Extended Education

Webinars

With webinars, UM Extended Education shares insights from experts on technology, trends, the labour market, lifelong learning, continuing education, and more.

Homecoming 2024 Webinar Latest webinar

As part of UM Homecoming, Extended Education presented a free one-hour webinar for UM alumni and our university community.

Futures of education: equity, inclusion, and lifelong learning

This webinar explored the futures of education that prioritize equity and inclusion. UM Extended Education discussed our newly created Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (EDIA) program, strategies to support diverse learners, including international students, and ways to integrate Indigenous perspectives into educational frameworks. This session provided valuable insights and practical strategies for creating a more inclusive and equitable learning environment for all.

Featuring

Robin Attas, Project Lead, University of Manitoba Equity Diversity Inclusion Accessibility (EDIA) credential
Carlos Miranda García, Personal Counsellor, Access and Aboriginal Focus Programs, Extended Education
Vicki Hatt, Instructor, Academic Language Support, Extended Education
Ogadimma Onyike, Graduate, Applied Business Management, Extended Education
Moderated by Ute Kothe, Dean, Extended Education

Watch the video

Q&A

Q: Holism and a great student experience is not recognized as important by some administration-types; you are there to get a degree within a time period - that’s it. Any comments to improve PSI organizational culture?

A: In general, the desire for a holistic approach to learning is not universal at post-secondary institutions – not just among administrators, but among instructors and learners as well. Often, a promising approach is combining individual efforts with broader processes and change management strategies. For instance, an instructor can change their syllabus or teaching approaches, but can also advocate at the department level to improve wrap-around learner supports related to wellness, basic needs, or other aspects. And it’s important to celebrate the successes we already have. The Access Program is a fantastic example of how a holistic approach to student learning can meet the needs of learners, and in a small way, contribute to institutional redress for the harms of colonization.

Q: How can we do a better job of orienting our students before they come into the learning experience on things like academic writing requirements (APA etc.) and Microsoft office tools and other basic skills to prepare them for the experience - kind of like a U1 for domestic program students out of high school?

A: As instructors, it’s important to recognize the hidden skills that any learning task might include. Academic writing requirements, specific technologies, and other skills like use of UM Learn and time management are often required for learning, but are not directly taught. Instructors can seek out ways to teach these skills directly or point learners towards campus resources like UM Libraries and the Academic Learning Centre that can help. Instructors should also be mindful of how many hidden skills or technologies they are incorporating. For instance, during the pandemic, many instructors added new online tools to enhance their remote teaching, but it meant that learners suddenly had to learn to use 10 new apps to succeed in all their courses. Finally, instructors teaching in the same program might consider coordinating their teaching to ensure that these skills are addressed at key points across the curriculum such as in the first course of a three-course micro-certificate.

Q: In course design, how do you ensure you’re including perspectives that are not your own in the course, but aren’t speaking for groups you don’t belong to?

A: One basic approach is to share perspectives not your own with credit to those whose perspectives they are. Robin Attas often uses a phrase like “It’s my understanding that” to start. Carlos Miranda Garcia did a great job during this webinar at naming the teachings he’d received while also recognizing that there are other teachings that are different. For example, noting the order of mind, body, heart, spirit as something that comes from what is called medicine wheel, medicine hoop, or medicine circle teachings. It’s even better to include perspectives directly from the people who’ve experienced them. Review course materials including readings, videos, etc. to ensure diverse author identities and the perspectives shared. And, where possible, invite guest speakers, being sure to compensate them appropriately.

Q: I like the idea of pursuing a holistic approach. Which programs do you recommend for shelter support, food support, and kids’ support?

A: Here is a great list of supports specific to the University of Manitoba: https://umanitoba.ca/student-supports

Instructors may also be interested in additional ideas on how to include these types of supports in your syllabus. See the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning’s syllabus template resource: https://umanitoba.ca/centre-advancement-teaching-learning/support/syllabus-toolkit.

Q: Perhaps instructors should be brought into the student orientation process. Would that be possible?

A: Each term, Extended Education offers a detailed three-hour student orientation with the goal of providing students with insight on academic and social supports, so they have holistic support from the beginning. At the same time, students can engage with each other and the support staff in Extended Education. Recently, we have invited instructors to voluntarily attend the orientation session – both to support the students and for an opportunity to get to know their students. Extended Education is open to suggestions for including specific topics and engaging instructors even further in student orientation.

