Tag Archives: Trends

Education Trends in 2017

Image of a student walking a road labeled 2017 with a question mark on the horizon.I try to follow higher education trends to make sure I know what is coming and can gear my teaching appropriately. This blog highlights some of the strategies and technologies I think will emerge in 2017. We will see in 12 months if I was right.

Improved Distance Education

I think technologies that create a shared classroom experience will improve distance education in 2017. Students will increasingly enroll in distance education,  so it is important that we improve the virtual classroom.

Immersive virtual reality is growing in popularity. I was one of the first to try out HP’s Halo telepresence system, now a Polycom product. Each of the teleconference rooms were physically identical, right down to the wall coloring and furniture. The idea is that you see your colleagues across the country or the world on the bank of monitors in front of you and feel like they are just on the other side of the table. It is a good idea and it works great but is expensive to purchase and maintain. Imagine if you could take this same technology into distance education using virtual reality. You could hold debates, work on shared projects, and hopefully improve the overall education experience to the point where it approximates an in-person experience. A September article from the Center for Digital Education highlights some of the specific developments in this area. The experience won’t change overnight but it is an important tool to improve distance education and an area that I will be monitoring.

Industry Partnerships

I believe that we need to do a better job of matching curriculum with skills needed in the workplace. In ancient Greece, students attended Plato’s Academy to learn thinking skills and become philosophers. Today we also need to equip students with applied skills they can use to further the mission of an employer. Rather than guessing what skills employers need, it is important to form partnerships and allow input into curriculum design. This could also lead to more internship opportunities where students could practice newly-learned skills. A strong partnership will help schools meet the needs of industry.

Standardized Certification System

Particularly in information technology and information management, there are a large number of available professional certificates. They range from security to advanced networking to systems administration. As an employer, how do I know whether a new or current employee presenting these certifications can really do the job? How do I know whether organizations offering these certifications are legitimate? Author Matthew Meyer, in a 2016 article, argued for a national certification system. This would be a certification system for certifiers, if you will. With the rising popularity of certificates this is an idea whose time has come because it would add some legitimacy to a certificate and assure quality and rigor to an employer. As I write this however, the American Commission for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) is fighting for its survival in the courts after the federal government cut off student aid for people attending those certified colleges. It could take several revisions to work out an appropriate certification body similar to the current regional accreditors for non-profit universities.

Political Changes

The political climate in the United States changed with the election and that could mean a shift in direction for post-secondary education. There could be more focus on vocational education, research, or toward non-degreed education such as skills-based certifications. The government influences the direction and emphasis on higher education through federal funds and guaranteed student loans. I believe that there will be a split emphasis on advanced research and skills-based education as we focus on current and anticipated workforce needs.

Thoughts

There is a lot changing in higher education and it’s an exciting time to work in this field.

What changes are you seeing in education? Are we taking advantage of technology and ideas on improving learning? Let me know your thoughts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Trends in Education: Information Availability

Adult students in a classroom.I have been thinking about changes in education. Some are due to technology advancements, but some are from social changes as we discover new ways of teaching and learning.  This blog post will explore some of those trends and how we might take advantage of shifts to improve higher education.

Information At Your Fingertips

Scott Miller, PhD, president of Wesleyan College, said in an article: “Some faculty voice concerns that the prevalence of information has negated the inclination to learn it.” Some may see improved information access as a threat to their teaching but I think we can use it to our advantage to improve the learning process. I liken this new information availability to the introduction of the printing press. Before then, students relied primarily on their instructors who could read the few texts that were available. Teachers guarded the writings so they alone could dispense knowledge. Written texts were laboriously copied by hand. After the advent of printing, there were more texts available so the general population could learn to read and could synthesize the information for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

In 2016, information is available at our fingertips through smart devices and the internet. My students and I have access to the same information, so my responsibility is to create the learning space and pose questions that will prompt further learning. We share the task of gathering information so that we can synthesize it through discussions into knowledge or even wisdom. Rather than feeling threatened by this, I believe it frees us to focus on ideas and insights.

Experiential Learning

Some disciplines still require experience to fully synthesize information into understanding. Chemistry students can read about the reaction of two mixed chemicals but it’s not the same as personally experiencing the outcome. Civil engineering students can read about load calculations and design principles but until they experiment with models and see the resulting success or failure, do they really understand the principles and can they apply them to real designs? Disciplines that require experiential learning will still need a classroom with the materials to experiment with. But are there other ways to augment classroom learning?

Many employers have onboarding programs to welcome and train new employees. Some of these programs are extensive, lasting weeks, if not months. Would it not be more efficient to shorten the onboarding process and instead bring students in earlier as part of a hands-on expanded internship?  I believe that since we now have so much valuable information available to students and faculty, we can be much more efficient in how we use that information. With the time created by that efficiency, students should be able to apply that knowledge in a real world setting. Students would win valuable experience and potential employers could hire employees with advanced thinking skills and practical experience.

