May 10, 2024
By Ellen Wagner
Welcome to the New Learning Frontier. This is a new blog, a site for ideas in progress. It’s my personal writing laboratory for testing them out, out loud. Thank you for sharing this metaphorical road trip with me.
Generative AI- powered writing tools have sparked entire new fields of inquiry as we all begin to understand their power. It is clear to anyone engaged in the frenzy of early AI planning and adoption that it will be essential to understand the science driving Gen AI’s evolution. But we’re going to need a lot more science than just Gen AI science to figure out next steps for learning innovation. We are going to need more scientific knowledge from scientists and scholars from all disciplines to make sure that we have evidence shaping our attitudes and supporting our decisions, across the board. And then we ALSO need to make it easier for designers and engineers to take scientific findings and apply them in real-life practical setting and solutions, so the science of how people learn can be used to help more people learn better in real life.
Chad Udell called it the “Shock of the New” – innovation as catalyst for reframing old conversations to look for new answers. Rather than simply being mesmerized by emerging technology innovations, being driven to realize the promises that emerging smart technologies might hold for solving learning and performance problems may ultimately have more impact.
We might find that there are tremendous opportunities to leverage AI to streamline operational silos and move barriers out of the way. Maybe what we used to call “silos” are really just intersections to be navigated.
Really, there’s no better time than now for new conversations on today’s new learning frontier.