademy Launches 50 New Channels On YouTube To Democratise Online Education — from edtechreview.in by Shalini Pathak

Excerpt:

Unacademy, an Indian EdTech unicorn and one of the leading online learning platform, has recently launched 50 new education channels on Google-owned YouTube. The channels significantly help in increasing accessibility for millions of learners across academic and non-academic categories.

Few of these 50 channels are built on the existing content categories as offered by Unacademy. They mark Unacademy’s foray into newer terrains such as ‘Tick Tock Tax’- to simplify the direct and indirect tax concepts, and Life After IIT – a platform to crack JEE and discuss success stories of top rankers.

 

What a New Strategy at 2U Means for the Future of Online Higher Education — from edsurge.com by Phil Hill

Excerpt:

The acceleration is that 2U is going all in on the education platform strategy that started with the company’s acquisition of edX last year. The idea at the time was to rely on a flywheel effect, where edX can upsell to its tens of millions of registered learners taking free or low-cost online courses known as MOOCs, thus driving down the marketing costs required for the OPM business, while offering a spectrum of options—from free MOOCs to stackable certificates, to bootcamps and short courses, all the way to full degrees. The flywheel aspect is that the more the strategy succeeds, the more revenue is made by institutional partners and by the company, leading to more free courses and registered learners. It’s a self-reinforcing strategy that is the same one followed by Coursera.

 

 

The Metaverse Will Reshape Our Lives. Let's Make Sure It's for the Better -- from time.com by Matthew Ball

Excerpts:

We cannot know in advance exactly how important a 3D internet might be to our global economy, just as we didn’t know the value of the internet. But we do have some view to the answer. As internet connectivity and computer processors have improved, we’ve shifted from colorless text to primitive webpages and web blogs, then online profiles (like a Facebook page) and video-based social networks, emojis, and filters. The volume of content we produce online has grown from a few message board posts, emails, or blog updates a week to a constant stream of multimedia content encapsulating our lives. The next evolution to this trend seems likely to be a persistent and “living” virtual world that is not a window into our life (such as Instagram) nor a place where we communicate it (such as Gmail) but one in which we also exist—and in 3D (hence the focus on immersive VR headsets and avatars).
...
Education is a category we have long expected to be transformed by the digital era, but has thus far resisted it. Since 1983, the cost of higher education has grown over 1,200%; medical care and services, which ranks second for cost increases in the U.S. over that period, is up half as much. The challenge is the real thing requires no fewer resources than it did decades ago, and what is lost when shifting to a remote computer screen. Eye contact. Peers. Hands-on experimentation. Equipment. Zoomschool, YouTube videos, and digital multiple choice are no substitute for the real thing.

In the metaverse, the Magic School Bus becomes possible. For decades, students learned about gravity by watching their teacher drop a feather and a hammer, and then seeing a tape of Apollo 15 commander David Scott doing the same on the moon. (Spoiler: They fall at the same speed.) Such demonstrations need not go away, but they can be supplemented by the creation of elaborate virtual Rube Goldberg machines, which students can then test under Earth-like gravity, on Mars, and even under sulfuric rainfalls of the Venusian upper atmospheres. Instead of dissecting a frog, we can travel its circulatory systems not unlike the way we drive the Mushroom Kingdom in Mario Kart. And all of this is available irrespective of geographic location or resources of the local school board.

DSC takeaway -- keep what's happening with the Metaverse on your radar. Among the many industries and areas it will impact, education, higher education, vocational training, as well as training and development within the corporate world will likely be among them.


The Post-Covid New Normal is Looking Bipolar — from philonedtech.com by Phil Hill

I think it is important to deal with evidence on enrollment trends on their own terms and not just in the context of Covid recovery, and not just based on pre-Covid trends. The data we’re seeing recently have some big implications for the health of institutions, for online and hybrid education, and for alternative educational programs (and even alternative scheduling of programs).

Excerpt from The Metaverse in 2040 -- from pewresearch.org by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie

Daniel D. Bryant, Wales-based VR educator, co-founder of Educators in VR and a leader in the Virtual World Society, predicted, “By 2040 the internet that you now access on a screen will be a place you can enter, visit and explore. Currently we are looking in through windows (literally), but we are soon going to be starting to climb through the windows and into the internet. The word website implies a location. Currently this is mostly in 2D. What if these sites are in 3D and you can get in and interact directly, rather than with a keyboard and a mouse? Think how creative people already get with creating and monetizing content on the 2D internet. Now add a third dimension to this and you have just created what Charlie Fink has referred to as the ‘largest wealth-and-value-creation experience humankind has ever witnessed.’ I can’t imagine the momentum heading anywhere else. When young people can truly get their heads and hands into the ‘metaverse,’ just stand back and watch in wonder. And that is even before AI [artificial intelligence] gets into the mix. AI will soon be able to generate virtual worlds and useful and very convincing AI bots to populate it. It’s a wild ride already. Better get strapped in.”

