70% of Workers Feel Unprepared: How Instructure Is Rethinking Learning with Ryan Lufkin

Why do I need to be charged to be the expert? Someone's got to check its work. It's great at doing research It's great at being that assistant and accomplishing tasks that can be time consuming, but it's not infallible We can't trust it to that level yet. Maybe someday, but we still need to be the experts. We can't offload that to the machines This is right about now with Ryan Alford a Radcast Network production We are the number one business show on the planet with over one million downloads a month Taking the BS out of business for over six years and over 400 episodes You ready to start snapping next and cash and checks? Well, it starts right about now Hello and welcome to write about now we're always talking about what the world has going on right now in the world of business marketing Personal development. We cover the gamut ultimately, but we're here to help you get ahead Entrepreneurs executives everyone out there listing. We know you have choices Thank you for being here new data shows that about 70% of US workers feel unprepared for today's workforce That raises a bigger question is the problem education employers or how we think about skills altogether today I'm joined by Ryan Lufkin the VP of global strategy in structure He has spent years helping companies and institutions rethink how people actually become job ready And we're getting into what's broken and what needs to change Ryan welcome to write about now Awesome thanks, right? Hey Ryan and Ryan you got to get started already man. We're like brothers from another talk to me man Instructure what that word means we're the makers of canvas canvas learning management system Like this point about half of all the college students in North America and about a third of all K-12 students in North America use canvas on a daily basis in learning or all about instruction Instructures the name of the company. It's funny. You wear it. You wear a canvas shirt to Home Depot and people are like Oh, you give me flashbacks to college. You wear an instruction shirt. I was many people knows. I always like to explain that connection I did recognize that in our notes and that name. I was twitching a little bit. I'm not sure Well, it's funny you can tell all good their educators were at designing courses in canvas if they were like Oh, I love canvas or oh, I hate canvas. You're like yeah teacher probably wasn't using it right. Yeah Yes That's your point of view I guess it's probably how literate they were with technology and a lot of times It's how much support they had in what is a good online course or a good hybrid course look like I think too often especially if they learned really rapidly at the beginning of COVID our solution grew rapidly Because people had to move online and over the course of about two days You can tell the educators were given a lot of support and a lot of resources and really trained what good look like And then the ones that were kind of thrown into it without that support our goal really hasn't proved over the last five years Of that level of online learning and of course design. There's some meta talk there I and the meta of the fact that the teachers weren't prepared to use the software Appropriately and we're talking about how workers in general feel unprepared You talked about this pace of change that started in six years ago March of 2020 and that pace of change Hasn't slowed just when everybody thought oh COVID's over we can take a breath in November 30th of 2022 Open AI launched chat GPT and we got everything got turned on its head again The last read from that have been just an incredibly fast-paced evolution of how do we use this technology of a chart And so it's the seven stages of grief going through all of that We're really in the acceptance phase with AI now and how are we applying it appropriately? Study percent of workers feel unprepared. What does that really mean? We've got this kind of schism between education that in many ways is still really dealing with academic integrity idea This idea that AI is just for cheating versus businesses that are trying to figure out how we optimize our jobs with these tools In the many cases don't feel like universities are preparing them for that You've even worse than k12 when you look at k12 and there's a kind of an anti-technology and education movement going on that ignores Some of the more glaring benefits of using technology that to reach people that have Suspility challenges and rural and frankly just maybe are missing school things like that We've got to get everybody on the same page and Google announced a really great program Trying to provide free AI education to six million educators across the United States We are getting ready to release some courses around AI literacy and even the detractors Those educators that are scared of AI or double-dominance that we're not using AI Honestly taking the AI literacy course At least understand how these tools work then you understand what they're capable of And then you can actually make the more informed decision about how deeply do you want to use these tools and put you in a better position About help your students understand how to use them ethically how to use them effectively things like that If we're going to learn something for the sake of learning and for teaching ourselves how to problem solve Are these the problems that we should be solving? Do we need to learn calculus? Do we need to learn things that AI can do and we'll forcivably be around unless we all go back to the old ages Because power goes away or something or the life I go the way Are we really teaching what we should be teaching in? Why do we still need to learn the things we learned 30 years ago? I will point to what was called the strawberry conundrum Chatsubt 3.2 If you ask it how many ours were in the word strawberry it would tell you to And you'd say go back and maybe look that again and tell me how many are there and they would say that there are two Orders in the strawberry of course there's three hours in the strawberry and they could not figure out because essentially Large language models are a black box. You don't know what's going on inside there They could not figure out why it hung up on that and it wasn't until the next model 3.3 came out They