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Mayfield Junior School of the Holy Child Jesus is a Catholic, independent, coeducational K-8 day school. Founded and sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, Mayfield implements the goals of the Holy Child Network of Schools and is distinguished by the educational philosophy of Cornelia Connelly, the Society's foundress. The Holy Child philosophy is based on trust and reverence for the dignity of every person and is shaped by the living tradition of over 150 years of international experience educating youth.

Mayfield is committed to Cornelia Connelly's belief in the development of the whole child as a spiritual, intellectual, creative and athletic person. Within a rigorous academic course of study, Mayfield students are challenged to reach their individual potential based on their abilities, talents and learning styles in order to meet the needs and wants of our time. Mayfield faculty and staff nurture each student's growth through dynamic, active learning opportunities in an environment that fosters respectful interactions, excellence, and meaningful reflection.

In concert with their families, students develop an understanding of the Catholic faith and participate in its traditions. Building on the diversity of our own community, an understanding of the greater world is woven into each child's life at Mayfield. As our students mature, they learn to make choices that contribute to the lives of others while enriching their own lives. The students are united into a community of faith-in-action, reaching beyond themselves with a sense of responsibility to serve others and to protect the dignity and sacredness of life.

Mayfield Junior School cherishes a spirit of warmth and love that invites the students, parents, faculty and staff from the past, present, and future into what is a proud and evolving tradition, the Mayfield Family, a tangible expression of God's love for one another.

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Mission and Vision| Mayfield Junior School

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Mayfield Junior School of the Holy Child Jesus is a Catholic, independent, coeducational K-8 day school. Founded and sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, Mayfield implements the goals of the Holy Child Network of Schools and is distinguished by the educational philosophy of Cornelia Connelly, the Society's foundress.

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The Holy Child Network of Schools is an association of elementary and secondary schools educating children nationwide.

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Updates Goals for the Schools of the Holy Child (Draft)

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Portrait Gallery | Portrait of a Graduate

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Re-imagine Your Graduates
The future is both awe-inspiring and unpredictable. To ensure our students are future-ready, we need to start measuring what matters rather than measuring what is easy. Start here.

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I think as you are looking at this- ask yourself, are these traits measurable?

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Our Portrait of a Graduate is an aspirational and realistic statement about how we educate. It influences all that we do in and out of the classroom and incorporates our Holy Child Goals, which are essential to our school identity.

Portrait of a Graduate was a collaborative effort of our faculty and staff who identified these goals as the outcomes for which we strive.

Goal 4 - Caring
Holy Child schools work for Christian principles of justice, peace, and compassion in every facet of life.
A Holy Child graduate is an empathetic and globally aware citizen who uses his or her gifts and talents to work towards social justice for all.

Goal 7 - Mission
Holy Child schools ensure the continuation and growth of Holy Child mission and philosophy in the school.
A Holy Child graduate is one who appreciates and draws upon the values nurtured while a student, and continues his or her connection to the Holy Child community.

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Portrait of a Graduate - Holy Child School at Rosemont 2022

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Portrait of a Graduate - Holy Child School at Rosemont is an independent, coed, Catholic school , PreSchool to 8th grade.

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Applies critical thinking to analyze and evaluate information in order to make logical judgments and decisions

Communicates effectively

Uses intellectual skills and knowledge to adapt to changing environments and responds flexibly to life's challenges

Commits herself to lifelong learning

Spiritual and Ethical Character

Acts with integrity based on faith and ethical principles

Displays compassion and respect toward others

Accepts responsibility for herself and her actions and understands the consequences of her choices

Recognizes and responds to the need for God in daily life

Balances the mental, physical and spiritual components of life

Social and Environmental Responsibilities

Acts with compassion

Possesses a lifelong commitment to serve her community and the environment

Takes leadership and contributes to our diverse global society

Applies effective interpersonal skills when working with people of diverse backgrounds

Leads by example and shares knowledge and resources

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Applies critical thinking to analyze and evaluate information in order to make logical judgments and decisions Communicates effectively Uses intellectual skills and knowledge to adapt to changing environments and responds flexibly to life's challenges Commits herself to lifelong learning Spiritual and Ethical Character Acts with integrity based on faith and

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Every day at Holy Child, we aim to engage our girls in an education that will shape who they are for the rest of their lives. Every project, every opportunity, and every experience is thoughtfully curated to help develop young women of conscience and action who will meet the wants of the age.

No matter when a girl arrives at Holy Child, we have the same vision of her on her graduation day. We want her to leave Holy Child as the best version of herself.

She will be:

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Portrait of a Graduate - School of the Holy Child

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Every day at Holy Child, we aim to engage our girls in an education that will shape who they are for the rest of their lives. Every project, every opportunity, and every experience is thoughtfully curated to help develop young women of conscience and action who will meet the wants of the age.

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As a member of the Holy Child Network of Schools, Mayfield Senior School of the Holy Child Jesus is a Catholic, independent, college preparatory school for young women sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. The school is committed to academic excellence within the context of Christian values. Mayfield's philosophy is rooted in the belief that knowledge is best gained in an atmosphere of disciplined thought, personal concern and religious awareness. Mayfield fosters each student's intellectual, spiritual, artistic, emotional, and physical gifts, thereby enabling each to find balance and make a meaningful contribution to society. Mayfield also challenges each student to reach beyond herself and render service to others.