Previous webinars

Lifelong Learning Webinars 2022 - 2024

AI and the Age of Augmentation: A Panel Discussion on the Future of AI in Lifelong Education - 2024

Unpacking the Ethical Implications of Bias and Data Use in Generative AI Models - 2024

The AI Horizon of Higher Education: emergent tools and policy considerations - 2024

AI and the Academy: Transformative Learning in Higher Education – a conversation with Sal Khan - 2024

Lifelong Learning and Generative AI: Unpacking ChatGPT’s Potential - 2023

Lifelong Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - 2023

Description

In this webinar, Kelly Shiohira, Executive Manager: Research and Data Ecosystems at JET Education Services, joined Rod Lastra, Acting Dean, UM Extended Education for a conversation about Lifelong Learning in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Kelly shared her thoughts on how AI has influenced higher education and how we should respond to the potential future implications.

Diagrams from the discussion

The Difference between Non-Computational AI, Rule based AI and Machine Learning

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The architecture of a generative AI model

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Rise of the Machine Age: Act II - Transformative Global Impacts of Machine Learning and Digital Transformation - 2022

Description

This webinar brought together a panel of experts that will address the impacts of AI on the future of work, sustainable urban spaces, and higher education. The panel provided perspectives on potential challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

Featuring

Kari Kumar, Associate Dean (Academic), UM Extended Education
Jason Shields, Assistant Professor, Interior Design, University of Manitoba
Briana Brownell, Founder and CEO, Pure Strategy Inc.
Rod Lastra, Acting Dean, UM Extended Education

Q&A

Do you think AI can replace other interdisciplinary fields such as graphic design and painting and would that risk real art and human design in general? Or would AI be the new technology for designers to learn?

Artificial Intelligence generated art has made some impressive progress in the past ten years. At the moment, many would agree that AI-art could be classified into two domains: i) digital technologies that extend human creativity and ii) digital technologies that generate art using machine learning algorithms which are generally devoid of direct human influence. The former has enormous potential to augment human creativity where the technology employed is simply a tool. The latter has been used to generate commercial art (e.g., logos). We are decades away from creating a digital Pablo Picasso or Andrés Segovia. Given that generalized AI is not even a reality it is unlikely creative endeavours will be under serious threat. At the moment, creative human-like AI processes have not even achieved child-like cognitive abilities. It all depends on how we define art. If, in the visual arts, it only means rendering pleasurable landscapes or portraits, then I suppose AI could supplant the art-by-numbers pieces that adorn the hallways and entrances of hotels. Truly authentic art is meant to challenge and serve as a reflection of modern society, thus as long as society doesn’t change the valuation of art then authentic artists have little to be worried about (at least for the time being).

It's a completely different story in professions such as graphic design where AI is being put to use in multiple areas. One great example is the testing of image ‘uniqueness’ associated with high-profile marketing campaigns and the use of consumer data to determine effective visual messaging (i.e., market intelligence). AI is also being used to create commercial art with surprising success. This has been taken one step further with the merger of large language models, specifically, ‘generative pre-trained transformer 3’ (GPT3) models which can mimic human writing in a manner that is targeted to a specific audience (i.e., narrative wedging). What this means for marketing is that design firms could generate logos and targeted communications with little input from designers. Related to this is text-to-image generation, which is a powerful example of AI-generated ‘art’ and has nearly limitless commercial applications (as well as some dubious ethical issues).

For those interested in trying out AU-powered natural language models check out Rytr which uses AI to generate complex phrases based on simple sets of themes and a set of keywords here: https://rytr.me/?via=home1

Sofian Audry recently (2021) published a great book titled Art in the age of machine learning. For those looking to learn more about the history and future trajectory of AI and art, this is worth a read.

Finally, there are a number of recent papers published on the topic of AI and marketing that may be of interest. Here are the references:

Mariani, M. M., Perez‐Vega, R., & Wirtz, J. (2022). AI in marketing, consumer research and psychology: a systematic literature review and research agenda. Psychology & Marketing, 39(4), 755-776.

Wisetsri, W. (2021). Systematic analysis and future research directions in artificial intelligence for marketing. Turkish Journal of Computer and Mathematics Education (TURCOMAT), 12(11), 43-55

What do you guys think about Google Imagen AI's recent breakthrough in generating life-like artificial video? What implications does this have for the future?

Text-to-image generation (e.g., OpenAI’s DALL-E, Meta’s Make-a-Scene and Google’s Imagen) creates photo-realistic content based on any string of user-defined descriptive natural language text such as “blue, flying, whales, in a red sky”. The algorithm can generate high-resolution images in seconds. The technology is still relatively new but holds huge potential (e.g., education, law enforcement) and poses serious legal challenges when it comes to privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. An extension of this is text-to-video where individually rendered images are stitched together. At the moment, AI-generated videos and images are relatively easy to differentiate from real content for those that possess the analytic tools to decipher such AI rendered content. That said, it can further perpetuate the amplification of deceptive content in social media. Generative AI image content is yet another example of the rate of technological change outpacing societal laws, rights, and ethics.