Below is an excerpted graphic from Gerd Leonhard's presentation The Future of Education (for EduCanada)

...which reminds me of Thomas Frey's reflections out at "A top futurist predicts the largest internet company of 2030 will be an online school."

Boost Usability of Libraries & Knowledge Hubs with Automation — from learningsolutionsmag.com by Markus Bernhardt

Excerpts:

Our article series looks at the top three areas where we see automation and AI revolutionizing the way in which successful L&D teams work: Asset libraries and knowledge hubs; hyper-personalized, truly adaptive learning; and capability mapping. This article examines the impact of AI and automation on maintaining asset libraries and knowledge hubs.
…
Thus, the contextualization engine becomes a powerful content management tool. It is also easy to use and requires no particular subject matter knowledge of the user; the librarian who has read everything does that for the user. And this works, of course, with articles, slide decks, audio, video, and even VR/AR content, and basically any file type.

Assets can be mapped to competencies, skills, learning objectives, departments, the requirements of a specific course or workshop, or to the horizontals and verticals of an organization’s internal restructuring model. And this takes place within seconds and minutes, and at scale.

 

With the ability to map content as well as practice exercises, questions, and assessments automatically into each concept’s complexity tree, it is now possible to use automation and AI to deliver adaptive and truly personalized learning content and learning paths. 

Entrepreneur Education Platform GeniusU Raises $1.5M Seed Funding at $250M Valuation -- from edtechreview.in ed by Stephen Soulunii

Excerpt:

Genius Group has recently announced that its EdTech arm, GeniusU Ltd, has raised $1.5 million in a seed round to support the development of its Genius Metaversity virtual learning plans.
...
With the fresh funding, GeniusU plans to extend its courses and programs to interactive learning environments in the metaverse, with students and faculty connecting and learning in global classrooms and virtual 3D environments. It also plans to integrate each student’s AI-based virtual assistant ‘Genie’ into the metaverse as 3D virtual assistants that accompany each student on their personalized journey and integrate its GEMs (Genius Education Merits) student credits into the metaverse. GEMs are earned by students as they learn and can be spent on products and services within GeniusU and counting towards their certifications.

The amazing opportunities of AI in the future of the educational metaverse -- from forbes.com by Rem Darbinyan

Excerpt:

Multilingual Learning Opportunities
Language differences may be a real challenge for students from different cultures as they may not be able to understand and keep up with the materials and assignments. Artificial intelligence, VR and AR technologies can enhance multilingual accessibility for learners no matter where they are in the world. Speech-to-text, text-to-speech and machine translation technologies enrich the learning process and create more immersive learning environments.

The true benefit of using AI in a metaverse learning space is the ability to respond to each student’s individual needs. AI can process multiple languages simultaneously and provide real-time translations, enabling learners to engage with the materials in the language of their choice. With the ability to instantly transcribe speech across multiple languages, artificial intelligence removes any language barriers for students, enabling them to be potentially involved, learn and communicate in any language.

Why one university is moving toward a subscription model — a podcast from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young

Excerpt:

“By the end of this decade or before, students should pay for higher ed the way they pay for Netflix or their cell phone bill,” [Maryville University President Mark] Lombardi says.

Momentum builds behind a way to lower the cost of college: A degree in three years — from hechingerreport.org by Jon Marcus
Skepticism about the cost and duration of a higher education drives a need for speed

Excerpt:

A rare brand-new nonprofit university, NewU has a comparatively low $16,500-a-year price that’s locked in for a student’s entire education and majors with interchangeable requirements so students don’t fall behind if they switch.

But the feature that appears to be really winning over applicants is that NewU will offer bachelor’s degrees in three years instead of the customary four.

“We didn’t think the three-year bachelor’s degree was going to be the biggest draw,” said Stratsi Kulinski, president of the startup college. “But it has been, hands-down. Consumers are definitely ready for something different.”

Now we just need a “Likewise TV” for learning-related resources! [Christian]

Likewise TV Brings Curation to Streaming — from lifewire.com by
And it’s available on iOS, Android, and some smart TVs

Some noteworthy and interesting features include:

  • All your streaming services in one place. One search. One watchlist. Socially powered recommendations.
  • Entertainment startup Likewise has launched a new recommendations hub that pulls from all the different streaming platforms to give you personalized picks.
  • Likewise TV is a streaming hub powered by machine learning, people from the Likewise community, and other streaming services. The service aims to do away with mindlessly scrolling through a menu, looking for something to watch, or jumping from one app to another by providing a single location for recommendations.
  • Note that Likewise TV is purely an aggregator.