Respectful of its traditions, Mayfield is always open to the new, "meeting the wants of the age" in the spirit of Cornelia Connelly, founder of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. Cornelia Connelly viewed God's world with deep respect and care. Her schools offer a holistic response to the challenges of each historical period. This education requires insight into the needs of the time regarding its values, ethics, choices and spirituality.

Within the Mayfield community, interaction among faculty, students and administration is characterized by appreciation and mutual respect. Trust, responsibility, friendship, self-discipline and self-discovery are central. Each is encouraged to "be yourself but make that self what God wants you to be." Consequently, Mayfield values humility that is vigorously honest and compassion that is enduring.

The measure of a Mayfield education goes beyond cumulative grade point averages, test scores and academic success. It plumbs depths that touch character and virtue and finds expression in "Actions Not Words." Mayfield fosters unity within diversity, simplicity and faith that generates a joy of being.

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As a member of the Holy Child Network of Schools, Mayfield Senior School of the Holy Child Jesus is a Catholic, independent, college preparatory school for young women sponsored by the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. The school is committed to academic excellence within the context of Christian values.

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MJS Portrait of a Graduate Narrowed Words 2014

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MJS Portrait of a Graduate Narrowed Words 2014

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MJS School Mission, Vision

Holy Child Goals and Criteria

SEL Competencies

Executive Functioning and Self Direction Skills

Social Justice Standards (DEIJ)

Service-Learning Standards

Critical Thinking, Problem Solving  and Computational Thinking Skills

Creation Skills

Digital Citizenship and Media Literacy Skills

Leadership skills`

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Scroll to Page 4 for a good summary of skills

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Scroll to Page 4 for a good summary of skills

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Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia.

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Stanford's study on high school students' inability to decipher fact from fiction online and what they recommend to do about it. 

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Stanford's study on high school students' inability to decipher fact from fiction online and what they recommend to do about it. 

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It doesn’t take long to learn how to spot misinformation online, Stanford study finds

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Research from the Stanford History Education Group finds that less than six hours of instruction helps students learn to spot dubious sources online.

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As psychologists worry that the coronavirus pandemic is triggering a loneliness epidemic, new Harvard research suggests feelings of social isolation are on the rise and that those hardest hit are older teens and young adults.

In the recently released results of a study conducted last October by researchers at Making Caring Common, 36 percent of respondents to a national survey of approximately 950 Americans reported feeling lonely "frequently" or "almost all the time or all the time" in the prior four weeks, compared with 25 percent who recalled experiencing serious issues in the two months prior to the pandemic. Perhaps most striking is that 61 percent of those aged 18 to 25 reported high levels.

"I was surprised at the degree of loneliness among young people," said Richard Weissbourd, a psychologist and senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) who helped lead the research. "If you look at other studies on the elderly, their rates of loneliness are high, but they don't seem to be as high as they are for young people."

The unsettling statistic is even more troubling when combined with June data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that 63 percent of young people reported experiencing substantial symptoms of anxiety and depression. "It's a group that we are really concerned about," said Weissbourd, who suspects several factors are at work.

Older teens and young adults may be particularly susceptible because they are often transitioning from their "inherited families to their chosen families," said Weissbourd, meaning they lack important connections to those who can "be critical guardrails against loneliness." Students in college may be struggling to fit in and feel homesick, while those not in school can feel disconnected from important social groups or communities. Young people are also often making critical decisions about their professional and personal lives and relationships, which can add to the stress and sense of isolation, he said.

"If every person who's in pretty good shape can make a commitment to reaching out to one person they are concerned might be lonely once a week, that would be a good thing."

- Richard Weissbourd, psychologist, senior lecturer at the Graduate School of Education

The new report also points to the way such feelings can lead to a downward spiral. Many young people who reported serious loneliness also said they felt as if no one "genuinely cared" about them. The survey also suggests that lonely people often feel they're reaching out or listening to other people more than other people are reaching out or listening to them. "These things can become self-defeating," said Weissbourd. "When you feel like you're trying hard while other people are not trying hard, or you feel like you're going to get rejected again, you withdraw, which increases your loneliness and your anxiety about social situations."

Weissbourd and his team argue that eliminating loneliness requires a robust social infrastructure. Schools can be important points of intervention, they suggest, where teachers can be trained to connect parents to each other and to ensure every student is connected to a school adult. Doctors should also be asking about loneliness during annual physicals, helping connect patients who are struggling with social supports; high schools, colleges, and senior centers should focus on connecting young people with the elderly; and employers should check in with employees about whether they are lonely and provide them with resources that support connection. To further reduce the stigma associated with loneliness, the authors also recommend the creation of national, state, and local campaigns that stress the importance of maintaining social ties, and reassure those suffering that it's OK to seek help.

"We need public education that removes the stigma of loneliness and really tries to alleviate the shame," said Weissbourd, "because shame can also be self-defeating and cause you to avoid social situations or hide your true feelings in ways that make meaningful connections with others very hard."

