The Holistic Student - Balancing the Development of Both “Soft” and “Hard” Skills in the Era of Digital Learning

Okay. I think we're gonna have a pat house. I apologize. This is a little tight, and I apologize to our panel. Lindsey, please be careful and do not fall off that end of the stage. I'd like to avoid that.

My name is Ryan Lufkin. I am vice president of global strategy here at instructure. You've probably seen me talk, a few times at this point. But I really wanna thank this panel. There is so much talent, so much knowledge on the stage.

I plan to learn quite a bit. And the topic's amazing. So I wanna I wanna get started, but I'm gonna have, Lizzie start, and we're gonna do introductions, if you wouldn't mind. Okay. Great.

The first question is, is the mic on? The mic is on. Okay. Great. Good afternoon. My name is Lindsey Tornotore.

I am a, the director of student, of systems improvement and student success with the California County superintendents. The California County, superintendents, are either elected or appointed officials within California that oversee the districts and charters in the fifty eight counties of California. And I serve as a lobbyist and policy, consultant for them. Good afternoon. I'm Jim Henderson.

I'm the president and CEO of the University of Louisiana system. That system of nine distinct institutions across the state of Louisiana. That serve more than ninety thousand students. We range from Carnegie r one research university to regional universities. We have the nation's most iconic public HBCU and Gramway State University.

And, every day is a full day. And it's all about serving those ninety thousand students, but delighted to be with you and and delighted to be here within structure. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Keith Phillips.

I'm the vice chancellor of workforce and economic development for the Alabama Community College System. Also wear another hat in in Alabama. I'm the executive director of the Alabama Technology Network, which is Alabama's manufacturing and extension partnership. We serve the community college system itself. We're we're an entity, our system entity, twenty four colleges statewide with one hundred and thirty locations.

And on average, we'll serve one hundred and fifty five thousand students annually, both non credit and for credit, proud to be part of this, panel discussion today. Hello. My name is, Tony Saul. I think I've traveled the furthest from here from London, England. Yeah.

And, We saw you guys left us two hundred years ago, but it was forgiving. And, I'll give you a c minus. You do not you're doing too badly since you left. But, the thing is, I run a charity called generating Genius, which is a pipeline program in STEM. I'm also, in our parliament, and I'm my other title is Lord Saul.

So you should have really bowed when came in, but we'll allow you to. And, yeah, we're we're really interested in this whole issue of, soft skills. We think that's the answer. Hi, everybody. I'm Marnie Baker Stein.

I am the chief content officer at Coursera. Where I oversee our content portfolio from clips to all of our open content and courses to our career academy and gateway certificates for sort of good jobs as well as our pathways into all of our degree programs. I'm really happy to be here today. I'm also a formally, instructor kind of, fan and have worked, with with your platform a lot over the years. So I'm I'm really happy to take part.

Good afternoon. My name is Joan Ebert. I'm honored to serve as the state superintendent of public instruction for the great state of Nevada. Serv over five hundred thousand students in our state. Third most diverse, and most of you know Las Vegas.

Being part of Nevada, but we also have many other wonderful parts. I am in my I finished four years. I'm in my fifth year as the state superintendent. I am the first woman, a a p I, in o a first woman in over twenty years. To be a state superintendent.

Thank you. And, really excited because, we know there's a lot of politics education. I was actually appointed by a Democratic governor and reappointed by our Republican governor. Wow. So I'm very pleased to continue to serve our students And when you stay focused on your students, you don't worry about your job.

That's exactly right. That's not done that way for me. So ask a couple of targeted questions, and then I'm gonna sit back and listen because I mostly just wanna hear you guys. But, we are kind of at the most transformative time of education. We're talking about so many different themes here learning loss, post COVID, you know, hangover, the immersion of AI, all of those factors I'm gonna ask, Jim and Keith really quick to start with you.

And and let's talk a little bit about, what you're experiencing with your organizations. It has been a little bit of a disruptive time. Not only have we dealt with the pandemic and and all of the other changes in in in higher education. We've had five named storms in the last four years in Louisiana, including the three of the most powerful storms ever hit the United States. Within two years.

One of my campuses, McKinney State University president called me at at at two fourteen in the morning and said, listen to The roof on the building I'm in was blown off. So we're gonna try to move to a safer building. I'm searching Laura. And then six weeks later, he called me and he said, listen. Although blue tarps have been blown off and fourteen inches of rain have been dumped into our our our facilities.

