exist mediumFuturist Jim Carroll writes: “In 1900, knowledge doubled approximately every 100 years. By 1945, this rate accelerated to doubling every 25 years, and by 1982, doubling every 13 months. Currently, between 2020 and 2025, some estimates suggest that knowledge will double every 12 hours.” And that’s just the time between breakfast and dinner!
Unfortunately, we graduate students with degrees and certificates that, once upon a time, we believed to have current and ongoing expertise in a specific field. It lasted a lifetime. This was true at the turn of the 20th century, but it is certainly not true now in the age of artificial intelligence. As we continue to accelerate the creation of new information, how do we ensure that students in degree or certificate programs are up to date with the latest information they need for the ever-changing workplace?
The speed of change in my field of communication technology was already evident 30 years ago when I was a communications professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield. While teaching my graduate seminar “New and Emerging Technologies in Electronic Media,” I was challenged to have my students identify new knowledge and information in order to write literature reviews and research reports. I create a curated reading list service for students taking seminars each semester. Some of the most dedicated students asked me at the end of the semester if I could keep them on the listserv for the coming semester so they could continue to keep up.
When it became available, I turned to a new online technology developed by Pyra Labs called weblogs or “blogs.” (Pyra was later acquired by Google and became the basis for blogger.com.) As a result, Select Reading moved to the then-new World Wide Web and became available in most places around the world.
My primary purpose in developing the blog is to provide students with links to key articles on important emerging topics in electronic media. However, like much online material, blogs serve a variety of purposes around the world: business leaders subscribe to keep up with the latest releases, faculty at other institutions subscribe to get updated resources for their own courses, and enterprising students elsewhere find that they are a good source of new material for their own similar seminars without having to delve into journal guidelines.
For my own purposes, I began sharing this concept at national conferences, such as the Annual Distance Learning Conference in 2007. I call this practice “endless semesters,” where students continue to receive updates on course material after they complete the course. Since I’m already blogging for my current course, there’s no additional work to share with others via the blog URL. This approach provides a low- or no-budget, proven approach where professors can share links to emerging findings, theory, practice, and applications in any field.
As I write this article, this blog, which has experienced great growth and is now named “Professional, Continuing and Online Education” by UPCEA, is about to surpass 3 million page views.
It is also a two-way medium that allows readers to comment on and discuss the shared material. Therefore, I believe that a version of this carefully curated reading list and related podcasts can serve as a backbone in addressing the issue of updating subsequent new material for degree program graduates and certificate program completers. The addition of regular synchronous meetings can provide further professional learning opportunities in subject areas by inviting guest speakers to address important developments in practice or in anticipation.
Some larger universities offer continuing education specifically to alumni, such as Purdue for Life, which offers more than 200 online or hybrid programs. NYU offers $15 Alumni Academy professional certificates and courses through its School of Professional Studies. The University of Michigan offers more than 100 alumni continuing education online courses free of charge to alumni. Other universities offer alumni discounts on continuing and professional study programs, such as Brown University’s Lifelong Learning and Travel Program, and Duke University offers a variety of programs and learning opportunities to alumni.
These are admirable initial efforts that provide graduates and certificate completers with the opportunity to keep up with a rapidly changing technological environment, advances in artificial intelligence augmentation, and the evolving, complex social context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are no longer judged by what we teach the semester before earning a degree or certificate online or on campus, but by how we support learners as they enter the workplace. These professions are likely to change radically over time—some will disappear, replaced by agent artificial intelligence, embodied robotics, and yet-to-be-imagined technologies.
Therefore, we need to continue to increase our efforts to ensure that our learners are not abandoned by employers because of a lack of preparation for the changes brought about by the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Sadly, over the past decade we have graduated and certified countless learners who today face the problem of lacking the vision and skills needed to advance in their career fields.
Who at your university is leading efforts to ensure free or affordable continuing professional learning opportunities for all learners so they can successfully advance their careers in the emerging Fourth Industrial Revolution? Are you ready to support your students with a custom blog as a lifeline for updating their knowledge and skills? This cannot wait another semester, another year; we are certifying learners who are leaving college unprepared for the careers that will emerge this year and in 2027.