Weissbourd said he and his colleagues consider combating loneliness a moral imperative in an increasingly "hyper-individualistic society," where many people often choose to focus on the well-being of their small circle of family and friends.

"We're making the case that there's a moral matter in terms of our community health, and that those of us who are in a position to do so should try to reach out to people who may be lonely. If every person who's in pretty good shape can make a commitment to reaching out to one person they are concerned might be lonely once a week, that would be a good thing."

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Young adults hardest hit by loneliness during pandemic, study finds

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As psychologists worry that the coronavirus pandemic is triggering a loneliness epidemic, new Harvard research suggests feelings of social isolation are on the rise and that those hardest hit are older teens and young adults.

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Many school district leaders are coalescing around the idea of a Portrait of a Graduate, asking the question: how can we bridge the gap between high school graduation and what comes next?

In today's world, the demands for students are tremendous as they move on to college, career, and adult life. It's no longer enough to just graduate on time with the right academic credentials.

That's why creating a Portrait of a Graduate may be at the top of the agenda for you and your team. Unique to each district, a Portrait of a Graduate outlines the 21st century skills that a district believes their students should embody and exemplify by graduation.

A Portrait of a Graduate is a great way to align school operations and pedagogy around a collective vision for student success. With this vision, your community is taking a strong stance on what it means for your students to be college, career, and life ready. You are also reinforcing your commitment to supporting the whole child in a way that goes beyond test scores.

If your district is ready to join the Portrait of a Graduate movement this school year, this guide is for you. You'll learn strategies for creating, implementing, and measuring the success of a Portrait of a Graduate in your community. You'll also see real examples from districts that have brought their graduate visions to life.

Learn how DC Public Schools uses Panorama to measure their Portrait of a Graduate.

1. What Is a Portrait of a Graduate? 2. How to Create a Portrait of a Graduate 3. Strategies for Portrait of a Graduate Implementation 4. Portrait of a Graduate Examples and Resources
What Is a Portrait of a Graduate?

The process of building and implementing a Portrait of a Graduate is a community effort. Typically, districts bring together students, staff, teachers, community leaders, business leaders, and school administrators to create the portrait. These stakeholders come together to discuss the responsibilities and goals of public schools in their local community, as well as the traits and skills that students will need the most to be successful in adult life.

Once the traits are finalized, the district submits the Portrait of a Graduate to its Board of Education. The end deliverable gets incorporated into the district's strategic plan and serves as a public-facing north star.

It's important to note that a district's Portrait of a Graduate is meant to complement academics and test scores as measures of preparedness. While it does not replace a focus on academic achievement, it shows the district community's commitment to investing in educational experiences that educate the whole child.

The Importance of a Portrait of a Graduate for Students

National data on postsecondary student outcomes highlights the need for district leaders-alongside community stakeholders and students-to redefine what student success means in schools. Here are some trends to be aware of:

Within the Portrait of a Graduate movement, districts are responding to these challenges with a deep focus on students' life skills-also known as 21st century skills or SEL skills-that supplement and enhance students' content mastery.

According to the 2018 Gallup Superintendents survey, 66 percent of superintendents ranked SEL/21st-Century Skills as a key area of need and a lever for improving students' college and career readiness.
How to Create a Portrait of a Graduate

1. Form a Portrait of a Graduate committee.

2. Engage community members in discussion.

3. Brainstorm and vet Portrait of a Graduate skills.

4. Create a visual representation.

1. Form a Portrait of a Graduate committee

The first step in creating your Portrait of a Graduate is to invite a group of participants. The most successful districts invite a variety of stakeholders, including teachers, administrators, parents, students, and community and business leaders.

You'll also need to select a facilitator, whether it's someone from your community or a professional.

Some districts like Sonoma County have expanded their Portrait of a Graduate conversations even further through the use of surveys.

2. Engage community members in discussion

Orient your committee's dialogue around key questions. Here are some questions sourced from districts.

From Sonoma County in California: What are the hopes, aspirations and dreams that our community has for our young people?

From Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District in Texas: What traits, skills, and mindsets do students need to be successful, regardless of the area they choose to pursue?

3. Brainstorm and vet Portrait of a Graduate skills

When considering skills and mindsets, the 4 C's designed by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) -critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication-can be a strong starting point. This popular framework also includes life skills such as flexibility, initiative, social skills, productivity, leadership and literacy skills such as information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy.

You might also consider language that honors the core values of your community. What are the skills and traits that community members take pride in and hope to pass on to their students and children?

Once you have a working draft, review your language from diverse perspectives to ensure it is inclusive of all students. For example, how might words like "self-reliant" and "citizenship" be interpreted? As a community contract, your Portrait of a Graduate must be widely circulated and thoroughly vetted.
Widely used Portrait of a Graduate skills and attributes:

Creative and critical thinker

Problem solver

Solution seeker

Lifelong learner

Self-regulated learner

Effective communicator

Innovator

Collaborator

Ethical and global citizen

Goal-directed and resilient individual

Dynamic leader

4. Create a visual representation

Next, it's time to create the end product-the visual representation.

Visual expression can be a powerful element. Districts use a variety of templates and shapes for their portraits, from silhouettes of graduates to circular badges. Some school districts, such as Humble Independent School District in Texas, even engage student artists to emphasize the element of student and community ownership in the Portrait of a Graduate process.

