Dave Edyburn, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
This session will share insights about the importance of interdisciplinary work during periods of rapid change. Among the topics to be address: 2023 enrollment trends in Colleges of Education, the role of scenarios when trying to make strategic decisions, and how knowledge-based technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning will alter the economics of learning and performance.
• Personally and professionally, how do I make sense of technological change?
• What are the immediate, short-term, and long-term implications of these changes?
1a. World
1b. State of K-12 Education
1c. Higher Education
1d. Buzzword Bingo (Higher Education version)
Fill Out This Bingo Card During Your First Faculty Meeting of the Year
1e. Buzzword Bingo (Corporate version)
• What is the future of Colleges of Education?
• Given the extensive teacher shortages, how might schools be re-imagined?
• What technologies are likely to disrupt the work force and the role of education?
One of my favorite futurists, Daniel Burrus, makes sense of trends by analyzing how events and technologies may be combined. He describes three approaches:
• incremental change
• convergence change
• disruptive change
Similar to what we did a few mintues ago by looking over some recent news headlines, futurists often study news articles, reports, and web sites to understand the topics being discussed in many areas of the country/world.
In my work, here are some of the trends and issues I have observed.
Table 1: Issues
Table 2: Technology Trends
One way to understand these patterns is to create scenarios that describe what the future looks like. I've prepared six scenarios to illustrate how you might use this process to gain insight about why the future might look significantly different than the past.
Scenario #1: Learning Loss
Scenario #2: Security
Scenario #3: Teacher Shortages + Online Learning
Scenario #4: Mental Health + Apps
Scenario #5: Equity + Accountability + Learning Loss + Machine Learning + Learning Analytics
Scenario #6: Remote Learning + Space Utilization + Immersive Environments + Personalized Learning
Edyburn, D. (2023). Reimagining the future of special education technology. In D. Cockerham, R. Kaplan-Rakowski, W. Foshay, & M. Spector (Eds.) Reimagining education: Studies and stories for effective learning practices in an evolving digital society (pp. 281-292). Springer. PDF
A world Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond, Daniel Susskind
The Future of the Professions, Susskind & Susskind
Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education by Nathan D. Grawe
The Agile College: How Institutions Successfully Navigate Demographic Changes by Nathan Grawe
Report: Future Today Institute Report (note: large file > 54 mg)
Report: An ed-tech tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in the time of COVID-19
Report: The 2023 State EdTech Trends Report (pdf)
Report: Are we back yet? How we spent our days from 2019 through 2022.
Report: All Work and No Pay — Teachers' Perceptions of Their Pay and Hours Worked
AI
Report: The Economic Potential of Generative AI
