Webinar: Tracey Wilen-Daugenti on How Technology is Reshaping Education, Work, and Society

Tuesday, April 17th: 

Tracey Wilen-Daugenti on How Technology is Reshaping Education, Work, and Society

From the Amazon book description:  
"Higher education in the U.S. has traditionally prepared students for work and social success, but with families, work, and society itself undergoing revolutionary change, is this preparation sufficient to develop the 21st-century workforce? This book explores how evolving family structures, new ways of balancing work and personal lives, and rapid technological advancements will transform the ways that U.S. colleges and universities develop well-educated, career-oriented citizens. Society 3.0 will help higher education providers and industry leaders understand these potentially disruptive variables and design appropriate programs and career paths for tomorrow's workers. 

Review

This webinar was interesting and not what I really expected. Daugenti's focus was primarily on learning patterns and how technology has helped increase resources for continuing educations, specifically at the collegiate level, with specific references to the University of Phoenix and how they are continuing to evolve the teaching methods to help accommodate the variety of learning types that exist. When you click on the url for the University of Phoenix, you will instantly see the push for customization to taylor to your learning styles. There was also a heavy focus on women, how society has changed and the impact on the career and education experiences.

The overall tone of the webinar was a little dry and hard to maintain interest, but this may be also because I was looking of more of a focus on how technology is reshaping education in general and not just a focus on higher education. My hope was to get a better understanding of learning patterns and how we can apply them to our classrooms, so that students are better prepared for higher education options and how they can understand their learning patterns and make decisions that will be of the greatest benefit to them. Personally I felt it was more beneficial to myself and learning all of the different options available to me and my continuing education. 

Daugenti is a wealth of knowledge and I felt like the webinar would of been more interesting if she was able just to present her work and Hargadon was a minimal participant rather than leading the questions and jumping topics. It was a good experience, however I had a different expectation of what I would get out of this topic vs. what I actually did get from it.