Strategies for Portrait of a Graduate Implementation

Once you've created your Portrait of a Graduate, don't stop there. Done well, a Portrait of a Graduate should guide district decisions around everything from classroom pedagogy, to human resources, to financial services and operations.

Create system alignment

Once complete, the committee should submit the Portrait of a Graduate for school board review and approval.

After it is approved, take the time to embed the vision into your strategic plan, website, and mission statement. Identify the initiatives and programs that will help students develop these competencies, and begin to design learning processes that integrate these traits into the classroom for all grade levels.

Operationalize your Portrait of a Graduate with measurement

Next, determine how you will measure progress for all students toward your Portrait of a Graduate vision.

Using instruments like the Panorama Social-Emotional Learning Survey, your district can gather valid and reliable data from students on their development of Portrait of a Graduate traits. The Panorama survey is customizable and aligns to CASEL competencies like Social Awareness and Self-Management.

You can easily map Panorama survey topics to your Portrait of a Graduate framework. For example, learn how District of Columbia Public Schools cross-walked their "Loved, Challenged, and Prepared" traits to the Panorama survey.

With a college and career readiness platform like Panorama, you can also look at your Portrait of a Graduate data alongside other college and career readiness indicators such as SAT scores, credit accumulation, course performance, attendance, and behavior. A holistic view of each child helps district-level staff, principals, counselors, and teachers understand exactly where students may be off track, and how to best help them.

A student report from Schertz-Cibolo-Universal-City ISD in Panorama (not real student data)

Provide educators and staff with ongoing professional development

Remember that it all starts with adults. Do educators deeply understand the Portrait of a Graduate traits? Do they feel equipped to help students develop these skills? Do educators themselves embody the traits you're promoting?

Build adult capacity around these skills and mindsets by focusing on adult SEL and self-care. Data can also play a powerful role in professional development. Imagine a room full of educators discussing trends in school-level data, identifying students who need additional support, and setting concrete goals to ensure every student is progressing towards your Portrait of a Graduate vision.

Bring your Portrait of a Graduate to life across the community

Most importantly, continue to communicate and celebrate your vision.

Hold interviews with the student and community newspapers. Recognize students on social media for exemplifying the traits of a graduate, like in Schertz-Cibolo-Universal City Independent School District.

Incorporate the Portrait of a Graduate into your meetings at every level. Discuss how your vision can be equitably implemented for all students. Engage staff, administrators, and students in conversations about what the portrait means to them.
Portrait of a Graduate Examples and Resources
Finally, make resources accessible for parents and teachers across elementary school, middle school, and high school to help cultivate these traits, mindsets, and skills in students.
Browse the #PortraitofaGraduate hashtag on Twitter for more inspiring examples.
School District Examples

Additional Resources to Explore

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A Comprehensive Guide to a Portrait of a Graduate

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A Portrait of a Graduate represents a school district's vision for the 21st century skills, character traits, and/or social-emotional competencies that students need to succeed in college, career, and life.

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Widely used Portrait of a Graduate skills and attributes:

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Widely used Portrait of a Graduate skills and attributes:

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Creative and critical thinker

Problem solver

Solution seeker

Lifelong learner

Self-regulated learner

Self Motivated

Effective communicator

Innovator

Collaborator

Ethical and global citizen

Goal-directed and resilient individual

Dynamic leader

Future Ready

Skilled Communicator

Panorama Ed

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List of Portrait of a Graduate Words from ChatGPT

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List of Portrait of a Graduate Words from ChatGPT

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Confident

Independent

Responsible

Emotionally intelligent

Ethical

Curious

Adaptable and Flexible

Innovative

Creative

Persistent

Resilient

Collaborative

Communicative

Resourceful

Organized

Self-motivated

Lifelong learner

Critical thinker

Problem-solver

Digital literate

Interculturally competent

Empathetic

Compassionate

Socially responsible

Active citizen

Global Citizen

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Batelle Kids Portrait of a Graduate Process

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Batelle Kids Portrait of a Graduate Process

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The ISTE Student Standards guide educators toward student-driven learning practices that prepare students to thrive in an evolving technological landscape.

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The Forum is working with multiple stakeholders to provide 1 billion people with skills and economic opportunities by 2030 as part of a reskilling revolution.
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Human-machine frontier
Image: World Economic Forum

- Jonas Prising, CEO, ManpowerGroup

- Rafael Lucchesi Ramacciotti, General Director, SENAI Brazil

Published

License and Republishing

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Reskilling Revolution: Preparing 1 billion people for tomorrow's economy

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The Reskilling Revolution has mobilized an impressive multistakeholder community of over 350 organizations. The Forum is working to provide 1 billion people with better education, skills and economic opportunities.

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It's no secret that our education system isn't ideal. Many of the life skills we need aren't being taught; instead, we focus on programming youth with industry-specific skills to prepare them for the workforce. Too often, this means that kids are graduating from high school and college ill-equipped to handle the broader challenges found in life. Though important, learning the structure of a cell won't teach you how to de-escalate conflict before it goes too far, and learning how to find the value of x won't teach you how not to crumble under pressure. Not only do life skills improve one's quality of life, they are also attractive to employers, who need workers that are mentally stable and well equipped to handle challenges and responsibilities that aren't listed on the job description.