fixed that that's the reason that we all need to be experts Chatsubt has a high propensity for what we would call hallucination more often it's confidently and correct What it's trying to do is give you what you've asked it for Some cases it makes things up it'll make up links sources It'll make up whole sets of information because it's just trying to give you what you want And if it doesn't find it or doesn't spend the time to find it it just kind of makes it up You don't know exactly why but when we are the experts we can double check that work and say Oh you know what that's all right And let's go back and fix it Let's not perpetuate that strawberry conundrum What's really scary is that next generation that takes that approach that you're talking about and says Well, why do I need to be charged to be the expert? Someone's got to check its work. It's great at doing research It's great at being that assistant and accomplishing tasks that can be time consuming But it's not infallible. You can't trust it to that level yet Maybe someday but we still need to be the experts. We can't offload that to the machines We're even things as simple as math is direct in black and white When I think of what you just described and I agree with it by tell people there still will be jobs Because of what you said and discernment and humanity that has to be ever laid on the top of these things There's not only just that as long with certain factual applications in the real world But when doing 10 plus 10 or a square plus b square plus c square It even at advanced levels that's fairly black and white. Are you saying that math has done wrong by JGBT? I think it's the reasoning behind it one of the things that's really important about math isn't just getting the answer It's actually having the logic and reasoning behind how do we get from here? There's a whole blooms taxonomy if you're in education You understand what blooms taxonomy is it's this skill tree There's a new blooms taxonomy that actually says okay These are the skills are going to be easily replaced by AI And these are the skills that aren't these are the human skills And they're problem solving they're creative thinking they're communication they're consensus building they're things like that And that's why to your point that we will always have jobs we will always have the ability to be so we need to be able to connect with other humans While we let AI do the more mundane tasks and in some cases yeah, it might get math wrong It might get very convoluted and accountant the idea of an accountant giving up control of their books or understanding the formulas And letting them run without being able to double check that is scary And not every job needs advanced math if we're marketing I don't use advanced math on a daily basis But there are occasions when it's important to have that reasoning that logic If math is still fairly critical learning and important to keep in the curriculum What are the things that should be changing then? I don't want to pretend that what we were doing 30 years ago But I do hear some of the subjects and some of the stuff and I'm like that's the same thing Someone with a higher pay grade smarter than me knows if that's what they need to be learned And I'm like that is not real life applicable When does K-12 become more preparatory for the real world versus the standard topics that we've always taught Because it was important 30, 40, 50 years ago that we did that That's where the tension especially in K-12 comes right now There's this kind of undercurrent of anti-technology going on But then our STEM scores are going in the toilet How do we address STEM if science, technology, and math Science, technology, and engineering math How do we do that if we're not going to actually leverage technology and the teaching of those things Meanwhile, you've got a group that's pushing that we should be teaching cursive again And why are we teaching cursive and knowledge school No one writes long form letters during the Civil War When they would write the pen, put in letters We don't do that anymore There's been a lot of news articles on that lately Who's pushing that and why? How does that benefit us? There's a really great story I was at California System meeting And we had a panel of educators It was a professor of product design And he said, okay, we used to spend the first 60% of a course designing a product Doing specs, doing market analysis, doing all this stuff The last 40% kind of analyzing the work presenting to each other things like that Now AI, we can do that All of that within the first 10% of the course Come up with an idea Have AI help us do a product design Have it do the research around that for us Now he makes his students actually reach out And contact experts in the market Set up a meeting and present to them this idea And get their feedback And I always say, if I call my daughter She won't answer the phone, she'll text me right back She's a junior college She does not answer the phone She doesn't pick up the phone He's pushing those students to lean back into those more human skills Reaching out, making connections Setting up a presentation Presenting your thing, collecting feedback Those things that AI can't easily do for us That's really the focus It's kind of that evolution in teaching We're not necessarily teaching entirely new things But we're doing it in more innovative ways That lean into those human skills And not just assigning 20 page papers That kids are going to use AI to write Are schools teaching the wrong things Or just teaching them the wrong way? It's the wrong way Really, it comes down to the assessment of mastery How do we actually know whether or not somebody has learned that skill How do we make sure that sticks in their brain Isn't just, I memorized these data points I took the quiz I dumped those memory points out of my brain And I moved on to the next thing How do we really teach skills That's the biggest challenge right now Is educators who are already underpaid And underappreciated And school classes that are too big Are being asked to evolve how they're teaching Fundamentally redesign their courses And then measure those outcomes In truly significant ways That can then be reported on To the Department of Labor and things of that That evolution, teaching online And with technology During COVID We