Articles such as Will ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay? and ChatGPT Will End High-School English point to essays written out of class no longer being a viable teaching tool or assessment of capabilities. ChatGPT is now blocked and banned in New York City public schools.

But what if ChatGPT and the next generation of AI tools can help students to learn? 

A lovely conversation with rural Oregon school teacher Cherie Shields in the New York Times podcast A Teacher Who Loves ChatGPT reveals some wonderful strategies and approaches that emerge from a constructive mindset to applying these technologies to education.

Classroom strategies for using ChatGPT

In preparing her students for an essay, she uses a variety of strategies in the classroom such as group discussions, think-pair-share, and writing short responses by hand. These activities help to generate ideas and organize thoughts for the essay. She says that ChatGPT can be a useful tool in this process by providing a clear outline for the essay and helping students to structure their arguments. Rather than introducing new information, ChatGPT can help create a scaffold to organize what has already been discussed in class and help students to get feedback on their work.

When working on an essay about Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, her students used a variety of techniques to analyze the speech, including identifying the use of repetition, metaphor, simile, and descriptive language. The students then had to pick another piece by a different person, and compare and contrast the persuasive elements of the two speeches. This required them to use their evaluative skills to determine which speech used language techniques more effectively.

She gave students a limited amount of time to generate a list of techniques used in the speech. This helped them to focus on finding specific examples. She also finds that ChatGPT is helpful in generating lists, outlines, and prompts for students as they write their essays, which is useful for students who are struggling to come up with ideas.

Learn to use the tools we have

There is a strong analogy with calculators, which on their introduction were thought to impede students’ ability at mental arithmetic and were banned.

Of course they are now often used or encouraged unless arithmetic skills are specifically being taught. Indeed, to prepare students for the “real world”of work they need to know how to use calculators effectively.

The continued rise of AI is inevitable. Schools need to teach students to use these tools well, complementing their skills, and helping define and develop the uniquely human capabilities that will serve them well through life.

Specific strategies for education

Amid the widespread horror at students “cheating” using ChatGPT, some more enlightened educators have been proposing a wealth of uses that can assist learning and development.

A lovely list of 20 specific suggestions at Ditch That Textbook provides all sorts of ideas for challenging and prompting rigorous thinking by students.

For example, as mentioned by Ms Shields, the classic think-pair-share approach can readily be enhanced with AI.

Augmenting the think-pair-share with ChatGPT could be one of the biggest tech-enabled leaps in pedagogy:
* Think
* Pair
* ChatGPT
* Pair
* Share

— Sarah Dillard (@dillardsarah) December 5, 2022

I believe the ability for ChatGPT to vary its responses to be appropriate to age and context is an incredible opportunity for personalized learning. If an explanation isn’t clear to the student, they can ask for it to be made simpler or different. 

An obvious application is to translate simple maths questions into ones that are more engaging to the student, for example using football-based questions for a sports fan.

Finding the right place for AI in education

Let’s remember that education should be focused on helping students learn as much as possible and gain a love of learning. Assessment is far less important.

There will be certainly situations where students should work things out for themselves unassisted by technology. 

Yet there are innumerable ways we can use AI to enhance learning. We are at the very beginning of the journey. Ms Shields has just begun using ChatGPT in the classroom and is already discovering wonderful applications. 

Let’s explore how we can help students learn more and be prepared for the work and world of future. There are unlimited opportunities.

“I come from a generation where we have Google PhDs, we can virtually figure out everything by just Googling around and doing some reading online”

Sci-Fi author William Gibson became a deep expert in antique watches by dint of five years research for “the sheer pointless pleasure of learning this vast, useless body of knowledge.” He notes that:

“Now you can be a kid in a town in the backwoods of Brazil, and you can wake up one morning and say, “I want to know everything about stainless steel sports watches from the 1950s,” and if you really applied yourself, to the internet, at the end of the year you would have the equivalent of a master’s degree in this tiny pointless field. I’ve totally met lots of people who have the equivalent of that degree.”

If you take this path you don’t get a piece of paper or certificate to put on your resume. But you may well have the same degree of knowledge, potentially even more up-to-date, than many with a formal advanced degree in your field of study, and likely faster.

It is fair to acknowledge that there are definitely trade-offs for the autodidactic path compared with the academic route, over and above the socially-recognized qualification, but these may not matter much to many people.

A fundamental issue now is the degree to which employers care about the piece of paper as against the knowledge and capability. That is rapidly shifting as companies realize they will often miss out on exceptionally talented people if they insist on formal qualifications.