That's why the World Health Organization (WHO) identified five fundamental life skills that are relevant for everybody, regardless of culture, education, or background. Specifically, the WHO focused on psychosocial skills rather than skills like, say, financial management or learning to cook. These are broad abilities that one can improve over time through conscious effort that deal with one's sense of self, sense of others, and cognitive abilities.

1. Decision-making and problem-solving

Everybody, even trust-fund babies, are faced with challenges and difficulties in their lives. Not all of us are talented at overcoming these challenges, however. Some misinterpret the premise of a problem, others work themselves in circles and get caught up in analysis paralysis. One way to make decisions and solve problems effectively is to follow Kristina Guo's DECIDE system, which she initially developed for health care managers:

1. Define the problem

2. Establish the criteria and constraints

3. Consider all the alternatives

4. Identify the best alternative

5. Develop and implement a plan of action

6. Evaluate and monitor the solution and feedback when necessary

If this seems far too clinical to you, another option is to follow Benjamin Franklin's method of decision-making, which he called " Prudential Algebra." When his friend Joseph Priestly wrote Franklin for advice on a problem, Franklin instead gave him a framework for making decisions. His method involves dividing a sheet into a pro and con column and listing out all of the reasons pro and con to a given decision. Then, Franklin would assign a weight to each pro and con according to their importance. Going down the list, if a pro and a con were of equal weight, he would cross them out. If a con were worth the weight of two pros, he would cross the three out. In this way, Franklin would wind up with a final list leaning towards either pro or con and make his decision accordingly. He would do this over the course of several days, so that his mind was always fresh when tackling the problem.

2. Creative thinking and critical thinking

We all know that there are few domains that don't rely heavily on creative and critical thinking. Defining critical thinking, though is a very slippery task. "At one level we all know what 'critical thinking' means - it means good thinking, almost the opposite of illogical, irrational, thinking," wrote Dr. Peter Facione in his essay " Critical Thinking: What It Is and Why It Counts." But there's more to it than that vague definition, of course. Facione asserts that "Critical thinking [is] purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, criteriological, or contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based." Put simply, it's a self-aware, focused, analytical way of looking at things.

As it turns out, one of the best ways to improve one's critical thinking skills is to study the humanities. The trend has been to think of the humanities as some kind of vestigial tail trailing behind the rest of the more cutting-edge fields of study, a holdover from a time when poets were actually celebrities. However, the humanities has always been about teaching people to think well. Regrettably, humans have peculiar, bias-prone, and heuristics-reliant brains in place of more efficient and purpose-built computers, but we have to learn to work with what we've got.

There's research that backs this assertion up as well. One study from North Carolina State University, for instance, found that students enrolled in humanities courses became more skeptical of pseudoscience compared to those enrolled in a course on scientific research methods.

3. Communication and interpersonal skills

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said, "The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place." Without becoming gifted, or at least competent, in communication, you're at risk for experiencing constant misunderstandings and needless fights and arguments.

Good communicators make more money, have higher self-esteem, have better marriages, and are sought out more by employers. Although social anxiety can make it challenging to get out there, seeking out metacognitive therapy has been shown to be very effective. If it's feasible, just stepping out of one's comfort zone and intentionally practicing communication is perhaps the most effective method at improving this crucial life skill.

4. Self-awareness and empathy

Self-awareness and empathy are two sides of the same coin. Together, they constitute an understanding of the experiences, emotions, and thinking that take place both within oneself and in others. Researcher Phillipe Rochat described self-awareness as "the most fundamental issue in psychology" and for good reason. Little in life would not be improved by a thorough understanding of ones' own motivations. Research has shown that practicing mindfulness can promote self-awareness and empathy, critical skills that can combat drug addiction, reduce stress, and promote a stronger understanding of others. Many of the life skills mentioned in this list overlap, but none are quite as influential as self-awareness and empathy.

5. Coping with emotions and coping with stress

One of the few certainties in life is that things will go wrong. Learning how to handle these inevitable challenges with grace and resilience is essential. According to the American Psychological Association, there are ten methods for learning to promote resilience and bounce back from life's challenges:

Make connections with friends and family members.

Avoid seeing crises as insurmountable problems.

Accept that change is a part of living.

Develop realistic goals and work towards them regularly.

Take decisive actions.

Look for opportunities for self-discovery, especially when faced with hardship.

Nurture a positive view of yourself.

Keep things in perspective. When face-to-face with a significant challenge, it can be easy to lose the big picture.

Maintain a hopeful outlook.

Take care of yourself by paying attention to your needs and feelings and by staying in good shape.

These life skills are far-reaching and deeply impactful. Perhaps the best thing about improving any one of these skills is that they all feed into each other. Becoming a better communicator will both reduce the instances of stress and improve your ability to combat stress, critical thinking skills will help you with decision-making, cultivating empathy can make you a better communicator, and so on. With some intentional effort and focus, these five capabilities can be improved, improving your life in the process.

