By DAVID MYTON Fasten your seat belts: the academic conference as we know it is encountering severe turbulence as it flies into a storm sparked by climate change – and it may not survive unscathed. It’s estimated that aviation accounts for 2% to 3% of global, man-made CO₂ emissions – and people flying to academic conferences are contributing a sizeable chunk of that figure. As an example, a study of air travel at the University of British Columbia in Canada revealed staff from five departments made 709 air trips over 18 months – resulting in emissions more than 200 times the building emissions ..read more

By DAVID WRIGHT Today we build companies that are designed to meet a specified and known need.  Most of these companies will not succeed in the future. Today, we educate and develop people based on defined careers or professions – many of which will not exist in the future. How do we create companies and people that are most likely to thrive in an economy already being disrupted by Artificial Intelligence and new automation technologies? This is THE question that will determine the future success of our economy and all others. The answer, I believe, is by creating a new ‘creativity engine’ – o ..read more

By DAVID MYTON Major global institutions – including academia, industry and governments – are not doing enough to help citizens learn about and adjust to Artificial Intelligence, and neither are they providing sufficient opportunity for lifelong learning. Further, the education provided by traditional universities “is failing to deliver the mix of in-demand skills employers need to prepare for widespread AI adoption”. The findings are contained in a new study – Facing the future: US, UK and Canadian citizens call for a unified skills strategy for the AI age – produced by Northeastern Universi ..read more

By DAVID MYTON It is imperative that governments, academic institutions, businesses and individuals consider how to proactively shape a new, positive future of work rather than give way to inertia and passivity. So says a recent White Paper from the World Economic Forum report Eight Futures of Work – Scenarios and their Implication examining what the future of work might look like by the year 2030. The WEF has selected “three core variables” – the rate of technological change and its impact on business models; the evolution of learning among the current and future workforce;
and the magnitude ..read more

By DAVID MYTON Preparing for a more data-centered approach to teaching, learning, and advising will require a strategy to upskill key institutional roles and develop a clear understanding of what is being measured across multiple platforms, according to a new report. The expanse of data now available offers institutions new opportunities to assess, measure, and document learning – a trend that itself will drive technology adoption, says the EDUCAUSE Horizon Report 2019 Higher Education Edition. Digital fluency, it notes, is “the ability to leverage digital tools and platforms to communicate cr ..read more