Where do you draw a line between constructive and destructive applications of AI and what's the role of ethical regulations?

The boundary between constructive and destructive is fuzzy, this is what makes ethical regulation so difficult to define and implement. We saw this in action during the pandemic, where bio-monitoring at the population level was critical to track the contagion of the virus. Similar technologies could also be used for purposes that have less clear societal benefit. A problem is who regulates use, given that most AI-driven applications are composed of complex neural networks that are deciphering enormous quantities of unvetted data. In other words, for most of the population, including law makers, the power of AI resides within a black-box, where application is often at the frontier of cutting-edge research and innovation.

Take for example the use of geo-tracking data. AI models can utilize complex likelihood algorithms to predict highly accurate movement behavior. Such models have successfully been put to use to track illegal fishing activity in the South Pacific even after a troller turns off its tracking beacon. This has given authorities and conservation organizations the tools to combat illegal activities that have resulted in the decimation of marine ecosystems. Another example is the use of cell phone metadata to identify geo-referenced patterns of poverty. AI models have been used to triangulate regions where humanitarian aid could be most effectively targeted simply using cell phone metadata. Such AI technologies were successfully used in Togo during the midst of the COVID crisis in Western Africa as well as Uganda and Bangladesh. The benefits of these AI models are without question. That said, one can see how the use of powerful AI algorithms applied to geo-tracking data could have nefarious outcomes.

Homecoming webinars 2021 - 2023

Lifelong Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence - 2023

Description

Diagrams from the discussion

The Difference between Non-Computational AI, Rule based AI and Machine Learning

View full image

The architecture of a generative AI model

View full image

The Canadian Skills Agenda - What university alumni should know about the future of work - 2022

Let's talk lifelong learning - 2021

Description

As part of UM Homecoming, Extended Education presented a free one-hour webinar for UM alumni and our university community. Since you completed your studies at UM, the professional world has been changing and will continue to change. Learn more about lifelong learning opportunities for you and your team, offered by your alma mater.

Our Extended Education experts talked lifelong learning.

Featuring

David Mandzuk, Acting Dean, UM Extended Education
Rod Lastra, Associate Dean (Academic), UM Extended Education
Paul Jenkins, Manager, Program Delivery, UM Extended Education

Q&A

Credential inflation, what does that mean?

Rod Lastra:

Credential inflation refers to the proliferation of credentialed programs that exceeds labour market demand. This is predicated on the notion that increasing investment toward education has a proportional and positive labour market outcome for the individual – the central tenet of human capital theory. In an era of short cycle skill-based education, there is the risk of over credentialling qualifications. The consequence is reduced “capital” worth of a credential per unit investment in education, resulting in the overqualification of an individual. As Phillip Brown pointed out in his book “The Death of Human Capital” (Brown, Lauder and Cheung 2020), inflammatory pressures can lead to a mismatch between credentialed requirements to do a job and the requirements to get a job. It is thus incumbent on Higher Education providers (e.g., University Continuing Education units) to ensure that credentialed programs have currency (i.e., meeting a need); and in the case of short cycle learning (associated with skilling), a lifespan for the program be determined in order to avoid saturating the market. This can only be done by developing a system that encourages collaboration between industry and Higher Education in the development and evaluation of programs – this is critical for credentialed programs that have direct labour market outcomes (e.g., micro-credentials).

Skills can be a broad term. How can we REALLY compare how a skill in welding versus marketing versus music can inform provincial government policy bent on reducing a skill-labour demand relationship to simplistic metrics?

Rod Lastra:

Unlike Europe or the UK (as examples), we do not have a national skills agenda strategy in Canada. As such, we do not have robust measures of qualifications and more precisely, standardized skills needs. Countries that have developed multi-state agreements related to a skills agenda are able to articulate a multinational skills qualification framework. Why is this important? To some extent this national/multinational framework removes the arbitrary nature of defining regional government lead skilling priorities – this ensures that skills not only have currency at the local level, but have value at broader scales, resulting in greater mobility to learners seeking skilling education. Thus, there is no clear answer to this question in the Canadian context. Perhaps this is where universities can play an important role; they are not only at the forefront of research and innovation, but are able to cast a national and international perspective on skills needs that emerge from collaboration with the local business sector. In doing so they can act as a scalable proxy to a national skilling agenda framework.