That's disruption. That's disruption. This is the same city in Southwest Louisiana that suffered a winter storm, a blizzard Lake Charles, Louisiana. It's never happened. And then they're just coming off the cusp of a biblical flood.

So we're in a, we're all dealing with climate challenges. We're in a state very vulnerable to climate. So you throw climate in there. You talk about the advance of of technology, the rise of automation. Powerful, powerful, man made disaster.

Yes, number. You made disasters. Water. Water is everywhere. Right? And and and it is totally disrupting our business, but it but at the same time, it's elevating the importance of our work.

Because when it comes to asymmetric environments, when it comes to unpredictable futures, The most powerful, the most proven we think foundation for success is education. It's it's always has been. It always will be. And so it just elevates the the importance of our work even during these disruptive times, disruptive times when it's increasingly difficult to deliver on that work with Fidelity. So I take a look at when you talk about the technology acceleration AI, you know, I kind of appreciate the comments that were made yesterday and structure and how we will incorporate AI into what we how we do things in in terms of workforce training and general education in the state of Alabama, and I think the idea there is that keeping the focus on the student to make sure we're looking at safeguards that it's used appropriately, that we're focused on student outcomes and student learning, for the system and for the students, but also how does it contribute to advance learning? So we're we're excited about the new changes, and that's coming on your with technology acceleration.

I would tell you, fortunately, for us, enrollment has been a positive trend. The Alabama Community College System, we've seen about a percent increase, academic year over academic year since the pandemic coming out of the pandemic in enrollment. And I'll contribute that to a lot of things that we have done focused on the nontraditional student, but also how our colleges have worked, stop out list, drop out list, you know, the folks that had contacts with, how did they continue work those and get them into employment or not into employment, but into enrollment moving to employment. Let's talk about the, the question about the, continuing gaps and the workforce skills gaps. That's the part and obviously being workforce, vice chancellor workforce, that's the part that kinda keeps me awake at night because we've seen a lot of things.

We talk about the pandemic. We talk about, what has been coming with the Silver tsunami. Or the the baby boomers who are leaving the workforce, you know, we saw, in the recession, if you call it that twenty, two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, A lot of those workers had to work a little bit longer to regain what they had lost in their retirement plan. So now we're really seeing those folks leaving the workforce they're taking, they are taking a lot of skills and knowledge with them. That's a concern when you talk about technology acceleration, during the pandemic, companies that were may be labor intensive, low wage, low skilled jobs.

We're looking at implementing technology to take, to sort of account for the absenteeism of the workforce, And that's one of those things that that concerns me from the idea that we need to look at incorporating technology in the workforce as kind of like you do lean. It's not about a reduction in head count, but it's about freeing people up to do other jobs. And we have a skills gap in Alabama. For ever one hundred qualified jobs we have, we have only forty four qualified applicants. Our labor force participation rates, fifty seven percent.

The college going rate of our graduating seniors, and twenty twenty two was fifty five percent. We've lost ten percent of that over since twenty fourteen. So we've got some workforce challenges. Softskills is a large part of how we address that. So if you'd hand the mic to Lindsey, I'm gonna teeth this up for her next.

One of the things we've really seen is that blurring of lines between k twelve and higher ed higher ed in the corporate spaces, we see more concurrent enrollment. More corporates, higher ed partnerships. What are your thoughts on this moving towards a lifelong learning journey? Sure. So from the perspective of in California, in many ways, we're there, in and in many ways, we have a lot of to work to do still. And so one of the ways that we are there is that back in twenty seventeen, when California implemented our every student succeeds act, one of the the requirements was to think about ways that the state would hold districts accountable for improving student outcomes to ensure they're reaching their fullest potentials.

And so California developed what we call the California school dashboard, which we have an app for. So if anybody looks on the Apple store, you can find that. And it gives a very transparent quick snapshot of how students are performing in a local school and in a district And it also unique feature disaggregates based on, student group, students experiencing homelessness, foster youth, and also by race and ethnicity. And so, this this dashboard system though has multiple measures of what we we look at to help, schools and districts to look at their student data to target resources and supports. And one of those is our, college and career indicator.