Likewise TV -- All your streaming services in one place. One search. One watchlist. Socially powered recommendations.

Some big numbers from bootcamps!

Tech Bootcamps re-skilled and up-skilled over 100,000 professionals globally in 2021, up from less than 20,000 in 2015. We expect this number to reach over 380,000 by 2025 representing over $3B of expenditure with significant upside as tech up-skilling models and modes overlap and converge. Governments, employers, universities and colleges everywhere are embracing rapid, high ROI training to build capacity in software, marketing, cyber and tech sales to drive their economies and growth.

-- from Accelerated Digital Skills and the ‘Bootcamp Boom’ out at holoniq.com

Excerpted chart from These 3 charts show the global growth in online learning — from weforum.org by Johnny Wood

 

But in the face of an entrenched and growing skills gap, young people are increasingly questioning the status quo and looking for shorter, less expensive, more direct-to-career options.

Shorter Training, Better Skills: Three Predictions For The Future Of
Career And Technical Education -- from forbes.com

 

In a squiggly career, everyone’s a learner and everyone’s a teacher.

Make Learning a Part of Your Daily Routine -- from hbr.org
by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis

“We know, broadly, that learning will become more available, it’ll be more online, and there’ll be a lot more people learning for a lot more of their lives,” said Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda.

School in the metaverse: How tech and the pandemic are changing
online education -- from protocol.com by David Pierce

Deprioritizing our development is a risky career strategy because it reduces our resilience and ability to respond to the changes happening around us.
...
In a squiggly career, everyone’s a learner and everyone’s a teacher.

Make Learning a Part of Your Daily Routine -- from hbr.org
by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis

With the addition of Codecademy’s innovative capabilities, we will create an even more immersive online learning experience. When we combine Skillsoft’s enterprise customer base of more than 12,000 corporate customers and over 46 million learners with Codecademy’s 40 million learners, sophisticated digital marketing capability and influential brand, we expect to unlock significant revenue synergies.”
...
Skillsoft has already assembled an expansive set of learning options, including virtual instructor-led training, coaching, micro videos, audio, books, bootcamps, live events, assessments and badges.

Skillsoft to acquire CodeAcademy, a leading platform for
learning high-demand technical skills, creating a worldwide
community of more than 85 million learners -- from skillsoft.com

 

Among money-courses, the best synthesis to date is found at Reforge. With a subscription model like MasterClass, Reforge organizes courses around business problems like retention and engagement, experimentation and testing, and monetization and pricing. Who builds and leads them? Executives from companies like Tinder, SurveyMonkey, HubSpot and Instacart. Reforge has attracted these experts through MasterClass-like persistence and networking (and presumably an attractive economic model). And as with MasterClass, it’s now at the point where tech leaders are seeking out Reforge.

Beyond branded experts and production values, Reforge has added a critical third element that we haven’t seen in less expensive love-courses: synchronous learning. Reforge casts itself as a membership network where “each has something to offer.” So in addition to 2-3 hours of self-paced material each week, members attend live sessions where instructors apply concepts through work-based scenarios.

MasterClass’s first masterstroke was recognizing that when it comes to conveying expertise online, brand matters a lot. 

From Ryan Craig's 11/14/21 Gap Letter 

Millions of jobs lost in the pandemic aren't coming back, and many of those vanished positions were disproportionately held by people of color. As automation and other shifts accelerate, many of these displaced workers will need additional education and training to find new roles, as well as a rapid return on their educational investment. This means more of the short-term credentials that are getting so much attention these days — but it also means faster pathways to an associate or bachelor's degree, both of which have greater proven value in the labor market.

From Competency-based learning can power an equitable recovery -- highereddive.com on 10/21/21

Foster online discussions: Terry Ord, an associate professor in the School of Biological, Earth, and Environmental Sciences at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, moved his class online during the pandemic, where it has stayed. Many of his students are from other countries, so he has had to figure out how to create a lively, asynchronous online community.

Ord created a forum centered on the lecture content. He broke his class of about 70 students into study groups of eight to 10 students, which remained fixed throughout the course. Then he released recorded lectures in groups of three to four at a time. The students had two to three weeks to watch them, post questions, and respond to other students’ questions.

“It was a huge hit,” he writes. “Most students went well beyond the requirements of the Q&A forum, spending time discussing ideas with each other and posting expanded details on content that they’d independently researched online. It was wonderful.”

