Group 3 Forum

We all think about things to come. Even those that resist change or are completely happy with the current state of things want to anticipate potential changes so that they can be ready to confront unwanted changes.

We all think about things to come, but do we consider all the factors at play in scenarios of the future? Facer and Sandford (2010) created four principles for developing not only likely projections of the futures, but also responsible and ethical ones. These principles are used here as the basis for the following guidelines, which we hope you will use to guide your thinking and sharing.

1.  Don’t focus on trying to make the most accurate prediction. Instead, consider what you think will exist in the future that challenges current assumptions and practices. If you think the status quo is the most likely scenario, what parts of it are those most likely to be preserved, and what changes could be most easily accommodated?

2.  The future is not directly determined by its new technologies. It’s about how we apply them, toward what ends, that matters.

3. Thinking about the future can’t ignore the roles of values, politics, economics, and culture.

4. Education and training has core responsibilities to meet and core values about meeting them. These can be colored by the local context, but some are universal. These need to be considered by our visions of the future.

Other than these useful guidelines, let your imagination flow.

The questions we asked to encourage your contributions to the Global Campus Innovations publication are also worth repeating in this context as a prompt for ideas:

• How has the subsidence, but not complete eradication, of the Covid pandemic altered our instructional methods and logistics? Has there been a return to past norms with new enthusiasm, or do we now take advantage of good practices learned from the innovations force upon us to help in the post Covid era?
• How has the rapidly progressing impacts of climate change and accompanying severe weather changed job performance needs, and therefore education and training needs?
• How is the evolution of operational forecast systems, like enhanced NWP and improved and more cost-effective observations instruments, changing the role of forecasters and the skill requirements of new staff to take on these roles?
• How are educators and trainers reacting to the opportunities or perceived threats from the unexpected successes in large language models and other Artificial Intelligence? Given its growing successes in mining and presenting useful information and intelligently constructing responses and explanations, including through the use of personal avatars, what are its impacts to teaching, content development, learning interactions and student evaluation methods? How might the role of teachers and trainers be altered in positive ways?
• What will be the impacts of AI on job performance requirements and the education and training to prepare the workforce for this new environment?
• How has the demand for increasingly sophisticated teleconferencing systems changed the capabilities for synchronous distance learning and expanding the reach of education and training?
• How have other advances in technology, both learning and performance technologies, altered the learning needs and opportunities of students and new staff members?
• How can we bridge the increasing gaps in education and training opportunities among the nations of the world to develop sufficient professionals to meet growing needs?

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