And, it has robust rigorous course offerings, academic course offerings as part of it, and also, integrates metrics that, honor and applaud, deep learning engagements such as CTE course pathways, ROTC programs and other military science and leadership, We also have something called the state seal of biliteracy as well that, student high school students can, achieve. And so, that metric and measure really does help to support the philosophy. I I would say then where we have work to go is building a stronger bridge between k through twelve to, post secondary. And in California, we have three sectors in our higher education. We have the UC, the CSU, and the California Community College System.

And something very unique and relevant to, all of us today is that all three of those sectors are aligned in that they are all implementers of Canvas as their primary LMS. And so, yes, that that deserves an applause, I think. And so when we think about the soft skills, we think about the holistic student and empowering them to be able to reach their fullest, potential in college or career, you know, using that common LMS really takes a lot of the guest work out. It gives them a transparent place to be, a lot of first generation college students, and a lot of other factors. The other thing is we have a few statewide initiatives as well that are expanding, data access to, follow students and track their their pathways.

So, again, I would I will just say at a very high level here that, we have some, some, celebrations of where we are, and we definitely have a road map of where to go still. Okay. I'm gonna head off my mic. We're gonna play musical microphones a little bit. So hang on to that one down there.

I'm gonna hand this to Marni and, your thoughts as well on that lifelong learning journey approach. Sure. So, Corsera is pretty much in the lifelong learning business, but I don't think we took it very seriously until recently. I often say, I don't know how many of you have ever looked at the Coursera catalog, but I often say, you know, at Coursera, the world is your oyster. You can really find almost anything on there.

But you better be a pearl diver because and you better be able to hold your breath for some time because it's very, very difficult for many learners, particularly who don't know what they don't know to find the next best step for them. So, recently we have, started to rethink coursera as a catalog, into Coursera as a learning journey that encompasses learners to the next best step for them in the place where they live against their career goal. And that's created us. That's that's caused us to sort of turn ourselves upside down in terms of understanding how we're architected and the services that we provide for learners. But it has also required us to sort of double down on making sure that we have pathways they need against the jobs that are out there in the places that they live.

And so we have this new program called it's these are gateway programs, but they're actually career pathways in micro credentials that allow you to build up your skills for in cybersecurity or in data analytics or in gen I AI, and then keep pass that into degree programs with performance based assessments. So we're really, really excited about that, but it's hard. And I think on the in the other big revelation for Cors Sarah recently on the lifelong learning front is that we can't always be the platform where learners receive the education. So we're really working hard to integrate and become interoperable with systems like Instructure so that we can really serve institutions everywhere. Of all sizes and all ilks, with this great content that's coming from Google and Disney and Walmart and IBM and make it as accessible as possible.

John, and have you go as well. Great. So like my colleague in California and thank you, we like to steal a lot of things from California as well. We too are PK twenty, instructor canvas, as well. And so that does create a nice seamless piece.

What I would like to focus on is the workforce actually are educators, and I know we have a lot of educators in the room. And when you think about when the pandemic hit, and the shift that our workforce needed to make really from Friday the thirteenth Right? March Friday the thirteenth to Monday, March sixteenth. Massive, massive, massive shift. And so our workforce as the educators, how did we make sure that we were invested and that we could pivot and support and make sure that the continuum of learning happened as well. And so at that moment in time, just quickly assessing the landscape, we were not statewide at that time, with one LMS.

We had a few, but our higher education system and our fifth we have the fifth largest school district in the Clark County School District, also was already using the tool. And so what we did is we created an environment where we had battle born buddies because we had educators that for a very long time because the diversity of our, geography had been teaching at a distance where experts have been training across the United States and globally as well. And we pulled our experts and made them available to every single educator across our state. So we've been investing in our workforce that we currently have, making sure that they can pivot and making sure that they create the environment for all of our students as we, prepare for the twenty second century. Because all of our kiddos that are in our classroom today, that's the century that they will be living and working in.

So one of the biggest themes in education right now really is micro credentials. Right? And we're looking at it to counteract the enrollment decline. We're looking at it to upscale and reskill adult workers. We're looking at it, as a means for high school students to move directly into jobs, things like that. But one of the things we risk is that traditional soft skills approach.

Those things that you get as part of a four year bachelor's degree. The ability to do decision, evidence based decision making, empathy towards your peers, working in group functions, public speaking is one that, I was talking to one of our colleagues about yesterday. How do we ensure that as you move to a credential's based program we're still equipping students with those soft skills that they're going to need to be productive members of society and and, you know, be prepared for available. I'm gonna start with Doctor. Suel, and then I'm just gonna let it let the conversation room.