Thoughts

We can take advantage of greater information access by making learning more efficient and effective. At the same time, students take a greater part in their learning and can apply that experience to a successful career. Those are my thoughts but I would love to hear from you.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional and assistant professor of practice for the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Managing a Farm Today—Agriculture Uses IT Too

I occasionally research how technology is being applied to different fields. Lately, I have been thinking about how technology is helping agriculture. Obviously others have been thinking the same thing but with more of a profit motive in mind. In May of this year, there was a conference held in Palo Alto, California, titled “Silicon Valley Agtech.” Their tagline is “Silicon Valley AgTech is where technology meets agriculture, Silicon Valley meets the Silicon Prairie, and innovation comes back to the farm.” Their aim is to bring together agriculture technology startups and venture capitalists to try to accelerate the interest and growth of this industry in Silicon Valley. Here are a few technologies that are aiding farmers and ranchers now.

Telematics

Telematics is the combination of telecommunications and informatics. It has to do with sending information to and from a remote object such as a vehicle. The GPS unit in newer cars is one such example of telematics, but the agriculture industry is using it in unique ways. GPS technology in newer tractors and farm implements can tell the driver precisely where to plow, plant, spray, and harvest. Harvest yield information can be uploaded in real time so that a farmer can tell immediately what to expect from his crop. Of course, all of this information exchange is going to result in a larger amount of data to be processed.

Big Data

Information collected in the field will include a new array of data points and could easily move into the area of big data. Some farm service companies are already getting into the cloud services business, specifically to collect, process, and make sense of data points. You can either upload data from the tractor thumb drive or upload the telematics-collected data directly to the service provider. Either way, the service provider stores, analyzes, and creates visualizations to help you understand where you can improve your farming and your crop yield.

Robotics

Farm equipment is not quite to the point where it can drive itself (think Google tractor) but it is getting close. Sprinkler pivots in large farm fields are often computer controlled with a remote or an app and require little human intervention when set up properly. There are farm service companies, however, that are developing tractors and other equipment to operate without a driver. With the telematics mentioned above and smart cameras, they will be able to operate within the parameters and confines of a field. This will free up the farmer to do higher value work such as analyzing the yield report sent by his cloud service provider.

Thoughts

Technology can be used to aid efficiencies in fields (no pun intended) as diverse as agricultural production. This also represents new opportunities for entrepreneurs and IT workers who have a passion for farm production and want to work to increase yields and decrease waste.

Do you know of other fields that are increasing their use of technology in a unique way? Let me know. I am always interested in learning more. 

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at nigh

IT Trends: How Will You Access Your Data in the Years to Come?

shutterstock_91611515I have been thinking lately about information technology trends and I want to highlight a few in the blog this week. This helps me to keep up on the latest in technology and I hope that it helps you as well.

The Cloud

According to a recent list from Gartner, one of the emerging trends over the next couple of years is that the cloud will become the most important data repository. This will have significant impact on IT organizations in the fact that devices such as PCs and laptops will be merely a window into the data and the applications. The computer will not actually house information; it will all be hosted in the cloud. Laptops could become simple terminals and more computing will be pushed to the tablet, which could serve the same function. With this push to mobile devices, the desktop PC could drop out of the scene completely. Device management will change dramatically, especially as employees become even more mobile.

Mobile

Another trend identified by Gartner is an increasingly mobile workforce. This includes not only telecommuters, but also those working in a progressively 24/7 world on company-issued devices as well as on personal devices. The line is blurring between the two, and IT organizations need to get a handle on who and what devices have access to their proprietary information. This goes beyond a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) policy and enters into the area of network design with an eye toward mobile security.

Security

With the movement towards the cloud and mobile devices, Sophos—the network and server security vendor—predicts there will be more attacks on personal and corporate data. They also predict mobile devices will leave personal data more vulnerable to theft, particularly through the use of apps. With larger numbers of employees working remotely and passing corporate data across their mobile devices, this trend spells trouble for the IT organization. The spotlight will be on them to keep the corporate data safe on the inside and keep viruses and intruders on the outside. More emphasis will be put on security, particularly the mobile variant. The upside to all of this is an increase in opportunities for security professionals. According to Robert Half, the staffing specialists, security professionals are one of the technical specialties in highest demand. If the trend towards mobile and cloud computing continues, this demand will become even more acute.

Thoughts

One of the benefits of trend spotting is that it points to where future opportunities lie. There is a need now for security professionals, cloud computing professionals, and those that can integrate mobile platforms with enterprise applications. If you are at a crossroads in your career, I would explore one of these areas. If you are just starting your IT career or education, I think any of these will be solid fields for years to come, with options to branch out into the periphery. Have you seen any other IT trends worth noting? Let me know. I will highlight other trends in future blog posts.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Beware the Ides of March: 3 Surprising Origins of Popular Traditions

Statue of Gaius Julius Caesar, Rome, ItalyThe blog post this week comes out of my personal curiosity with traditions and their origins. It started with the origins of the Ides of March and then snowballed to Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day. I am hoping that you learn something new from my research. If anything, it will arm you with new party conversation topics.

