How the current events will impact the future
I attended a virtual conference yesterday called ETH Global Lecture Series: The Future of Learning and Work. The meeting was a free event, hosted by the ETH University professors from Economics, Technology, and Business backgrounds. It was a fascinating meeting, the professors had very powerful ideas and predictions on the future of work and learning impacted by the Pandemic. I was surprised at how relevant this meeting was to this course. I decided to share my notes with you all.
The Pandemic has permanently changed the way we learn and work. In the near future, the learning environments will be very similar to the work environments – in ways people interact with one another, mentor, lead, share knowledge and promote productivity.
To summarize, the three most significant forces that have impacted the future of work and workforce education are The Pandemic, Technology for teaching and learning, the closing gap between Human-Technology. The following are the salient points of the discussion (merged with my own thoughts to fulfill the requirements of this assignment):
Designing instruction and learning environments will be more towards designing for the work context. This holds very true for liberal arts colleges, that design instruction around the professor and the content. The concept of signature pedagogy is more important than ever.
Designing instruction and learning environments will be more about simulating the future organizational culture of students, including but not limited to designing for diversity, empathy, understanding the drivers, languages, and triggers of different cultures, ethical use of technology and resources, ethical thinking, resulting in changing professionalism values.
Designing instruction and learning environments will be based on how human beings learn. This is a shift from “adult-centric” instruction design to “human-centric” instruction design. The former limits our capacity to design instruction for multiple-modal instruction (virtual learning environment, simulations). This includes designing learning environments for experience and accessibility.
Designing instruction and learning environments will also include designing for struggling learners. In the past, people used to be terrified to ask for help. This is changing. People now reach out for support. This trend needs to be supported for learning environments, where supplemental help with learning materials is available and we promote pairing students or grouping students to create a collaborative learning environment.
In the past, people feared the term “digital transformation”. They translated it to “automation” and eradication of jobs. This really means what kind of new jobs automation will create for people and what kind of new skills we need to teach them in workforce development courses. In short, the digital transformation will always be at the service of people – it is nothing to be feared. This point has a great implication for my current study: designing instruction and learning environments with the aid of technology.
Career paths are now no longer centered around professions and skills and job descriptions. Traditionally, we study, specialize, apprentice, and then get jobs. Now, it is more about what the learner likes to do. In the future, people will make progression into multiple career paths. We need to design a curriculum for multiple-skill pathways so that the learner has the flexibility to progress through different careers (4 to 5) in their lifetime! The competition will be fierce. Your skills-competency set will be an umbrella of the future job-titles (reversed situation!). As instructional designers and educators, we will need to develop learning paths that match with the future career paths of the learners: Personalized Learning Paths: Learning environments need to be active and assessments need to be authentic.
Learning how to learn will be the single most important workplace survival skill. We need to teach the meta-learning skills in workforce education. Learners should be able to predict the direction of the workforce and adapt their learning accordingly.
We need to teach learners how to communicate and utilize knowledge of the aging population of their future workplace. Future employees should be able to empower aging workers in order to enhance organizational productivity.
Designing instruction and learning environments will involve multiple coordinated modalities. For example, we have experienced the limitations of the Zoom virtual meetings. In the near future, we will have VR meetings that will enable us to do more in virtual meetings, for example, demonstrate a simulation and invite others to try, in an immersive learning environment. Virtual job experience will be important. Virtual environments will be more interactive, more realistic, and more measurable.
Assessments need to change from “looking for the right answer” to assess “how the learner thinks, how they utilize their skills and their decision-making pathway”.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning intervention will be prevalent earlier than we thought.
Hybrid learning and working environments will be the norm. People will find themselves doing things they have never done before. Preparing the learner for this uncertainty will be vital to their survival in the workforce.
About ETH: Freedom and individual responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit and open-mindedness: ETH Zurich stands on a bedrock of true Swiss values. Our university for science and technology dates back to the year 1855 when the founders of modern-day Switzerland created it as a center of innovation and knowledge.
Their event: Towards Gender Equity
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