So what's cool? Thanks for that. I think for my point of view, when I go around talking to teachers or to, we don't call them school districts. We just say groups of teachers really in England, but, it's really about how who who does this stuff? Who's actually doing it? What's happened in high schools? And maybe, well, maybe in universities, it might be, the counselor or something like that. It's a side thing that you do the soft stuff in, and then we in the tech, we do the real stuff here. And I what what what I think we should be doing is the people who do the tech should be embedding this soft skills in what they do already.

So if you're a tech person, you're a soft person as well, you know, it's not soft. It's together. And, I think that's got to be what we what we teach, our teachers. And what we teach, people who think that they're just in in front of a screen. They've gotta really get get involved in that.

And just on a on a just a practical example that. We did a we did some coding with some high school, fourteen year olds. And, what we did was we did in the end do coding, you know, and and and they look back now. I do a a a long program, a pipeline program. So these children came to us when they're fourteen, they're now thirty.

And they look back. And what it was was the fact that we did the Python doing art So you did Python for artwork. The fact that you had to work in pairs, and if you've got children know that they hate, working together. They like to kind of do things their own out, they have to share, take turns. And so really what was going on and of course, competition.

I mean, competition is key. I mean, There's only one job. And I used to say to him, there's only one winner, you know, that you say we've got one winner, and then you have to learn how to lose. You know, all these other behavioral attributes that you kinda need in life, you can get actually in teaching the the tech stuff itself. So my sense in this is that, just in terms of a pedagogy, we've gotta really change this around and really make make sure that the stuff stays in the mainstream and it's not a sideline.

I'll go next. So I think, you know, again, I'm gonna base my experiences on, what we're doing in Alabama to address this. And a couple things that we've done to to address the soft skills and I appreciate that comment. It's gotta be in everything that we do. A couple few good examples that we're doing is work based learning and apprenticeships.

Those are building soft skills because that's the earn and learn model where individuals are really having to show up on time and be in a work environment, and then we can reinforce that in the classrooms. We've had several pilots that we've launched that are along the lines of, alamaps advancing Alabama apprenticeships where we're incorporating that into our class trim theory, but also, Fame programs. I don't know if anyone's from Kentucky, but the Federation of Advanced Manufacturing, Manufacturing Excellence programs, where students are really disciplined on things that their safety protocols, it's all those things that that's part of their their common daily activities that building a lot of these soft skills into the program. One thing that we've done, it was part of an adult education product. But for years, we talked ready to work.

And it was hardly dated, business and industry in some parts of the state would almost run you out of town because they didn't want it. So, after the pandemic coming out of the pandemic, we developed a product called Ace, Alabama Career. And the idea of that is it can be delivered in person. It can be delivered in a hybrid model or or fully, asynchronous from the standpoint of, how the modality is for teaching it. But it's modular based and some of the things I had to write them down because I knew I'd forget them.

But these this was feedback from business and industry that we heard that wasn't part of rated to work, digital literacy and financial literacy. We incorporated those as modules. We got into workplace etiquette. We were at we've added modules that's, math for work that was one of the things that industry told us that they needed. Workplace Safety.

We actually try to incorporate an OSHA ten hour in that course that those individuals, they walk away with an OSHA ten card, and a lot of cases that will allow them to walk in a facility for a job. We've incorporated, conflict resolution in the workplace, how to deal with problems at the workplace, in the workplace. And then obviously the employment prep skills, how to do a resume, how to conduct interviews. And then as a stack on, we've got the work keys modules that we can stack onto that. We've had success with this, and so there's another entity in the state through the Department of Commerce that's part of it and you'll get this one that you know who I'm talking They're part of their recruitment effort of business and industry in in the state, and they do pre employment and pre job training.

And we had a large OEM who came into the state, our latest one, I won't call the name, but they needed to hire about three thousand individuals. So they were running, and they were production line entry level jobs. They were running those people through, that they prescreened, they run them through the training, and the ones that were not making it through and they weren't hiring had to stay out of line for twelve months and to go back, go get back in line, but you can't reapply for twelve months. Well, that's terrible. So we we looked at and worked with them, and we incorporated this ACE product, and we We did assessments on the individuals as they were going through the pre employment training to figure out what were their gaps? What were the deficiencies? And then we we had a chance to capture them on the backside and run them through the elements of Ace.