need to address this the same way And we need to provide educators The resources they need To evolve how they're teaching With AI With preparing those students Because it's not going away And I think those educators that I can opt out We've had students say I want to opt out You're not going to be able to opt out of AI There's a way mode that just drove past people's houses They don't get to say you don't get to drive past here Nope, that ought to maybe cars driving on the street You're going to be involved with AI at some level And understanding it And embracing it Understanding the ethical aspects of what are really important Talking with Ryan Lufkin The VP of Global Strategy and Instructure Ryan, you kind of teed this up You're teeing all my notes up perfectly I really like this You're an excellent guest Skills versus degrees It seems like we're in a skills-based economy Versus a degree-based economy And I don't know if degrees hold the same value they used to You can prove me wrong What skills actually matter most right now We've talked about those human skills And how important they are I will say I'm still a big believer that the degree The associate degree The bachelor's degree The master's degree They are still the preferred currency In hiring And then there's a reason for that Because they're not just about The hard skills generally The math They include the soft skills Working with groups Being empathetic Only consensus Communication Like all those things that are incredibly important Those human skills that we're talking about They embody all of those A year or two ago You saw a lot of businesses kind of Pro that they were taking out A degree as a requirement for hiring And what you saw as a lot of them slowly reintroduce that Because it really is the best Parameter of whether or not a person is prepared To enter the modern workforce That said Because of this pace of change We live in a world That we all need to be lifelong learners Every single one of us That means go to school for 12 years Or 16 years or 20 years Then we would go to a job And often the same job for 30 years Then we would retire with our pension And I mean that was our parents' generation That doesn't exist anymore The average tenure at a job is about three years They're saying well we're gonna work until we die There's no pensions anymore It's incumbent on us to prepare ourselves To be upwardly mobile Within the job market By constantly training new skills And in most cases employers aren't owning that The college and university system still owns That upscaling and rescaling of adult learners And they really have done an amazing job post-COVID Especially of rolling out new credential programs Because you can actually roll out a credential program A certificate program Without all of the regulatory requirements for under accreditation That a standard college program needs In many cases it's the same or similar content repackaged In more bite-sized chunks So you can go and take a three or four course certificate But then that certificate I can post a LinkedIn I can post an employer and show Look if you look at my LinkedIn I've got certificate and data driven marketing From E. Cornell I did an AI regulation and compliance course From Oxford's ad business school I'm doing my masters right now With Arizona State University Because to me I enjoy learning It's one of those things But it's also that way That you qualify yourself for Being up in the mobile in a job That's one of the things that we've shifted towards And it's not necessarily breaking it down To the component skills We have it all agreed on like a skills taxonomy That makes sense to everyone And a lot of the old skills taxonomies Are really outdated They don't capture a lot of the more modern skills that we need Not quite there yet But getting those certificates That'll demonstrate for employers That I'm a learner I want to evolve And like these skills We're getting there Pretty quickly Hey guys If you've ever built a website before You know how quickly you can turn into a time suck Recently I've been playing around With Wix's new hybrid editor Called Wix Harmony You basically start by telling it What you're trying to build You prompt it to generate a professional great site Just like you want it And here's the part I like You can easily go back and forth between AI and hands-on editing whenever you want The AI agent Aria is an expert In website design and business You can answer questions Or perform direct actions throughout the process Which has been huge for me When I'm trying to perfect the look of my website You've also got built-in tools for selling Bookings and marketing Pretty much all the stuff You actually need once the site's live You're building anything right now A site project, brand, business, whatever Wix Harmony Honestly makes it easier to get out of your own way And start making stuff happen Go to wix.com Backslashharmony That's wix.com Backslashharmony Start your website today I always say we got in there when I was in college Definitely learning soft skills I would dare say make this statement Ryan I have made more money per GPA than anyone That I went to school with I had the lowest I graduated 2.0.1 I was one point away from not graduating On a calculus test Mainly because I never went to class I started with the highest grade I get was in 90 Because I deducted 10 points So I had to essentially make A's on everything Because just to pass the class essentially Because I was bored I'm an entrepreneur That's the thing Partly ADD I know I'm hired different But it taught me absolutely nothing Now here's what I learned You nailed it to soft skills People come into consensus Absolutely probably we was worth the money just for that However I might could have learned that And gotten further towards where I want to go Doing something different if different ahead existed What's cool now yeah to your point There are more educational opportunities More paths to find yourself into a well-paying job Than there ever have been in the history of the world And the biggest challenge is finding out What do you want to do And then finding through all the noise What's the best path to get to the other And it's not always a two or four-year degree But I was the same way I'll be honest A diagnosed ADHD Miss class a lot On academic probation at one point What