What are the KPIs for the state of local talent in Winnipeg? How do you measure skill levels?

Rod Lastra:

This is difficult to answer as PIs would be contingent on the level of organizational and operational maturity of a business or sector. It is also marred by confounded factors such as demographic issues (which we touched upon in our discussion); is it the lack of talent, or discrepancy in the proportionate number of working age (15-65 yrs) versus total population in the province, or both? Furthermore, within a tight labour market (where demand for labour “high job vacancies” supersedes supply “low unemployment”) conditions make it difficult for employers to find talent. Factors such as inflation can also create upward pressures on labour costs driving a wider gap between demand and supply - spiralling towards a negative feedback loop. Thus, the use of meaningful KPIs in this economy is difficult to implement and assess – at best. This is difficult to answer as PIs would be contingent on the level of organizational and operational maturity of a business or sector. It is also marred by confounded factors such as demographic issues (which we touched upon in our discussion); is it the lack of talent, or discrepancy in the proportionate number of working age (15-65 yrs) versus total population in the province, or both? Furthermore, within a tight labour market (where demand for labour “high job vacancies” supersedes supply “low unemployment”) conditions make it difficult for employers to find talent. Factors such as inflation can also create upward pressures on labour costs driving a wider gap between demand and supply - spiralling towards a negative feedback loop. Thus, the use of meaningful KPIs in this economy is difficult to implement and assess – at best.
One of the most important shifts that occurred in the past fifty years is how we define, measure and/or assess skills. Skills were self-declared abilities one would put on a CV. In the past twenty years, and more recently with the rise of the concept of micro-credentials, skills have become front and center. Many employers are now seeking proof and validation of skills attainment (often in the form of a digital credential “badge” or other alternative credential). This not only opens the door to a plethora of skills-based education programs, but for every skill there is the potential of defining the level of a skill. Adult education models certainty have defined a number of methods to develop authentic assessments of skills. Thus, going back to a previous point, this is where clear understanding of how we identify and define skills is critical. This can only be done in collaboration with industry (deciphering qualification into skills-based language). It is worth mentioning that skills (e.g., communication, collaboration, critical thinking) are embedded in formal education (e.g., undergraduate degree) but are rarely articulated. Lastly, and this last point is important, some skills can, and often should, be assessed using a competency-based education (CBE) model – where the time-in-seat model is replaced with “mastery” of content before attainment is achieved.

How do we ensure that we maintain quality of programming when there's often an urgency to deliver minimal viable products in course offerings to meet a labour market gap?

Rod Lastra:

Rapid development of “just-in-time” programs should not come at the expense of quality. University Continuing Education units which specialize in the development of skills-based education do so ensuring:
o   program concepts are well vetted using extensive consultations,
o   content is developed by experts, and
o   programs undergo frequent reviews to assess value and avoid the perils of credential inflation.

Paul Jenkins:

This is one of the burning questions of the day. How to make educational programming both responsive and efficacious represents a challenge that educators and institutions are still working hard to resolve, and there is no one universal formula. However, here are some of the key guiding considerations:

We need to clarify what, exactly, we mean when we are discussing “skills” so that learners, educators, employers, governments and the public at large know what to expect from the skills agenda. Once we have done this, we will be better able to produce a greater variety of educational and skilling programming, and in some cases that will mean producing faster, more responsive options. This will also help ensure that our programming is legible and portable. That is, both learners and employers from anywhere in Canada (and, ideally, beyond) will be able to look at a course or program and readily identify what skills are imparted, so that skills acquired in Ontario can be readily recognized and applied in B.C. or Nunavut.
We need to deepen the relationship between our tertiary education systems and industry/employers. That means, we need industry/employers to clearly and explicitly outline the skills they need, and we need our educational institutions to clearly and explicitly outline the skills they develop and impart. Employers are becoming far more articulate in expressing their needs. It is now up to universities and other institutions to respond. Improvements here will obviously help with the first point above.
While there is a new and welcome focus on and support for developing learning programs to meet skills gaps, we need to carefully measure and assess our efforts to ensure that they are effective, and that our strategies and priorities are sound. In Canada, at least, this is an area where real improvements are needed.

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University of Manitoba

Webinars

Homecoming 2024 Webinar Latest webinar

Futures of education: equity, inclusion, and lifelong learning

Featuring

Watch the video

Previous webinars

Lifelong Learning Webinars 2022 - 2024

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Presentation notes

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Presentation notes

Recommended readings

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Diagrams from the discussion

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Q&A

Homecoming webinars 2021 - 2023

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Diagrams from the discussion

Recommended readings

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Q&A

University continuing education webinars

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