The quality of discussion is actually better, he says, than in his face-to-face course, and the Q&A is mentioned as one of students’ favorite components, with many saying it pushed them to think for themselves.

From Teaching: Your Pandemic Teaching Tips by Beth McMurtire -- 10/14/21

Here are a couple of recent examples of learning-related platforms:

LearnWorlds.com

Thinkific.com

 

  • UND says it wants to “provide competency-based, online education that provides ‘micro-pathways’ or smaller targeted units of learning to individuals as a way to enhance their skill set and knowledge for advancing in the labor market or reskilling for a new employment opportunity.” -- from It’s like Netflix for education: UND considers subscription tuition model 

  • Curiosity Stream Is the Streaming Service Tailored for People Who Love To Learn — from
    And for less than $20 a year, Curiosity Stream offers something for everyone.

  • A pre-pandemic study shows that more than 4 in 10 college degree holders are underemployed and are likely to remain that way for decades to come. This coupled with the astronomical cost of college and mounting student loan debt raises a need for alternative pathways into America’s workforce. The current college system is not putting all Americans to work.
    ...
    Jobtech has the potential to be more effective for job seekers by aligning their aspirations more directly with the needs of employers. Unlike higher education institutions, a jobtech company’s profit and survival depend on people getting placed in good jobs. (Why Tech Companies View the Job Search As Big Business | EdSurge - 5/10/21)

  • "Perhaps most significant, this trend represents employers stepping in to fill the skills gap and build learning options to create the digital workforce of the future. It’s clear that these employer-issued credentials are becoming a major part of the broader, significant trend toward skills-based hiring—and alternative, non-degree pathways into careers and professional advancement. Why now? Because online education is now mainstream, and online platforms make it easier for employers to offer education on their own if they wish, separate from the traditional higher education enterprise. And, many companies can’t wait for higher education institutions to develop the shorter term credential programs employers need." (More Employers Are Awarding Credentials. Is A Parallel Higher Education System Emerging? | EdSurge- 3/25/21)

In 2021, it's all about rapid skill building at scale. This image links to the 20-21 Workplace Learning Report

  • In fact, the number one thing teens would change about college is the price tag. Their second top concern is making sure the path they take directly connects them to a future career. (source)

  • Given the expected concentration of job growth in high-wage occupations and declines in low-wage occupations, the scale and nature of workforce transitions required in the years ahead will be challenging, according to our research. Across the eight focus countries, more than 100 million workers, or 1 in 16, will need to find a different occupation by 2030 in our post-COVID-19 scenario, as shown in Exhibit 4. This is 12 percent more than we estimated before the pandemic, and up to 25 percent more in advanced economies (Exhibit 4). (MckInsey & Co. 2/18/21)

  • We are confronted less often with the traditional 18-year-old learner and increasingly with the 60-year learner -- students who return repeatedly through their career seeking upskilling and wholly new competencies. These students need just-in-time learning that addresses the changing needs of employers and entrepreneurs in an AI-rich environment. (source)

  • At the moment, “the higher-education value proposition is all around the most inexpensive education and certification that will get me a job,” says Susan Grajek, vice president for communities and research at Educause, a nonprofit organization that advocates for technology in higher education. (source)

  • Per Laurie Burruss on LinkedIn: The internet has empowered adult learners by providing new online tools to ramp up education and training. “The need for workers to keep pace with fast-moving economic, cultural and technological changes, combined with longer careers, will add up to great swaths of adults who need to learn more than generations past — and faster than ever,” said Luke Yoquinto, a research associate at the M.I.T. AgeLab and co-author of “Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn

  • Then some data from MOOC Enrollment Explodes in 2020:
    According to a new report by Class Central, a company that tracks massive open online courses, of all learners who have registered for MOOCs throughout their history, a third did so last year. Coursera, the largest MOOC operator, added nearly four times the number of new registered users, exploding from 8 million in 2019 to 31 million in 2020 — a rise of 387 percent. Dhawal Shah, founder of Class Central, estimated that Coursera's total number of users is currently 76 million. The second largest MOOC organization, edX, doubled in size, expanding from 5 million new registered users in 2019 to 10 million in 2020. Shah put the total user base at 35 million. UK-based Future Learn nearly met Coursera's pace of growth, adding 5 million new registered users in 2020, compared to 1.3 million in 2019, a boost of 384 percent. The total user base was estimated to be about 15 million.

 

  • Digital credentials leader bolsters workforce analytics and skills visibility for the enterprise -- resource from Ryan Craig's Gap Letter Vol III, #3 (Feb 5, 2021)
    Credly, the leader in digital credentials, announces Credly 360, a new offering that provides the most reliable workforce analytics and skills visibility available for enterprises. Powered by the world’s largest network of verified skills, Credly 360 allows organizations to better understand, engage and retain talent.

