Tag Archives: future

Disrupting higher education

Universities and colleges are going to be around for a while, but two things are disrupting the need for many students to attend an expensive school for four or more years;

1. Targeted Certification

2. Coronavirus

Tackling the second one first, students are questioning the value of what they are paying to go to school, when suddenly most or all of their courses are online due to COVID-19. The interesting thing is that not all of them are going to head back to class and think that the experience is still worth it. Smaller universities are already struggling and if things don’t bounce back, the cost of doing business on a smaller scale are going to force costs to rise. Lower enrolment and higher costs are a double edged sword that some universities won’t survive.

As mentioned, targeted certification is another blow to the modern university. Have a look at this article Google Has a Plan to Disrupt the College Degree. For the cost of textbooks for a semester, Google is providing certification, in just 6 months, in fields where students can come out to decent paying jobs.

A few years back my nephew took an 18-month comprehensive course that cost a lot of money. The program could be paid up front, or by giving up a percentage of salary for the first 2 years after graduation. The skills training was so good and in demand, that most students took the expensive choice of paying up front, knowing they were likely going to land a 6-figure (or close to 6-figure) salary when they came out. It was a hard 18 months, but my nephew (who lives in California) landed a job with a Silicon Valley start-up soon after finishing this program.

Engineers, doctors and nurses, and other professions that require comprehensive certification will still require a university degree for quite some time now, but there is going to be a big shift to certifications and polytechnical schools.

I’m happy to have started higher education with a general arts degree that took me longer than 4 years to get. It was an amazing time. But I was able to get that degree with under $10,000 debt to my name. Many students today leave their first 4-year degree with much much more debt, and only the promise of more schooling before they can find a job and start paying back their debt.

Universities are becoming the place to either get professional degrees, or places for the affluent to spend a few years growing up, or a place for less affluent students to start accumulating debt. Meanwhile, job specific skills training and certification programs are sprouting up and challenging the need for many to go to university. This disruption is coming fast, and I think we are going to see many universities struggle to transition what they look like for a lot of students who will opt out of this path of higher education.

Foot operated buttons

Crosswalks, elevators, doors, and kiosks are examples of things that we operate with our hands. They are frequently used contact points that can spread coronavirus. We see people using their elbows, car keys, or the bottom of their shirts to shield from directly touching these high use contact points. Soon we will see the level of these contact points lowered so that we can operate them with our feet.

It’s easy to push a door, door latch, or a button with your shoe. It makes sense that we use our covered feet rather than our uncovered hands to do this. I’m not sure if we will see hand-level options removed, or just foot level options added. To accommodate wheelchair use or impaired vision, it would help to have both options.

Also, design of these lower, foot-powered options will require significant durability improvements, people are far more likely to kick a button much harder than they would press one with their finger. And these buttons or push bars will need to be larger than the options for fingers and hands. But I think we will see these options, and automatically opening doors far more frequently in the coming year.

Water fountains are an example where this already started to happen and it makes sense that we will see this trend amplified.

What else will we see being foot operated in the future?

A step behind

I asked my daughter if she saw this new way of cutting a mango?

“Dad, you are so behind on your Tik Tok trends, I saw that ages ago.”

Yes, I’m behind. We all are in different areas of our lives. There is always a new tool, a new approach, a new technique that you will bump into.

The iPhone did everything with one button, now the new ones don’t have a button. People try to put gas in Teslas. Light switches you touch instead of toggle. Apps update, move things around, and add features you need to stumble on to know they are there. And now even the rules for social engagement keep changing.

No one is ‘caught up’, everyone is a step behind somewhere. These days, that’s normal. Things change quickly. Some would say too quickly. But things change, and we catch up.

We just need to give ourselves a little time. We just need to accept some ambiguity and unknown. We need to be unafraid to ask questions. We need to know that it’s ok to feel a little behind… as long as we aren’t stagnating, we are moving forward.

It’s seeping in

Last night I had a dream and while I don’t remember all of it, I do remember that social distancing played a part in what was happening. Having to keep my distance from others was hindering the task I was trying to do. This is the first time that I can recall the pandemic seeping into my dreams.

I wonder how this is affecting our psyche? What impact is it having on people who already felt isolated? How is it adding stress to our family dynamics and our jobs?

I don’t know why, but a short (pretty insignificant) scene that I witnessed weeks ago keeps replaying in my mind as sort of a ‘statement of impact’ of the pandemic. I was in my car at the closest traffic light intersection to my home, and I was the first car stopped at the light. On the far left curb a dad and his young daughter on bicycles rode up on the sidewalk to the intersection. The 3 or 4 year old girl got off her bike to press the crosswalk button. She put her bike down, went to the button and raised her elbow to press it.

That’s the whole scene which keeps replaying in my mind. That simple motion of a little kid pressing a button with her elbow rather than her finger. It somehow defines the pandemic response for me. Things have changed. We will do things differently in response to Covid-19 for years to come. Young kids won’t know how this has impacted them because they will just grow up doing things that are culturally ‘normal’, even if the behaviours were not normal just 6 months ago.