I knew that Caesar was killed by Brutus and Cassius on the fifteenth, or the Ides of March, but I assumed that there was more to it than that. The Roman months were broken up into three parts. The Kalends was the first day of the month, the Nones was thought to be the date of the half moon and the Ides is thought to be the day of the full moon or the “half division” of the month. In 44 BCE, the year of the death of Julius Caesar, the half division fell on March 15, which has been chronicled by historians. This significance would have died out long ago, had it not been for a play by William Shakespeare in which the soothsayer character utters the line “Beware the Ides of March.” It is amazing to think that because of powerful prose, we still think about this event over 2,000 years later.

Mardi Gras

I know enough French to understand that Mardi Gras means “fat Tuesday,” and that it is tied to the beginning of Lent, but who started the whole thing about parties and parades? It turns out that Mardi Gras dates back thousands of years to pagan spring and fertility rites. When the Christian church was established, rather than doing away with traditional pagan rituals, they folded them into their own rites. Thus, Mardi Gras came to be the Tuesday before the beginning of Lent, a time of fasting and reflection. In the days before Lent, households would traditionally eat up all of the meat, eggs, milk, and cheese in the house and prepare themselves for the period where they would eat only fish or fast. The term “Carnival” comes from the ancient word “carnelevarium”—to remove or take away meat. Today, Louisiana is the only US state where Mardi Gras is a legal holiday.

St. Patrick’s Day

Who was this guy and why do we dress in green to celebrate him? St. Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and is credited with bringing Christianity to the emerald isle. St. Patrick’s day is observed on March 17 to commemorate his death in 461 CE and it always falls on Lent (see Mardi Gras above). The Irish tradition has been to attend church in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon and evening. Lenten prohibitions against eating meat were waved and Irish families feasted on bacon and cabbage. St. Patrick was known to use the shamrock in his teaching, so the Irish began to wear shamrocks and then later dressed in green to celebrate. This legend and tradition spread to America after the Irish potato famine drove many Irish to emigrate. The first St. Patrick’s Day parade was actually held in New York and not in Ireland. The next time you celebrate St Patrick’s Day by donning green, think of the Christian missionary who died more than 1,500 years ago.

Thoughts

I hope this excursion has left you with some facts that you did not know. I hope it also leaves you wondering about the origins of other traditions and inspires you to do some of your own research. Asking questions about any tradition is a great way to grow and become smarter about the world around us. I wonder why we… ?

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.

Trend Spotting: Keeping Track of the Ever Changing Game

Businessman climbing above the clouds to get a better view of the landscapeI have been thinking lately about the value of trend spotting and the people or groups that provide that service in your organization. To some organizations and industries it is very important and to some it is not even on the radar. Is it important to your organization? Does it need to exist?

By trend spotting, I am referring to the practice of monitoring trends, particularly those that are pertinent to your business or industry. Those may be a demographic shift; an alteration in preferences for one product over another; a change in how people perceive a product or service; a political movement or a response to the shifting political current. All of these things could have an effect on how you do business and the way you sell your product or service, including developing the right product mix. In our connected world, it is easy for demands to suddenly boom or to die out just as easily, and without monitoring those trends, we could either miss a new opportunity or be left holding the bag when demand for our specialty or product dries up.

I have been searching for web sites that could extend my trend spotting abilities and help me to stay abreast of new developments that are important to me. Here are some sites that may be of interest to you as well.

Springwise

Springwise.com, according to their site, is “helped by a network of 17,000 spotters and scans the globe for smart new business ideas, delivering immediate inspiration to entrepreneurial minds.” These spotters are organized into a group through springspotters.com. This is a fascinating concept that I have never considered in the past—anyone can submit a trend or a new business idea that they think is rising, and if their submission is chosen and aired, they are awarded with “cool gifts.” You can either browse their site or become a paying member and follow the trends related to your needs. This is, in essence, crowd sourcing for trends.

Trendwatching

Trendwatching.com is very similar to Springwise. It is a fee-based service that supplies you with trend information targeted specifically to your business and industry. The trends are fed by an organization called happyspotting.com. An interesting fact—contributions to happyspotting are rewarded with points that can be redeemed for gifts. Apparently, it is not about the money anymore, it is about the cool gifts.

What Springwise and Trendspotting are doing is harnessing the power of people around the world who are watching out for new products, new businesses, and new ways of doing things. I do not know what the qualifications are to be a happyspotter or a springspotter, but there must be an algorithm or filter that tries to determine whether this is a random occurrence, the beginning of a trend, or a “tipping point”. To help you stay ahead of the trends, these could be valuable services to you.

Thoughts

Are you a trend spotter? Do you have someone in your organization that is dedicated to that task? Perhaps multiple people each have a piece in their job description? Is it even important to your organization to stay on top of trends? Let me know your thoughts on how important you think this is.

Author Kelly BrownAbout Kelly Brown

Kelly Brown is an IT professional, adjunct faculty for the University of Oregon, and academic director of the UO Applied Information Management Master’s Degree Program. He writes about IT and business topics that keep him up at night.