We've seen a lot of success with that. In fact, it's one of our very successful programs, and we did that through adult education. Another thing that we're doing is, we have created the ACCS Alabama Community System Innovation Center, and we've been developing skills for success courses. And it's it's the credential. It's the short term rapid non credit credential.

But the way we put those together, it's not what Keith says that that industry needs. We pull tasks for some business ministry get together, and they tell us what they need. Some of the common things that we have heard, especially when outward facing businesses, fiber optics technician, for example, Those fiber optics technicians are gonna interact with their customers. Customer service training has been huge in terms of requests that we incorporate that into the training. We have, I was trying to think of another example.

Well, we we're in the process of putting together customer service training and call center training because we have some call centers. And we've heard it from multiple com multiple companies that want to use this training. They want us to build in an understanding of empathy do you put yourself in the place of that person who's on the other line? So we are looking to embed a lot of those things in the training that we are putting together now and in the future. In Nevada, we're looking at the Nevada future of learning network. And, specifically soft skills, what we've been calling them durable skills.

Alright? As long as we've been a society, communication, working in teams, all of those pieces, and moving forward are important, but we as educators have not been intentional and explicit with everyone on how we're teaching those skills, and then also the students realizing that they are working on those collaborative school skills. They may not agree on something. And so how do we build relationships? How do we listen to each other? All of those pieces. We've pulled together business and industry to build out our portrait of a learner. You can find that on our our website as well.

It is been a huge shift because people go, well, where's math? And where's science? And where's your ELA? It is all still there, but we're pulling out those pieces that are intentional when our students graduate and it's something that we share the time and you're you have a new neighbor in your neighborhood. Do you ask them what their ACT score is? Is that what, you know, what they got on? Back when they're in eighth grade? No. You wanna know that they're a good neighbor, that if they have a dog, they're gonna pick up after their dog. They're gonna pull their trash cans in, right? Those types of things. And so how do we create a society moving forward? And how are we intentional and explicitly calling out those pieces? So a lot of, and I work with, my colleague in Alabama as well, Antonio and California, I would say not just in Nevada, but nationally, how are we struct restructuring education thinking about personalized competency based learning, doing that time shift as well, not how much time our students spend in a seat.

But what is it that they know? What are they able to do? Can they articulate? Can they go out into a community and build relationships and build a workforce that we all want to be proud of in the United States. Heather, can I just add something to what you said? Cause I think I was most formally just my last job six months ago. I was provost and chief academic officer at Western Governors University. Which is a large competency based university. And one of the things you said in your question was, you know, we're moving to micro credentials, and are we losing the off skills that we systematically develop in more traditional learning experiences, we don't systematically develop them in more traditional learning experiences, we certainly don't measure them.

Many, in many cases, students in their freshman sophomore year are stuck in very large classes that are incredibly didactic and it's about memorizing stuff and showing that you can memorize stuff. And even when they get in those upper level classes, in many cases, The soft skills are assumed, and they probably are. They probably are learning a lot of soft skills, but it's not It's not assessed explicitly, and those learners don't have a sense of the currency of those skills either. So I think one of the great things about micro credentials, and I hate false dichotomies, but I don't think there is a I hate them. But one of the one of the one of the great thing about about micro credentials is that is that they are generally competency base because they're coming out of industry and we've heard a lot of the things here which is industry job task analysis says students need these skills, and they are often soft skills as well as hard skills.

So it's sort of forcing a push to our competency based education, which I think is really important in this in this conversation. So that gets to some work that we're doing across the University of Louisiana system that goes exactly to that point. Folks, this isn't new. The thirteenth century people would gather on the banks of the Saint River and Paris to listen to lectures on philosophy to to learn about mathematics and mathematical theories. Why? Because they knew that education was the path to social mobility and quality of life.

I believe we do a disservice sometimes as educators talking about the pathway to a job. And in Louisiana, so much of our industry or so much of our economy is based on petroleum. And we spend a lot of time training people for petroleum jobs. And we had one of the greatest renaissance in oil and gas in the in two thousand ten to two thousand and twenty. Let me tell you what happened to go from Mexico.

We produced forty percent more product measured in barrels of oil over that decade. And we worked forty percent fewer man hours. Industry is working to boost profitability. They wanna reduce the cost of labor. They wanna automate.