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5 critical life skills everyone should have, according to WHO

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It's no secret that our education system isn't ideal. Many of the life skills we need aren't being taught; instead, we focus on programming youth with industry-specific skills to prepare them for the workforce. Too often, this means that kids are graduating from high school and college ill-equipped to handle the broader challenges found in life.

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Senior Researcher Chris Dede isn't overly worried about growing concerns over generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, in education. As a longtime researcher on emerging technologies, he's seen many decades where new technologies promised to upend the field. Instead, Dede says artificial intelligence requires educators to get smarter about how they teach in order to truly take advantage of what AI has to offer."The trick about AI is that to get it, we need to change what we're educating people for because if you educate people for what AI does well, you're just preparing them to lose to AI. But if you educate them for what AI can't do, then you've got IA [Intelligence Augmentation]," he says. Dede, the associate director of research for the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, says AI raises the bar and it has the power to significantly impact learning in powerful ways.

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Dede talks about how the field of education needs to evolve and get smarter, in order to work with - not against - artificial intelligence.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Jill Anderson: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.

Chris Dede thinks we need to get smarter about using artificial intelligence and education. He has spent decades exploring emerging learning technologies as a Harvard researcher. The recent explosion of generative AI, like ChatGPT, has been met with mixed reactions in education. Some public school districts have banned it. Some colleges and universities have tweaked their teaching and learning already.

Generative AI raises que

Chris Dede: I've actually been working with AI for more than half a century. Way back when when I was a graduate student, I read the first article on AI in education, which was published in 1970. And the author confidently predicted that we wouldn't need teachers within five or six years because AI was going to do everything. And of course, we still see predictions like that today.

But having lived through nine hype cycles for AI, I'm both impressed by how much it's advanced, but I'm also wary about elaborate claims for it. And there is a lot of excitement now about generative AI is the term that people are using, which includes programs like ChatGPT. It includes things like Dolly that are capable of creating images. It includes really AI on its own doing performances that we previously would have thought were something that people would have to do.

But it's interesting to compare ChatGPT to a search engine. And people don't remember this, but there was a time when-- before search engines when people really struggled to find resources, and there was enormous excitement when search engines came out. And search engines are, in fact, AI. They are based on AI at the back end, coming up with lists of things that hopefully match what you typed in. In fact, the problem with the search engine becomes not trying to find anything, but trying to filter everything to decide what's really useful.

So you can think of ChatGPT as the next step beyond a search engine where instead of getting a list of things and then you decide which might be useful and you examine them, you get an answer that says, this is what I think you want. And that is really more the AI taking charge than it is the AI saying, I can help you. Here's some things that you might look at and decide about. That makes me wary because AI is not at a stage where it really understands what it's saying.

And so it will make up things when it doesn't know them, kind of a not very good student seeing if they can fake out the teacher. And it will provide answers that are not customized to somebody's culture or to somebody's reading level or to somebody's other characteristics. So it's really quite limited.

I know that Harvard has sent some wording out that I've now put into my syllabi about students being welcome to use whatever tools they want. But when they present something as their work, it has to be something that they wrote themselves. It can't be something that somebody else wrote, which is classic plagiarism. It can't be something that Chat AI wrote that they're presenting as their work and so on. I think that what Chat AI does is it raises the bar for human performance.

I know a lot about what people are going through now in terms of job interviews because my older daughter is an HR manager, and my younger daughter just graduated. And she's having a lot of job interviews. And in contrast to earlier times, now, job interviews typically involve a performance.

If you're going to be hired for a marketing position, they'll say bring in a marketing plan when we do our face-to-face interview on this, and we'll evaluate it. Or in her case, in mechanical engineering, they say when you come in, there's this system that you're going to have a chance to debug, and we'll see how well you do it. Those employers are going to type the same thing into Chat AI. And if someone comes in with something that isn't any better than Chat AI, they're not going to get hired because why hire somebody that can't outcompete a free resource?

Jill Anderson: Oh interesting.

Chris Dede: So it raises the bar for human performance in an interesting way.

Jill Anderson: Your research looks at something called intelligence augmentation. I want to know what that means and how that's different from artificial intelligence.

Chris Dede: Intelligence augmentation is really about the opposite of this sort of negative example I was describing where now you've got to outthink Chat AI if you want to get a job. It says, when is the whole more than the sum of the parts? When do a person and AI working together do things that neither one could do as well on their own?

And often, people think, well, yeah, I can see a computer programmer, there might be intelligence augmentation because I know that machines can start to do programming. What they don't realize is that it applies to a wide range of jobs, including mine, as a college professor. So I am the associate director for research in a national AI institute funded by the National Science Foundation on adult learning and online education. And one of the things the Institute is building is AI assistants for college faculty.

So there's question answering assistants to help with student questions, and there's tutoring assistants and library assistants and laboratory assistants. There's even a social assistant that can help students in a large class meet other students who might be good learning partners. So now, as a professor, I'm potentially surrounded by all these assistants who are doing parts of my job, and I can be deskilled by that, which is a bad future. You sort of end up working for the assistant where they say, well, here's a question I can't answer.

