The unlimited opportunities to use ChatGPT to improve education and learning

By

ChatGPT is on everyone’s lips, but the issue that has brought perhaps the most controversy is its impact on education.

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? 

Read more →

Will a “Google PhD” become as good as a university-granted PhD?

By

Jordi Muñoz became President of prominent early drone company 3D Robotics at age 22, having made himself a world-leading expert in drone design and manufacturing, teaching himself through the universe of resources available through the web and his own experiments. He says:

“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:
Read more →

Reinvention and the virtuous circle of learning by doing: the case of The Virtual Excellence Show

By

For the last couple of months I have been selectively sharing conversations, tutorials, and highlight videos from The Virtual Excellence Show on this blog, but I haven’t written anything about the show itself. This is the story of the show and the most important things I’ve learned so far.

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.
Read more →

The state of futures and foresight tertiary education globally

By

After researching government agencies that use foresight as well as futurist associations, Ross Dawson and I have compiled a list of all the known university programs focused on strategic foresight and futures studies. Although we may have missed some courses that feature a class or two related to futures and foresight, we believe we have a comprehensive list of all the accredited tertiary futures and foresight degrees and diplomas that are active for 2018 plus a few short courses.

The list covers:

Read more →

6 characteristics of education of the future and how credentials will change

By

The Commonwealth Bank Jobs and Skills of the Future Report I wrote recently dug into how work and jobs are changing and what skills will be required. These shifts in work mean it is crystal clear that education must also change.

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.
Read more →

Just launched: The Commonwealth Bank jobs and skills of the future report

By

The future of work has been a central theme of my work for many years. Work sits at the very center of society, the economy, and our individual and collective identities. It may well be the domain that is most disrupted by technological and social change in coming years. And education is at the heart of how we can make these shifts as positive as possible.

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).
Read more →

Keynote slides: The Future of Work and Education

By

I had the great pleasure today of doing the opening keynote at CEE2017 Enterprising Minds Conference in Melbourne, organised by the Centre for Educational Enterprise, run by Melbourne Girls Grammar School.

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.

Read more →

How to prepare for the future of work – human-machine collaboration, humanisation, education

By

Today’s Australian Financial Review features an article Ross Dawson on the future of work (and how to prepare for it), drawing on an interview with me.

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.”

Read more →

Vivid Sydney: Flexibility, diversity, and productivity at the heart of the future of work

By

Next week I am doing the keynote at a Vivid Sydney event titled The End of Nine to Five, organized by Gemini3, a job share matching technology company, in collaboration with EY Australia and Hermann International Asia.

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:
Read more →

The rise of global remote work will impact health, education, and far more

By

Today’s Australian Financial Review featured a section Transformation Agenda, including an article based on an interview with me, Health and education sectors the next to feel online disruption.

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.