I lived in China for a couple years just after H1N1. It wasn’t pervasive, but some people would wear masks in public. It became something that was just part of the public landscape. We will see that here, for a long time coming.

Automatic doors are going to be everywhere. Voice operated elevators will ask us what floor we are going to. Hand sanitizer will greet us in shop and restaurant entrances. Lineups will be spaced out, and social distancing social etiquette will be ingrained into our behaviour.

For many of us this is an adjustment. But for young kids, dreams involving social distancing will always have been there, and pressing buttons with elbows is just what has always been done. For us we see these things seeping into our dreams and habits. For young kids it is already the norm.

We do not know

In a number of different places I’ve already said that COVID-19 has humbled me in that my thoughts and predictions have been way off. I’m not the only one.

Here is an interesting but worrisome article from Vox: My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes?

“We do not know how much immunity to expect once someone is infected with the virus, we do not know how long that immunity may last, and we do not know how many antibodies are needed to mount an effective response.”

There is still so much we need to learn about this virus that has changed the social and economic habits of humankind on a massive scale. So much we don’t know.

Here’s one thing I believe, (while admittedly not truly knowing):

We are going to be dealing with COVID-19 social restrictions and economic repercussions well into 2022.

I want to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt that I’m wrong.

I tend to be optimistic, and this doesn’t sound very optimistic. Not at all. But I think accepting that from now and right through 2021, we will be navigating a defensive response to COVID-19 will help us stay positive. We can plan the best possible path forward facing a very challenging scenario, and be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong. This is better than hoping for the best and continually being disappointed.

If we prepare for a long response, adhering to the required social distancing and social norms recommended to us, we will make things better, faster.

The path forward won’t be easy, but maybe we’ll learn some valuable lessons along the way. On the path, we need to be patient with each other. Tolerant. Forgiving. Kind.

We aren’t designed to live our lives in a constant state of anxiety or stress, and it’s hard to constantly adapt to change. But the rules for social interaction are going to be fluid for a while, sometimes loosening restrictions and opening public and social spaces, sometimes closing them down again. We need to be fluid too. Responsive. Adaptable.

We may not know what the future holds, but we will be more prepared for that future if we prepare for a prolonged and bumpy ride. Let’s work together and make it as smooth as possible.

Uncertainty as the new norm

When people make goals, they often ask themselves or are asked by others coaching them, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I can pretty much guarantee that anyone asked where they saw themselves in five years, back in 2015, was pretty much wrong. Every. Single. One. I made light of this idea with a fun post ‘Truth is Stranger than Fiction‘, back in April.

Now I’m looking at the same thing in a different light. It’s one thing to understand how hard it is to visualize where we will be in 5 years, yet another when we don’t have any idea where we will be in the next couple months? Schools ‘re-open’ in September and our province has said that we won’t know what ‘open’ means until the middle of August. We could be completely open, mostly open, partially open, or fully teaching from a distance. My guess is that learning will be blended, but by how much, I honestly don’t have a clue? Are students only coming in once a week or twice a week? Will students have an option to stay home and still expect teachers to work with them? Will teachers report to school every day? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Will there be a second wave of Covid-19 in Canada? Will the virus mutate significantly? Has it already done so? Will the virus be an issue right into 2022? Will there be a vaccine, or will we manage/mitigate the spread or impact in some other way? Will the borders to the US re-open soon? Will there be a major recession? Will Covid-19 be with us for years to come like flus that return every winter? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I’m used to people asking me questions and giving them answers. I am usually someone that is ‘in the know’, but this virus has humbled me. It has made me far less certain about where things are going next. Ambiguity is the norm now. So is uncertainty.

Within every crisis lies an opportunity. Our perspective has a huge role to play in this. When we are stuck thinking ‘woe is me‘, well then a crisis is a crises. When we recognize that ‘stuff happens‘ and that stuff is separate from how we respond to it, then we can start to see the opportunities.

How can we support local businesses? How can we help the needy in our communities?

What can we do to meaningfully engage students in classes from a distance? How can we leverage the right tools so that when ‘learning from home’  students get more voice and choice in the work that they are doing? How can we make the student experience seamless as we bounce between varying amounts of time students spend at school vs home? How do we meaningfully build community without having our students spend much, if any, time together? …At least for these questions I have a few ideas.

The new school year will bring many challenges, and with those challenges we will also have opportunities. Opportunities to challenge the status quo, and to do things differently. I won’t pretend that I know what’s in store. I understand that there is a lot of uncertainty ahead. Uncertainty is the new norm, and we’ll just have to get used to this.

The death of the business card

I recently updated my business card and I ended up recycling a few hundred of the old, out-dated ones. This isn’t the first time my responsibilities or title has changed prompting me to do this, but maybe it’s the last? In a post COVID-19 world are we going to routinely take a small card out of our wallets and hand it to someone else? Are we going to sanitize our hands first? Or are we going to send a digital version via our phones, instantly and without making physical contact of a common object?