you learn is All of a sudden you're like It clicks and you're like Oh if I go to class If the teacher knows my name If I do the basic studying I will graduate And those are the things It's those social skills College is almost about as much as learning what you need to do To be successful There's a lot of kind of noise around Employees not being prepared for a little job They don't want to come to the office They don't want to show up on time They don't want to spend the time there What college does is train you that you need to be You need to be here from this time to this time You need to make connections with the people That your bosses, your educator, and your peers And those are what make you successful That model applies in the workspace In ways that we're really kind of just starting To really appreciate It was we do the debate between Remote work and in-person work How do we make sure we do that One of the challenges I faced too Is I had a job working for an antigency When I was a senior in college And I was like Why do I need to I've already accomplished my goal Which is getting hired Why do I need to finish And that was it odds for me But my first job was working for Cokes at agency In the Western United States Writing 22nd Customized radio bumpers For Leadville, Colorado And Boise, Idaho And St. George, Utah Things like that There were four interns And that's what we did All of those can be done by AI By one person now Entry level job That really got my foot in the door And got me hired by the agency full time And was the start of my career It's now gone What are schools doing To provide more experiential learning To better prepare students To make that leap And then what are businesses doing To maintain those entry level positions That's one of the biggest challenges Right now that people need to be talking more about Yeah, great points I do want to talk about Canvas a little bit Workers falling behind Because of tech Or because of how we train them And it seems like Canvas is helping close that gap The goal really is to provide this framework For students to understand How they know how to get learning We've added some AI features And things like translation And discussion summaries That save educators time And help keep students on track But the bigger aspect is We provide this open architecture We work with Google and Gemini And Microsoft and Copilot And Cloud and Anthropic The big players For schools they want that choice What do we plug in What would make available Based off of the contracts we have And the organization that we want Our goal really has been To be the framework that supports All that innovation Make sure that they meet The unique requirements of education Accessibility, privacy, security Those are non-starters for education We are governed by very strict laws around Student data privacy and accessibility And so how do we make sure that these tools support that We support K12, higher ed And more increasingly The government and corporate space as well People graduate and say I really like using Canvas Why don't I have something like that here in my job We've moved to support that as well That lifelong learning approach is incredibly important And we want to make sure we're there to support Institutions as they look at that I try to be reflective Outside of my own curiosity And skill set Or whatever I'm interested into And then sometimes I step back Called empathy, college Just understanding other sides of it But it's a lot to digest It is intimidating I've got clawed and chat GPT For the best answers I kind of like that answer better than this one Just like when prognosticating my age How long I live I do think it is overwhelming Because I'm very good with change and adapting But I go damn This is a lot to take on To understand how to apply it There's this constant stream of new innovations And new things coming out Bores laws that acceleration of technology Innovation Bores laws out the window with AI It's so rapid it's insane There's announcements like Claw Which is an open source large language model There was a person that said okay I go out and make me a reservation for dinner And it went out And it tried to access the website Website wasn't working So it gave itself a voice And it called the restaurant And made the reservation And that freaked everyone out aggressively Because it accomplished the task That it was given And it did so by going outside The bounds of what the person asking To do the task Thought it was possible We all want jives We all want the virtual assistant That we've been promised forever That you click a button and say Oh make me a reservation Go do that But be a flight to cancun We're going to go to a hotel on a restaurant And settle that up And then Let's go We all want that level of ease But with that comes risk And that's where we're in this kind of phase right now Of how much do we trust these tools To be autonomous And how much do we really need to To continue the oversight But it's a lot It can be very, very overwhelming You almost have to shrink your bubble Into the world that you control And that you have aspect And kind of ignore a lot of the other noise How do you think Employers should think differently About training and onboarding In this day and age A really good friend Troy Who was in a car accident And suffered a traumatic brain injury And was out of work for about a year And when he was ready to go back He would do these interviews And they'd say, well, do you know AI And he would say What do you want me to know about AI And they'd say, well, do you know AI And what came clear very quickly Was that they didn't actually know what they wanted They wanted someone with skills In using AI and adapting these tools To come in and help them Deliver that kind of innovation He reached out to me and made a conversation I sent him some courses that he could take And he upskilled quickly And then got a job pretty rapidly from that But we're in this position where A lot of colleges and universities Aren't necessarily taking ownership Of teaching AI literacy And employers Aren't necessarily taking ownership They want these graduates to come out With these skills to help them We need both sides to take ownership Of training students on AI literacy And how to use these tools Effectively and ethically Across the board The other aspect