  • "Launching a new non-degree credential today is like building a bridge halfway (a pier); the only way to complete it is to build from the other side – from the employer side. And that’s exactly what digital credential apps will do. And once the enterprise has made better hiring decisions, we’ll see apps mapping career pathways, highlighting future managers and leaders and assembling more complete, compatible and diverse teams." Ryan Craig -- Gap Letter Vol III, #3 (Feb 5, 2021)

  • ...CuriosityStream is a streaming service for people who love to learn. It hosts numerous award-winning, thought-provoking educational content covering history, science, technology, and sports.

  • ...the social and economic imperatives for colleges to serve older students — offering them convenient, affordable academic programs — have never been more compelling.
    (Goldie Blumenstyk, from the 11/4/20 edition of The Edge newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education)

  • What will this new world look like? It’s likely, for one thing, to be more consolidated, with smaller numbers of colleges creating the content that can now be delivered, at scale, online. It’s likely that to be increasingly un-bundled, with the once-standard package (four years, on campus, with education plus everything else) broken into a myriad of more discrete and specific offerings. It’s likely to be distributed over a large segment of a learner’s life.
    (Debora Spar , Sr. Associate Dean of Harvard Business School Online, 9/10/20)

  • YouTube retains the #1 position that it is has held *for the 5th year running.* (emphasis DSC)
    Jane Hart, 9/1/20, Top 200 Tools for Learning

  • AI changes everything. It changes how we work, shop, travel, entertain ourselves, socialize, deal with finance and healthcare. When online, AI mediates almost everything – Google, Google Scholar, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Netflix. It would be bizarre to imagine that AI will have no role to play in learning – it already has. Both informally and formally, AI is now embedded in many of the tools real learners use for online learning...
    -- So what is the book about? (Donald Clark, September 2020); which discusses his book entitled, Artificial Intelligence for Learning: How to use AI to Support Employee Development

  • Information technology transforms industries by making scarce resources plentiful, forcing customers to rethink the value of established products.
    -- Are universities going the way of CDs and cable TV? (June 2020)

  • “Many—perhaps millions—will need quick, job-focused upskilling and reskilling." -- Opportunity America (June 2020)

  • The problem lies in an imperfect, incomplete market that does not provide comprehensive information over an individual’s lifetime to encourage a broader awareness of careers. Nor do we help individuals understand that career development is a process and not a destination, while showing them how to develop their lifelong approach to making a living. -- A New Model for Career Exploration in a VUCA World (July 2020)

  • "...it is abundantly apparent that universities must leverage technology to increase educational quality and access. The rapid shift to delivering an education that complies with social distancing guidelines speaks volumes about the adaptability of higher education institutions, but this transition has also posed unique difficultiesfor colleges and universities that had been slow to adopt digital education. The last decade has shown that online education, implemented effectively, can meet or even surpass the quality of in-person instruction. Digital instruction, broadly defined, leverages online capabilities and integrates adaptive learning methodologies, predictive analytics, and innovations in instructional design to enable increased student engagement, personalized learning experiences, and improved learning outcomes. The ability of these technologies to transcend geographic barriers and to shrink the marginal cost of educating additional students makes them essential for delivering education at scale." -- Dr. Micheal Crow, Pres. ASU, 6/25/20

  • "The Coronavirus has brought forth the Dawn of the Age of Digital Learning — a time for builders to create the platforms, tools, and technology to propel society forward." -- source, dated 5/6/20

  • "As previously noted, in the next 10 years, the number of higher ed students will double from 207M to over 414M. In Before Coronavirus (B.C.), we had expected a lot of this growth to happen online. In After Disease (A.D.), all of this growth will occur online, and many of the students formerly on campuses will also be taking courses online. -- source, dated 5/6/20


  • "Millions of working adults must turn to digital degrees to improve their employability in a post-industrial economy that demands higher-level skills than on the assembly line." -- source, dated 3/5/20

  • "Technology-enhanced learning can help us keep up with demand and offer pathways for the existing workforce to gain new skills. AI-based learning tools developed in the past decade have incredible potential to personalise education, enhance college readiness and access, and improve educational outcomes." -- source, dated 1/21/20

  • "Voice is the most accessible form you can think of when you think about any interface. In education, it’s already started to take off."  -- source, dated 3/2/20

Back to Living Class[Room] home

 

© 2023 | Daniel Christian
However, this vision/idea goes back much further than the date listed on the
graphic below -- and the pieces continue to come together!

Learning from The Living [Class] Room