Entrepreneurs of course only care whether they have the knowledge to do what they’re undertaking.

It is a shifting landscape. Traditional advanced degrees have their place and will not disappear.

But “Google PhDs” will in some cases be as good, if they result in an equivalent level of expertise.

Image: John Walker

The last time I spoke in-person at a conference was in late February of this year, with in following weeks all my other engagements cancelled in rapid succession. It quickly became apparent that there would be no more physical events for the foreseeable future.

I do have other ventures but the majority of my revenue for the last couple of years has been as a professional speaker, so, as many others, I saw my current livelihood simply evaporating.

The need for personal reinvention

In March I suggested that the fundamental elements to strategy in a COVID world are survival and reinvention.

I evidently needed to follow my own prescriptions and reinvent myself.

Physical events supplanted by virtual events

It was clear that events would not entirely disappear, but that events activities and budgets would be greatly reduced, and until the pandemic was contained all events would have to be virtual.

Virtual speaking and events in fact play to my strengths. On the show I have shared the story of my decades of experience in virtual engagement, including organizing and moderating the world’s first cross-continental panels linked by video back in 2006 and commencing virtual speaking and strategy facilitation around the same time.

However a key issue is being found and visible when people are searching for keynote speakers for their virtual events, while overall demand is greatly reduced.

Everything virtual

It was certainly not just events that were going virtual.

Managing almost entirely remote workforces has become an immediate for every organization.

Yet this is hardly a new issue. I wrote extensively about connected and remote work in my 2002 book Living Networks and my 2009 book Implementing Enterprise 2.0, and in 2010 about the cloud workplace and organizations to networks as a key theme for the 2010s.

Not just organizations, but music is shifting to immersive live platforms, dating is becoming virtual, and government and democracy must become increasingly virtual.

Launching a live-streaming show

While I have extensive knowledge and experience of things virtual, I clearly still had a lot to learn in taking my work entirely into a virtual space.

It appeared inevitable that virtual work and play was going to play a central role not only in our immediate future, but also far beyond, accelerating the virtualization of business and society. Futurist Cathy Hackl noted that we compressed 2 years of advances into 2 months.

In response I came up with the idea of both demonstrating my capabilities and learning more about all things virtual by doing a live-streaming show on the theme of ‘virtual excellence’, the capabilities we would all need to learn to achieve our objectives.

Learning by doing

We have already had some amazing guests on the show, including Howard Rheingold, arguably the granddaddy of virtual communities, author and leading management thinker John Hagel, virtual facilitator extraordinaire Nancy White and many others.

One of the things that struck me as I spoke to our guests is that they all emphasized the concept learning by doing as at the heart of almost everything.

In particular John Hagel spoke powerfully and succinctly about his core theme of scalable learning. Every single one of the other guests essentially said that we can only learn by doing.

And that is exactly what I am doing in the show.

I am learning from all of my conversations with these amazing people, I am learning by producing the show, I am learning by working to build the show (please help us grow it by subscribing to the show on YouTube 😃!).

Sharing what we learn

And of course doing the show creates a virtuous circle: we learn and then we share what we learn.

That is perhaps the most powerful learning loop there is: learning to share and through sharing.

Highly challenging and highly rewarding

Doing the show is still a major challenge, as I have a number of other compelling projects, and any new YouTube channel requires substantial effort to get any meaningful traction at all.

I have already given up on the live-streamed production of the conversations: I had to be up at 7am my time to hit the timezones we want to cover. Pre-records are plenty good for now, we can engage on social while the shows are streamed on their weekly schedule.

The first few shows in particular are pretty embarrassing in their production quality. But as LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman says, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.” By that measure we definitely didn’t launch too late, and we learned faster for it.

Come along for the journey!

The intention is to grow the show, even though this early it hasn’t got much traction.

I believe in the concept and the potential of The Virtual Excellence Show, but far more importantly, I believe in how much I learn by doing the show. That alone makes it worthwhile.

I hope you will be an early YouTube subcriber and come along for the journey!

For a good while to come the show will be a major focus of my work – between substantial other projects I have on including writing a book and launching a new company – and I expect it to be more than amply interesting and fun.

The list covers:

• 11 doctoral degree programs
• 20 masters degree programs
• 4 post-graduate diplomas
• 3 undergraduate degree programs
• 11 short courses

In addition to the 49 total tertiary courses majoring in futures and foresight, we also found 7 programs that are not expressly futures or foresight but are related in some manner. In the academic world, the focus is obviously on teaching foresight to long-term students. Post-graduate diplomas are less common than masters degrees, but even they outnumber the undergraduate courses.

