What I want to remember from Online Educa Berlin 2017 - OEB17

So last week I attended the oeb.global conference, which has become an annual tradition for me. This year's theme was 'Learning Uncertainty'. One week after the event, here's what I want to remember:

My pre-conference workshop "Transform Yourself" and my Barely Viable Prototype of the Stories app

It's been a few years since I hosted a pre-conference workshop myself, so I was exited to have around 20 people sign up for a session Transform (y)ourself on how we can thrive in the age of uncertainty (the theme of the conference, remember?) The answer? (which you may not like) : growing up. This session was about 'vertical development' or simply 'growing up'. It is well known since the research of Piget that children go through stages of development. Basically as a toddler the world is super simple: there is 'me' and 'not-me'. Then we start seeing more shades of grey. But development doesn't end at adulthood. There are further stages that allow us to deal with more complexity, more uncertainty and more empathy with the entities around us. The session was based on the work of prof Torbert and I highly recommend you read the HBR article on the 7 transformations of leadership.

Transform (y)ourself - vertical development from Bert De Coutere

In the first half of the session we created the stories of our own development and I created a (barely viable) prototype of an app where gaps in the stories are completed with images. I learned that it has some bugs (like the multi-lingual features), but that overall it works well to blend the physical cards with a digital story capturing app and to share those stories.

In the second half of the session we brainstormed on how we can use Vertical Development in our work. This is what we came up with:

The sessions I attended

- The opening keynote covered three very different topics. And while I couldn't see a clear link with the conference theme, all three gave me new perspectives, and that's what you want from a conference. What I mostly want to remember is the plea from Abigail Trafford on considering longevity as a business opportunity for development. We are given extra decades of life, and our education system is mostly focused on the transition between youth and the first job. What's the curriculum for 50-60 year old people to help with what Abigail calls a second adolescence?

- Living and Working Alongside AI in Everyday Life: I went to this session because I see AI as an unfolding technology that holds deep disruptive potential for our industry. Donald Clark gave an excellent overview and made the observation that the only vendors in the exhibition hall using AI did that to stop students cheating on tests. Surely there are better use cases?

- I then attended a session on nudging which was fully packed. The only problem was that it wasn't about nudging at all. The session nonetheless gave a good reality check on learning and learner engagement in corporations today. It's always good to balance sessions that proclaim a bold future and sessions that give an update on what we are actually doing on the field today (= how are we doing on what we were talking about three years ago in these conferences?).

- In the afternoon I repeated the session on Leadership for All that I did at the MidSummit in Iceland. You can find my earlier post on it here.

- The OEB debate was not conclusive this year: the audience was 50/50 split on the motion with a lot of words: The motion for debate this year is: “As the internet and social media are profoundly affecting both thinking and learning in ways that are not always beneficial, education institutions should take steps to encourage students to reduce their reliance on them”.

- The plenary on Friday morning again gave an insight on what companies are doing today. Patrick King from LinkedIn shared some data illustrating what big data companies are capturing and how they try to turn those into actionable insights. Alan Ryan from the NHS in the UK then gave an insight in his organization - arguably one of the biggest organizations in the world.

- Next I attended a workshop by the futuresschool on how to create strategic foresight around trends we are spotting. I found the process and tools they offered very useful.

- Next I enjoyed a session on chatbots and their use for education. We all know the stories about the  teaching assistant Jill Watson who was nominated for a teaching award - only, she turned out to be a chatbot. What I didn't know it took about 4 years to create the chatbot to be at this level. I did leave the session with a feeling this is an area I want to look into next year.

The three most interesting vendors

All vendors I found interesting this year were at the 'startup' alley.

- uptale.io : this Paris-based startup offers an online editor to make Virtual Reality videos into learning experiences with 40+ interactions such as questions, choices, etc.

- potential.ly : I met this startup last year already. They further developed their platform which I'd describe as feeding you adapted micro-content - adapted by an assessment. As a learner you first go through an assessment that largely measures the big 5, team roles and some other preferences, and the authoring tool then let's you filter pieces of a learning activity based on various parameters such as the assessment, learning history etc.

- 360.edia.nl : this Dutch startup provides AI interfaces for educational use - it's AI as a service. They call it 'artificial intelligent building blocks delivered as APIs', and specifically for education.

For next year

Over the years, both my own interests and the interests of the conference moved from technology to learning in general. However, there are important technology evolutions I want to keep an eye on, so next year I want to focus more on the technological aspect again. For example: what are companies doing with the xAPI standard that's out there for a few years now? How relevant is the new LTI Advantage standard? What are we really doing with VR and AR in training? How can AI-as-a-service enhance the learning process?

This is on my bucket list for 2018:

- Make prototypes of learning experiences in AI - maybe using the uptale.io platform or a similar one. 

- Get my head around how chatbots can enhance the field of leadership development

Till next year!