Frankly, I think it’s about time! When I get a card, I usually take a photo with it in Evernote and then either hand the card back or put the card in a small business card holder on my desk, seldom ever to be looked at again. One thing I’ve hated about the Evernote process is that when I first started using this feature (I think it’s only on the paid version), the card reader would pick up all the different parts like name, company name, title, and phone numbers, and put them in the right category, and then ask me if I wanted to connect with them on LinkedIn. But now people are so creative with their card design, I find Evernote often has trouble picking up the different categories and something as simple as the company name is wrong, or missing or miss-categorized, because the company name is embedded in a logo or uses a different font for the first letter, or is placed in an unusual place compared to the rest of the information, etc.

What we need are simple contact cards that we can digitally ‘bump’ to each other. One nice feature of this would be that the card could have several versions, appropriate for the person you are sharing it with. For example, I run two schools and sometimes it’s nice to have a simple card with just one of the schools on there. Also, my card has my cell phone on it, but I’d rather a vendor call my office line, and leave a message with secretaries, rather than interrupt me with a vibrating phone when I’m with staff or students.

Having a business card digitally sent and entered directly into our contacts makes sense. It shouldn’t need to done by a proprietary company that requires everyone to have the same app to do, it should be a feature of our phones. It should be sent via Bluetooth or via a tool like airdrop, except not limited to Apple devices. It would need to be initiated with a request, rather than just open for anyone to take/steal your information.

For example, I click an invite and it says, ‘David Truss is asking for your business card’, the other person sees this, picks a card to share and sends it. Upon receipt, I see something like ‘Peter Parker shared his contact information with you. Share back?’ The tool could also ask if you want to connect on different social media sites that were shared, like Twitter and LinkedIn, and even scrape a profile photo from one of these as your contact image. It could also set a reminder to contact the person, or ask for additional details or tags/categories to help you remember the person.

Some people will be sad to see the card stock business card go away, but I’m looking forward to having the information shared digitally, on the tool that I’ll actually use to contact the person. We don’t need the waste of hundreds of our-dated cards being recycled or put in landfills, when a digital card is superior and provides far more choice than a static card that is seldom kept or looked at again.

Ten Million

According to Worldometers.info as of today over 10,000,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Of those, over 5% or 500,000 (read half a million) people have died.

I don’t want to share commentary, I just want that to sink in.

This is a global issue. It has and will further impact the world. As we head into summer, be smart, be safe, stay healthy.

Life interrupted

A travel app I use just reminded me that tomorrow night I was supposed to be on a flight to California for the ISTE conference. Cancelled. The next trip on the app was to be 3 weeks from now, heading to Barcelona, where I was to get on my first ever cruise ship with two stops in Spain and three stops in Italy, then spend a week in Portugal. Cancelled.

Will anyone be planning a trip on a cruise ship any time soon? Is my trip to Europe delayed a year or altogether cancelled? ‘The best-laid plans of mice and men… often go awry.’ It is easy to wallow a bit in the shadow of what could have been, but I suddenly find myself making new plans to visit family. Unexpected, and pressing, the plans are thrust upon me, yet something I’m looking forward to. I very well might have been cancelling my ISTE trip anyways.

We tend to plan things like we can somehow control the future. We can’t. So many things can disrupt what we hope to do in the coming days and weeks. There’s nothing like a pandemic to wake us up to that reality! How many jobs have been lost? How many travel plans cancelled? How many concerts, shows, and sporting events put on hold?

Life often gets interrupted. Sometimes it surprises us with unexpected delights, and sometimes with disappointing or devastating news. We can be saddened by upsetting news and plans gone awry, or we can recognize that circumstances beyond our control will often dictate that our best-laid plans are just that, plans… and plans change.

In the history books

We are only half way through 2020 and already we know that this year will be prominent in history books like no year in the 2000’s before it. It is the beginning of a new era, one that will keep us socially distancing from one another for a while; One that will make the wearing of masks and hiding our faces ‘normal’; One where handshakes and hugs are greeted with hesitation rather than warmth.

But it will also be a year remembered for bringing about social change. It will be remembered not just for changing our social interactions as they relate to salutations, but also for bringing about equity and making the world a more just place for those that have been disenfranchised and unfairly treated. Perhaps this year will be remembered as year a pandemic brought us together exactly when it was trying to pull us apart.

There is still half a year left, and many hints that economies and therefore people will struggle. The second half of 2020 will hold inequalities, political strife, and a death toll that will include those fighting against a virus, and those fighting against injustice. While the pandemic will surely be the lead story in the history book chapter on 2020, I hope that social change, and the battle against injustice is the focus of the chapter.

That is my hope, but if there is one thing the first half of this year has taught me, it is that this is not a time when it is easy to predict the future. If you don’t believe me, go back in your memory to the end of December 2019 and tell me that you could have predicted anything about the world we are living in today.

The year is only half over and it is already one for the history books.