Europe

European universities are the most engaged in the space, with 24 programs across 8 countries plus 4 of the related programs that were found. France boasts 4 programs, while between Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, futures and foresight are also well represented in Scandinavia. The Corvinus University of Budapest in Hungary is the only Eastern Bloc university, while universities in the UK, Germany, and Portugal round out the rest of Europe. Malta is also represented in the related programs.

Americas

North America has 8 courses, including two of the best-known programs globally, at University of Texas – Houston and University of Hawaii at Manoa, and 2 of the undergraduate programs, while Latin America – including courses in Costa Rica and Mexico – boasts a total of 9 programs. Across South America Colombia is a clear leader in tertiary futures and foresight programs with 3 masters degrees and a graduate diploma at 4 different universities. Argentina and Peru also have masters degrees, giving the continent 6 futures and foresight (la prospectiva) programs.

Australia, Asia and Africa

With the recent closure of Swinburne University’s Master in Strategic Foresight, Australia’s universities have only 2 programs, one of which is half design futures and half strategic foresight. Another related course at the Institute for Sustainable Futures in Australia teaches sustainability along with aspects of foresight.

Only 4 current programs were found in all of Asia from Iran to India and Taiwan. However, it shows that progress is being in Asia for futures and foresight, at least academically.

The University of Stellenbosch is the only African university represented, but their reach is extensive. Established in the 1970s the program has alumni all over Africa and much of the world.

Please help improve the list

Greater insight on the programs is provided in the complete list. Please browse through, and let us know if we may have missed a program.

Several discontinued programs were found. Also, 4 other programs were found that we were unable to verify information for. We would appreciate any insight you can give about the futures and foresight programs at University of Tehran, Leonardo Da Vinci Online University, Fo Guang University, and University of Lisbon. Are they still active?

Image: John Walker

Below is an excerpt from the report giving a snapshot of some of the shifts needed in education:

Education of the Future

Looking further into the future of education, we may see a radical restructuring of how we learn, not just in schools and universities, but through our entire life. Classrooms will continue to exist, enhanced through the use of a wide range of new tools, technologies and methodologies. Education will also become an ongoing part of everyone’s lives, and embedded into our employment, helping us improve our skills and capabilities while we work.

Characteristics

Pervasive accessibility
Learning will be always available to everyone at all times, at work, home and everywhere spend time

Personalised journeys
Everyone learns differently. Algorithms will uncover our preferences so all learning is designed for the individual.

Real world relevance
Education will prepare us for the real world by focusing on understanding how knowledge will be applied and the emotional and relationship skills required

Immersive experience
Virtual reality and other tools will allow us to experience lifelike situations and practice in simulations before we need to apply our skills in real life

Augmented teachers
Teachers will remain central to education, but they will be augmented by technology to draw on the best tools available

Peer learning
Education will shift to learning from experts to learning with people who are like you, learning together as the world changes

Credentials

Formal degrees and diplomas will continue to be important in the future, however will be less necessary. Algorithms are increasingly able to analyse data about your work and study to indicate your capabilities in a work environment, often better than a formal academic qualification can.

Some employers are identifying high-potential candidates with software that assesses how specialists in a field have contributed to their profession and how their peers view them.

Rather than multi-year degrees, we will often get recognition for shorter learning journeys. Massively Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are offering ‘nano-degrees’ that show competence in a specific domain.

We may move to a world in which employers look more to the information they can gather about individuals’ knowledge, work and attitudes than to their official certificates.

As such I was delighted to be commissioned by Commonwealth Bank to create a report in collaboration with their team: The Commonwealth Bank jobs and skills of the future report (12.4MB), to share useful insights for individuals, families and organisations what we can do today to shape a positive future of work for all Australians.

The report has been launched this morning and can be downloaded here (12.4MB).

In coming days I will be sharing a number of elements of the report on my blog, as well as some of the media interviews stemming from the report. For now here is the introduction to the report, which summarises the core ideas. The report content is of course equally relevant to any countries, not just Australia.

INTRODUCTION

Ross Dawson
Futurist and Author

My session pulled out to a very big picture view, starting with the key drivers of Acceleration, Society and Structure, delving into the disruption of Work and the resulting human Capabilities we need, and finally on to the fundamental shifts in Learning, Education and the resulting Leadership that is required.