So you have to do it. Or you can upskill because the assistant is taking over routine parts of the job. And in turn, you can focus much more deeply on personalization to individual students, on bringing in cultural dimensions and equity dimensions that AI does not understand and cannot possibly help with. The trick about AI is that to get it, we need to change what we're educating people for because if you educate people for what AI does well, you're just preparing them to lose to AI. But if you educate them for what AI can't do, then you've got IA.

Jill Anderson: So that's the goal here. We have to change the way that we're educating young people, even older people at this point. I mean, everybody needs to change the way that they're learning about these things and interacting with them.

Chris Dede: They do. And we're hampered by our system of assessment because the assessments that we use, including Harvard with the GRE and the SAT and so on, those are what AI does well. AI can score really well on psychometric tests. So we're using the wrong measure, if you will. We need to use performance assessments to measure what people can do to get into places like Harvard or higher education in general because that's emphasizing the skills that are going to be really useful for them.

Jill Anderson: You mentioned at the start artificial intelligence isn't really something brand new. This has been around for decades, but we're so slow to adapt and prepare and alter the way that we do things that once it reaches kind of the masses, we're already behind.

Chris Dede: Well, we are. And the other part of it is that we keep putting old wine in new bottles. I mean, this is - if I had to write a headline for the entire history of educational technology, it would be old wine in new bottles. But we don't understand what the new bottle really means.

So let me give you an example of something that I think generative AI could make a big difference, be very powerful, but I'm not seeing it discussed in all the hype about generative AI. And that is evidence-based modeling for local decisions. So let's take climate change.

One of the problems with climate change is that let's say that you're in Des Moines, Iowa, and you read about all this flooding in California. And you say to yourself, well, I'm not next to an ocean. I don't live in California. And I don't see why I should be that worried about this stuff.

Now, no one has done a study, I assume, of flooding in Des Moines, Iowa, in 2050 based on mid-level projections about climate change. But with generative AI, we can estimate that now.

Generative AI can reach out across topographic databases, meteorological databases, and other related databases to come up with here's the parts of Des Moines that are going to go underwater in 2050 and here's how often this is going to happen if these models are correct. That really changes the dialogue about climate change because now you're talking about wait a minute.
You mean that park I take my kids to is going to have a foot of water in it? So I think that kind of evidence-based modeling is not something that people are doing with generative AI right now, but it's perfectly feasible. And that's the new wine that we can put in the new bottle.

Jill Anderson: That's really a great way to use that. I mean, and you could even use that in your classroom. Something that you said a long, long time ago was that - and this is paraphrasing - the idea that we often implement new technology, and we make this mistake of focusing on students first rather than teachers.

Chris Dede: In December, I gave a keynote at a conference called Empowering Learners for the Age of AU that has been held the last few years. And one of the things I talked about was the shift from teaching to learning. Both are important, but teaching is ultimately sort of pouring knowledge into the minds of learners. And learning is much more open ended, and it's essential for the future because every time you need to learn something new, you can't afford to go back and have another master's degree. You need to be able to do self-directed learning.

And where AI can be helpful with this is that AI can be like an intellectual partner, even when you don't have a teacher that can help you learn in different ways. One of the things that I've been working on with a professor at the Harvard Business School is AI systems that can help you learn negotiation.

Now, the AI can't be the person you're negotiating with. AI is not good at playing human beings - not yet and not for quite a long time, I think. But what AI can do is to create a situation where a human being can play three people at once. So here you are. You're learning how to negotiate a raise.

You go into a virtual conference room. There's three virtual people who are three bosses. There's one simulation specialist behind all three, and you negotiate with them. And then at the end, the system gives you some advice on what you did well and not so well.

And if you have a human mentor, that person gives you advice as well. Ronda Bandy, who was a professor in HGSE until she moved to Hunter College, she and I have published five articles on the work we did for the HGSE's Reach Every Reader Project on using this kind of digital puppeteering to help teachers practice equitable discussion leading. So again, here's something that people aren't talking about where AI on the front end can create rich evocative situations, and AI and machine learning on the back end can find really interesting patterns for improvement.

Jill Anderson: You know, Chris, how hard is it to get there for educators?

Chris Dede: I think, in part, that's what these national AI institutes are about. Our institute, which is really adult learning with a workplace focus, is looking at that part of the spectrum. There's another institute whose focus is middle school and high school and developing AI partners for students where the student and the partner are learning together in a different kind of IA. There's a third Institute that's looking at narrative and storytelling as a powerful form of education and how can AI help with narrative and storytelling.

You can imagine sitting down. Mom and dad aren't around. You've got a storybook like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and you've got something like Alexa that can listen to what you're reading and respond.

And so you begin, and you say, Goldilocks went out of her house one day and went into the woods and got lost. And Alexa says, why do you think Goldilocks went into the woods? Was she a naughty girl? No. Or was she an adventurous girl, or was she deeply concerned about climate change and wanting to study ecosystems?

I mean, I'm being playful about this, but I think the point is that AI doesn't understand any of the questions that it's asking but it can ask the questions, and then the child can start to think deeper than just regurgitating the story. So there's all sorts of possibilities here that we just have to think of as new wine instead of asking how can AI automate our order thinking about teaching and learning.

Jill Anderson: I've been hearing a lot of concern about writing in particular-- writing papers where young people are actually expressing their own ideas, concerns about plagiarism and cheating, which I would say the latter have long existed as challenges in education, aren't really a new one. Does AI really change this? And how might a higher ed or any educator really look at this differently?

