ELI 2018, Day 3

The final day of ELI covered Universal Design in Learning (UDL) and what Artificial Intelligence and Robotics may mean for higher education, our profession and the future.

Embracing challenges in UDL

Oakland University brought some excellent points to the discussion on creating an environment for Universal Design in Learning and where it creates some conflict with following recommendations for accessibility.

In particular, you want to remove barriers to learning and increase access, which means phrasing your approach as a social justice issue for all rather than a legal requirement for a few may be more convincing for many faculty.

They have seen evidence of increased student success and retention because of increased access opportunity and have created online videos both to make it easier for faculty to get started and student-created videos to show faculty the barriers students encounter when their course is not UDL structured.

Where the conflict with ADA compliance becomes visible is in the need to close-caption all video content made available to all students - if we want to give out students choices to access the material then we need to make sure this is all captioned, but that takes additional time that we often do not have.

We also need to remember to give our students some guidance -- they do not always know that there are different ways to access and thus learn materials and may not know the best way for them to learn.

CAST is another good resource for all things UDL.

What AI and robotics may mean to our professions and education - Diane Oblinger

The final keynote reminded us how technology, in particular AI and robotics, is changing the job world at amazing speed, and we need to take this into consideration at all levels of education.  Many of the current existing jobs will no longer exist in a few years, including such professions as stock brokers (you can already trade online, so why need people who are proven not to be as expert as they claim).

Elliq

Robots and AI will not be able to replace the critical thinking connected to ethics, but they will be able to provide social comfort for, for example, the single elderly -- see as an example Elliq, an Israeli product that interacts with older people, encouraging them to engage in activities, reminding them of tasks to keep their lives structured.

Other areas where AI is making major impact is: 

• knowledge curation
• online mediation
• online legal advice
• online medical advice and connecting within medical community
• job placement that is more fair

By 2030, many of our current professions will have gone through radical relearning because the technology will have introduced new dimensions that we cannot quite see yet. How nimble is higher education to adjust curricula, degrees, or certifications to account for such changes?  As Oblinger reminded us, what used to be called soft skills will become even more important, the core skills of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and life long learning.