is There's this old advantage That I've heard from a lot of employers That are like, well, what if we train Our employees and they leave The counterpoint is What if you don't train them and they stay We need employers to really own The upskilling and recently of their employees To make their workforce better And not hide behind the fear That those skill employees Will then take that training and go somewhere else Yeah, that's very flawed We've seen both sides of it We've come up in this innovation realm But we're also part of the analog world By the way, a lot of old employers People thought Very scarcity driven That scarcity mentality, I think, is really important To acknowledge And I think what you're seeing is As the average age As we cycle through the older leadership We're starting to get that more innovative leadership And a lot of industries That previously were very focused on Coming back in the office Let's not use technology We're being forced to really adapt To the modern world In a way, if you want to keep a good employee You're going to have Flexblowers You're going to have Good technology support There's these new requirements for students They're just very different Than when we came out of college Or entered workforce These tools Have an empowerment component How much they unlock I came up in the ad agency business too, Ryan I worked 20 years plus 15 work for other agencies There's no better silo world Than the ad agency business I made this kind better But I'm 10 years removed from it Ryan, you're going to get this Much like I was out of fish out of water in college I was a creative strategic Account guy An ad agency I was a good writer I think in headlines I'm a big idea guy But I'm actually pretty organized Pretty good account guy And I understood strategy It serves me well Because I was in a very Entrepreneurial agency That actually took advantage of my skills And most agencies A fish out of water I bring this up through my own context Because, Ryan, you got that Now with AI Used to be Okay, how can we get the most out of this person At the cheapest possible Give them 7 hats And it was just a financially driven But now with AI And the abilities People can sit in a lot of different boxes Because AI unlocks a lot of abilities And skills Agentic or otherwise That allows them to do those things That is an incredible example I'm going to steal that for later Because I love that example Of that silent organization I remember having an idea Because I was on the account management side Like creative idea I'm like, what if we do this And I was told, stop Shut up Not your department Go talk to the customer I had been a commercial designer I had the right to be creative And it was so funny that That got shut down Even the stages within the creative field Somebody would come up with the writers Came up with headlines The designers came up with Maybe storyboards To pitch the idea Now you can have the idea You can actually work with AI To do the writing And improve the writing You can actually have AI create The storyboards for you To your point exactly Now imagine educators Educators who are Not necessarily really trained On how to be an educator They're really subject Better experts in their field I'm a history professor I know history like the back of my hand But suddenly I have the ability to use these tools To create short videos To create imagery To make my writing less dry Things like that If we lean into that If we support that Holy cow The potentials are just unlocked For employees to be So much more productive In ways that we know But we've got to break down that Frame that box Those boxes that we put people in Love that analogy That was a good one That's a big opportunity Ryan as we close out here I got a little rapid fire for you If you don't mind Three things Most overrated skill Coding Unfortunately Most underrated skill Good clear communication Is incredible One mindset shift people need I really like what you just call that Around the boxing of organizations And this idea that everybody Needs to stay in their box And not try to cross over Because they get many great ideas Have never filmed the light of day Because somebody was sitting in their wrong box Really is kind of got me thinking now I think that's just a great point Yeah, if we can get people thinking The leaders going How do we use AI To enable our people To step outside of their boxes Because they can What do we unlock It's good leaders Being willing to Be more flexible Being willing to really Call out those employees That are using these tools The right way And are using them effectively Again, modeling what good looks like Show people what's possible And then encourage everybody Else to kind of follow That freeing of their minds AI creates these laboratories Of opportunity And if you enable that And you empower that You're getting It's kind of like In science and technology How many more tests can they do Improve the model That could change the world Or at least change the organization We're just at the point Where we're building the trust And we're starting to use these tools In really creative ways But they're brand new And we don't even know Exactly what they're all capable of If we suspend our fear a little bit And if we lean into using them And learning them I think there's a lot of Opportunity that they They uncover Ryan, working everybody Keep up with what you're Up to Instructure canvass etc I'm on linkedin Instructure.com Is our website We blog frequently And then My boss, Melissa Lowell Who's their chief academic officer She and I do a podcast Called Educast 3000 You've got a huge number More episodes I think we have about 41 episodes You have hundreds We talk to some of the smartest people Education and really pick their brains To make us smarter It's great Really appreciate you Ryan For coming on Great conversation I really enjoyed it Hey guys, you're going to find us Ryan is right.com You'll find Show notes from today Highlight clips The full link episodes Go check us out on YouTube Hit that subscribe button We appreciate it You got to see this army green I'm rocking Ryan's rocking it too We appreciate you We're lucky That you're here We'll see you next time On right about now This has been right about now With Ryan Alford A Radcast Network 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