They wanna be safe. And if we're only producing students that know how to do a task and not how to approach life and work, and civil discourse. So this kinda came to a crystallization for me. I was visiting with a new large digital, technology company came to New Orleans. And I said, listen, I wanna talk to you about our computer science programs and our nation leading cybersecurity programs, and all these things.

They said, yes, great. We wanna hear about that, but we wanna interview your music majors. Because we can teach them the technology in a matter of weeks. We can't tell them how to work as part of a team, where your individual success is totally dependent on the success of the organization as a whole. But music majors get that.

And I thought I was thinking, how do we then how are we assessing How are we measuring that? How are we doing that with purpose? And we've launched led by faculty with academic leaders from all nine of our institutions, a core competency initiative. So that every degree that we offer, whether it's in dance theater or if it's in cybersecurity or if it's in biomedical engineer, You're gonna get the discipline specific knowledge skills and ability to go with that, but you're also gonna get the five core competencies that undergird every degree we have, creative and critical thinking. Effective communication, cultural competence. How do you work with people that come from a different belief system, a different background, a different culture, different life experiences, And yet, your success is tied together, your mutual success. I've got a brother-in-law from Gaita on Louisiana.

How many of y'all been to Gaita on Louisiana? He works on an oil rig right now with a team from Indonesia and a team from China in Saudi Arabia. You think he's developed from cultural competence along the way? Yeah. He's had to cultural competent resilience. Adaptable resilience is absolutely key. Self reflective awareness.

We have this this problem with people that know everything, and they're so certain in their wrongness about these things. And it is a political tool because listen, if I could tell you something that you want to believe to be true, you're gonna hold it as the gospel truth. And if I tell you something that it conflicts with what you want to believe to be true, you process it in the same part of your brain that process as pain signals. So what happens when you're feeling pain? If you put your hand on a hot stove, you don't rationalize while your hand is hurting. You you stop it as quickly as possible.

When you're presented with a piece of information that hits you in that same piece of your brain, you dismiss it as a myth. As a hoax. As vaccines are gonna give you blood clots. And it's a political weapon. Pardon my French.

The bullshit around diversity equity inclusion we're hearing in different states. There is nothing more important in this country today then people don't understand diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and how everybody has a seat at the table. And we as educators cannot walk away from that conversation. We've gotta be preparing students to work in that new world where they're working with people that think about things differently and how that's an advantage and how it's in a life enhancer. So I get thank you.

I I get I get passionate about this because we're not just developing people for jobs. We're developing people for economic vitality to have self determination over their economic and their social futures. And that requires us to develop these soft skills, these core competencies. And at the same time, with these opportunities that emerge where you have to have a very specific set of knowledge, modules like with Coursera, and we're developing a system wide partnership with Coursera so that you're able to do both. It is a false dichotomy.

It takes both. Thank you. Can can I just say one thing on that? I mean, just, sorry, it's just it also is this almost disruptive thing you do. And I was just seeing what can we do as human beings as that can outsmart AI? I really wanted to work on that one. And I think it's it it really is this this space because one of the things I taught my students was and it's something you should do with students.

How do you manage your teacher? It's a completely different way rather than that the behavior management schemes always or about the teacher, managing the students. But how because in the management of your of the teacher in those conflict scenarios that you might have, you actually, in the end, disrupt the normal way because what you're actually doing is it's the emotional intelligence that you're really, you're dealing with. Yeah? So a teacher screams at you at the in the classroom. You're gonna scream back in that power dynamic. No.

What's about what about manipulating the teacher back towards you? You know. And I am we did this once in in in that manipulation. That's right. We did. With this.

We did this in a high school and the teachers hated it because and I I remember one point I we were doing this program. We we we call it the giving it taking in the working skill. Yeah. And students had to learn all of that. And then I saw her, Marcia.

She was outside the principal's office and I said, Marcia, you know, what are you doing out there? He said, sir, I got confused with the giving and the taking and working it out skills. So I just told this teacher to fuck off. So but at least she tried, you know. Can I Can I speak just for a moment? What before we leave this topic? I'm gonna speak for the robots just a little bit here. So one of the things that I think we are another false dichotomy I think is generative AI is good or it's bad.