The slides to my keynote are below. As always, my slides were designed to support my presentation and not to stand alone, but may be somewhat useful to those who weren’t present for my keynote. Many of the slides were in fact videos, in this deck only shown as images.

Following my keynote was a fantastic panel discussion moderated by Jan Owen, where I was joined by Fiona Mackenzie, Anthony Mackay and Matt Wright. I hope to share a few of the many ideas we touched on in the discussion in a later post.

Image: Duane Cox

Direct quotes from me in the article include:

“Human history is all about the automation of work,” he says.

“Right from the plough through to the spinning Jenny through to the automobile, through to any number of other inventions. They all destroy jobs. And at the same time we have always created more jobs than we have destroyed. The automation has been of jobs which have not been that desirable.

“There is a case you can make that we will continue to be a prosperous society and have meaningful work because we are continuing to unfold work which plays to our uniquely human capabilities.”

“In many domains we have seen that humans working with machines are superior to machines working alone or humans working alone.”

“The big story is not about humans being replaced with machines, this is about how we find ways in which humans and machines can be complementary and provide value,” Dawson says.

He says successful organisations must ensure that their staff learn continuously. “That must be embedded into every job, every role, everything we do.

“[Primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions] need to understand the extraordinary pace of change of the nature of work. None of them are adequate for people for a very different world moving forward.”

Individuals must also take responsibility for their learning trajectory.

“The organisation needs to provide facilities for it and the individual needs to take responsibility for being able to drive that and do that themselves.

“Every institution of every kind, we all need to be thinking what is it we can do now which will shift us more toward that ability for us to have, not just full employment but richer, more valued, more worthwhile employment.”

You can read the full article here.

I will be speaking on Creating the Future of Work, looking at the dramatically shifting landscape for work, the distinctive human capabilities that will drive value, and the resulting structure of work required to draw out the greatest growth and contribution for our teams. In the keynote I will share for the first time globally a new framework I have created on Humans in the Future of Work. I’ll share more on that here after the keynote.

Here are quotes from some of the other speakers to give a sense of what they will be covering:

“Successfully matched job share pairs will address triple bottom line for businesses including increased productivity, diversity and flexibility”
– Sarah Liu, Co-founder of Gemini3

“The past is scattered with predictions of the future that failed to materialise. In general we are better at predicting trends rather than predicting the depth or timing of their impact and we are blind to the disruptors that are often the most profoundly influential”
– Louise Rolland, Executive Director of Ernst & Young

“Different people think about the End of 9 to 5 in different ways. Some think of it as threatening, others think of it as liberating. Understanding and harnessing this difference is key to opening up new ways of working”
– Michael Morgan, CEO of Hermann International Asia

It promises to be an excellent event! I’ll share more insights from my latest thinking on the future of work after the event.

Further details and registration for The End of Nine to Five here.

After opening with a discussion of connected work and marketplaces such as Freelancer.com and Upwork, the article goes on:

According to business consultant and futurist, Ross Dawson it’s a trend gathering pace within professional services like business consultancy, marketing strategy, IT services, even engineering and law. “Knowledge work can now be done anywhere.” he says.

It appears that this is another emerging sector where Australia is leading the way.

Sydney-based firms Expert360 and Skillsapien support two of the leading digital marketplaces for professional services, both of which Dawson sees as signalling a transition to “virtual” organisations.

“What is the role of the organisation today?” he asks. “Do they need to have offices with people sitting together? Is that the best way to source the best ideas?”

With the emergence of massive online platforms connecting millions of people it would seem not.

The article goes on to draw on my comments to look at many of the examples of how connected work is disrupting health, including CrowdMed, Doctus.com.au, and Dr Sicknote, and then closes with my comments on the impact on education, from an Australian perspective.

In the case of education, the online learning genie is out of the bottle, Dawson notes, with Australian institutions well placed to capitalise on it.

MOOCs (massive open online courses) have been around for some time with a fair degree of competition. But new opportunities are appearing in areas like professional certification, for which Australian institutions are well regarded.

“Education is and will continue to be one of Australia’s greatest exports,” Dawson says, noting that Australia’s fondness for and skills in developing digital channels will breed further opportunities in this and other knowledge-driven sectors.

Work can be done anywhere. We have reached the point where professions of all kinds will be increasingly practised remotely. While we need to ensure that potential problems are minimized, we also need to acknowledge the massive social upsides. This shift is inevitable.