Right? And I do think, so we have had, at Coursera over the last couple months, some prototypes of these generative AI coaches inside of courses that are bound to coursera content, content. So they're not bound to the entire internet. They're bound to coursera and which is represents a lot of great thinkers and universities and employers. And what I think is we've I've had to just saw a presentation on this yesterday is that students being able to have just in time personalized contextualized conversation with a gen AI powered coach is actually increasing their velocity of curiosity around the content. Because it takes them it takes them out of just watching that video and taking notes about what that person is saying.

And it gives us them an opportunity to ask questions. Not only about conceptually I don't get that, but also like how does this relate to me in my job or in the place that I live or the job that I might wanna do, or how does this relate to anything? And to be able to have those conversations all the time is radically increasing learner engagement in that in that learning experience. So that just in time personalized contextualized piece that goes hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder with the work that the teacher is doing in that classroom around community, and, is just, I think, really powerful. So I don't want us to sort of, you know, just toss out the robots before we figure out how they can help us in our educational endeavor. Do you wanna do you want final thoughts on that one or do you wanna go to the next one? Free to go to the next one.

We can go to the next one. So I love this conversation so much. I think these insights in this conversation, leads to such optimism. Right? In Salt Lake City, there's a news channel that has a a recurring series called Crisis in Education. Right? They're not looking at the positive aspects of these emerging trends.

They're not look they're they're really looking for the negative aspect of it. I think we're bombarded by that a lot. And I I wanna make sure that you know, as we have these conversations, I get excited about solving these challenges. I get excited about looking at it and, you know, being called out and say, you know what? You kinda made a misstep there and said, that those are being measured. They're not being measured.

They're just taking we assume they have them. Right? It's important that we've gotta we've gotta build that into the process. But, We were also, you know, hit with these these kind of catastrophic headlines around the enrollment cliff. You know, the very dramatic enrollment cliff that's gonna hit in the US in twenty twenty five, you know, the our inability to close the, the learning gap, you know, the learning loss from COVID, things like that. I think, you know, this group has some very optimistic approaches around that.

But what what does the next five, ten years hold. And maybe Lindsay can start with that. But but, you know, we've we've hit this kind of most most provocative changing time and education. Does it get easier? Do we get used to the pace of change? What do you see? Well, What I will say is, from the what we're seeing at the district, k through twelve level in California, in particular, and I think this is a national trend, of course. The impacts of students returning from COVID back to school, and those students who are not returning back to school.

And why are they not returning? And a lot of the reasons stated actually we're alluded to up here of a lack of, sense of belonging, a lack of, feeling like they are seen also. And so really thinking about how do we support our students, meet them where they're at, also to be able to really shift, the way that we're providing services and supports you can't take a textbook and teach students the soft skills through a textbook. You get that through humanistic connection between a teacher. And so the other big challenge that we are facing, again, in California, and of course, national trend is, the educator workforce shortage. And so really navigating and thinking about how are we going to ensure that we have, equipped caring teachers in the classroom to be there for our kids.

And so one, anecdote I wanted to share with this group is that, the California County superintendents have had the unique opportunity to partner within structure over this past year. And, so us coming from k through twelve education, looking at one of our partners from the industry and helping each other see and approach a shared problem of practice, but in different ways has been really, really interesting conversations. And the area that we're focusing on is the educator workforce. And so California has a, pathway to help, folks who are in the, classified, status moved towards having a a full credential. And it's been one of the, brightest pathways for helping, to increase our educator workforce, also thinking about supporting adults who make a change in how they want to and what they want with their career goals.

And so when we think about lifelong learning and supporting that approach as well, this program is a really bright example. Thank you. I think we share a lot of common sentiment about what the future looks like. I think for us, and again, I I go back to what's at task for me and our state, and our system is that how do we continue to address, the skills gaps that we've got, I agree with you. We're not just training for an occupation or job or training for careers, or training for the opportunities for families to, to better themselves.

The idea of that, whether it's a four credit pathway or a nine credit pathway way, it's lifelong learning, and it's continued upskilled. If you have a job, it's incumbent worker training to continue to upskill to remain competitive, where we are with business and industry, you're right. That's about productivity. It's about the bottom line. And bottom line sometimes means that people aren't part of that process or those improvements that the company is trying to implement, but they have to take into consideration, and we have to take into consideration.

For every individual who's in the workforce and actively engaged in the workforce, we gotta keep those individuals in the workforce, and that means if they're running out of skill, or they're under skilled? How do we figure out how to do that? The other part is the hard part. And that's for Alabama, the forty three percent who's not actively participating in the workforce. And how do you motivate that population to get them encouraged? A big part of what we're going to focus on is meeting them where they are. We're gonna lean on the, nonprofits and the faith based faith based organizations in our communities because those are trusted resources And hopefully over time, the people that aren't in the labor force, you know, we can put all the social media posts we want to out there about what we do at our colleges. They're not looking at it.

They don't identify with us. So I think for us, it's going to take a different grassroots effort to connect with the nontraditional student. And I think for us, again, there was some light cast data that says that, every year, there's three point six million graduating seniors, But there's ninety six million Americans with a high school diploma, no post secondary education. So we've gotta look at, you know, how do we there's a short term gain to this and a long game, and we gotta learn how to play both of those to fix where we are from my perspective in terms of where we are with the workforce and the skills gaps. I'm optimistic about the future.

I think that, one of the things that we've got to look at in the education sphere though is we've got to go up stream all the time, I think. Some of the things that we're facing at the higher ed level and, you know, tend to be have their roots back down to, you know, prime we call it primary school, young with the younger children. And I think that we I mean, in the UK, we we we're we're we're we're quite happy, recently because even though it's England and we're meant to be good at reading and we meant to know English English language. We were really bottom. We were in fact, I think the US was slightly ahead of us at one point.

But recently, we've actually become we're number three in the world for for for reading. And we're now ahead. I think we're just ahead of of Finland. You know, they've got nothing else to do out there, but so they just need us to read. But, but but but one of the things that boosted our kind of thing up the league tables was the use of phonics in the reading thing.

Now, I'm I'm up for holds. I don't and I'm not political on this. I I go out either way with it. Which method do you wanna use? But one of the things about using that method to boost up the reading was that it's the key, I think, to where the children who are of now post COVID, we can't find them. A lot of them can't read, and a lot of them find the curriculum hard to access.

So it's it's it's that kind of tension that we've that we've had. So we think that by getting the literacy right and getting the the that that reading correct, particularly for ethnic minority groups, being able to read is I think that that that that that that ability in there. So I I think I think we we can crack it, but one of the things is I think we gotta go back to very bland, boring traditional ways of just working. Which is opening up a book or a tablet or whatever, sitting down and actually reading. I mean, that's where we gotta start.

We can't move from that thing where However far we go, wherever a ai takes us. It always has to come back. Because at the end of the day, you gotta read the ai, you know. And if you haven't got literacy, how you gotta read it, you know, so we we we always at that point where we can't run from it. We can hide.

We can't run from those basic things. Alright. Learning learning to read. Yeah. Right? Reading to learn.

So as we're I'm really excited about all of the competency based learning that is transpiring, through various tools, as well as personalized, making sure that we are capturing our students park that they see themselves into the future? What are their interests? How they can move forward? Removing time is, something that we're moving forward as a state, not just currently actually individual school districts can move in that direction. And we're providing them the supports to be able to do that because it's a we have a long history of seat time, and it's not necessarily the children that have a hard time with moving away from the hundred and eighty days. It's the adults. And so how do we get to, work with our constituents? Parents, teachers as well, administrators, the whole entire that is used to a hundred and eighty day calendar moving away from that. I'm really optimistic that this is the time that we can can do that.

I love that. So awesome. I just last quick thing for me, I just I think it's going to be more competency based, our future I think it's going to be more personalized and contextualized due to AI. I think it's going to be less less attached to time and seat time. And I think it's going to be less bound by age because AI is going to radically disrupt work.

Forever. And our sense of like front loading our educational system into the to the time when students are young, which is very important. And then stopping by the time they get to eighteen or twenty two, that is that's going to be a thing of the past. And so sort of this boundless education and lifelong learning, I I think is it's it's in its moment, and it's it's gonna grow into the future with all of us. I love this conversation.

I wanna keep having this conversation for the next several hours. Unfortunately, that is our time. So I wanna thank the panel again. Your insight has been incredible. Please, yes.

Yeah. I will probably be reaching out to you for, you know, to be on the podcast and do things like that because that your insights really are incredible. And so I thank you very much. Oh, let me give you Oh, I was gonna say, we all we made it through without anybody falling off the stage. And then Marty goes, let me go ahead and give you that so you can scan that for your code.

But, yes, truly insightful. This has been amazing, and and we will have follow-up conversations. Thanks everybody.