Chris Dede: So I think where AI changes this is it helps us understand the kind of writing that we should be teaching versus the kind of writing that we are teaching. So I remember preparing my children for the SAT, and it used to have something called the essay section. And you had to write this very formal essay that was a certain number of paragraphs, and the topic sentences each had to do this and so on.

Nobody in the world writes those kinds of essays in the real world. They're just like an academic exercise. And of course, AI now can do that beautifully.

But any reporter will tell you that they could never use Chat AI to write their stories because stories is what they write. They write narratives. If you just put in a description, you'll be fired from your reportorial job because no one is interested in descriptions. They want a story.

So giving students a description and teaching them to turn it into a story or teaching them to turn it into something else that has a human and creative dimension for it, how would you write this for a seventh-grader that doesn't have much experience with the world? How would you write this for somebody in Russia building on the foundation of what AI gives you and taking it in ways that only people can? That's where writing should be going.

And of course, good writing teachers will tell you, well, that's nothing new. I've been teaching my students how to write descriptive essays. The people who are most qualified to talk about the limits of AI are the ones who teach what the AI is supposedly doing.

Jill Anderson: So do you have any helpful tips for educators regardless of what level they're working at on where to kind of begin embracing this technology?

Chris Dede: What AI can do well is what's called reckoning, which is calculative prediction. And I've given some examples of that with flooding in Des Moines and other kinds of things. And what people do is practical wisdom, if you will, and it involves culture and ethics and what it's like to be embodied and to have the biological things that are part of human nature and so on.

So when I look at what I'm teaching, I have to ask myself, how much of what I'm teaching is reckoning? So I'm preparing people to lose to AI. And how much of what I'm teaching is practical wisdom?

So for example, we spend a lot of time in vocational technical education and standard academic education teaching people to factor. How do you factor these complex polynomials?

There is no workplace anywhere in the world, even in the most primitive possible conditions, where anybody makes a living by factoring. It's an app. It's an app on a phone. Should you know a little bit about factoring so it's not magic? Sure.

Should you become fluent in factoring? Absolutely not. It's on the wrong side of the equation.
So I think just teachers and curriculum developers and assessors and stakeholders in the outcomes of education need to ask themselves, what is being taught now, and which parts of it are shifting over? And how do we include enough about those parts that AI isn't magic? But how do we change the balance of our focus to be more on the practical wisdom side?

Jill Anderson: So final thoughts here - don't be scared but figure out how to use this to your advantage?

Chris Dede: Yeah, don't be scared. AI is not smart. It really isn't. People would be appalled if they knew how little AI understands what it's telling you, especially given how much people seem to be relying on it. But it is capable of taking over parts of what you do that are routine and predictable and, in turn, freeing up the creative and the innovative and the human parts that are really the rewarding part of both work the life.

EdCast: Chris Dede is a senior research fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is also a co-principal investigator of the National Artificial Intelligence Institute in adult learning and online education. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.
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Educating in a World of Artificial Intelligence

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Chris Dede discusses how education can evolve to work with - rather than fight against - artificial intelligence

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Finance Monthly | Monthly Finance News Magazine

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As the importance of D&I in the workplace rapidly grows, organisations are introducing more and more initiatives with a much broader impact on the business. Leadership teams are finding themselves increasingly focused on metrics and quotas. And all of us are navigating the "future of work", as well as trying to understand the role that D&I will play.

With so much going on, it's easy to see how we could forget that people are at the heart of this topic.

Like many other recent changes, this increased focus on D&I can be attributed - at least partially - to the COVID-19 pandemic. While there are certainly many other factors that have shaped the current climate, the global health crisis had a way of reminding us about the people who are our colleagues, employees, clients and customers.

Suddenly, as we battled the same personal challenges, saw into each other's houses, and caught glimpses of each other's families, roommates and pets - work became more human.

Work also became more digital, and after the initial disruption, the flexibility of remote working enabled a higher level of inclusivity.

A new global survey commissioned by Intel, which interviewed 3,136 business leaders across 17 countries and several industries, showed that 63% of respondents said that the pandemic has had a positive impact on D&I in their organisation.

But what's next? How can organisations ensure that the current focus on D&I has a sustained impact and that people remain at the heart of everything they do in this space?

People, not profits

Despite already knowing that D&I is becoming more important, it is great to see a continued commitment to progress, our research found that: 88% of business leaders say that their organisation has made achieving a diverse and inclusive working environment a long-term goal.

What was even better was seeing the reasons why companies are committed to D&I. When asked to indicate what they considered the main opportunities an effective D&I environment would provide, the top three responses were: a positive working environment (34%), increased employee trust and loyalty (32%) and better employee health and wellbeing (30%).

Comparatively, only 20% cite increased profitability as a driver for D&I.

While this indicates that companies do see the bigger picture and are focused on improving the lives of the people that work with them, they must ensure that they maintain this mindset when it comes to actually investing in D&I.

43% of business leaders said there's room for improvement when thinking about how much their company invests in systems and initiatives that promote D&I.

Given that the future of work is hybrid, technology will certainly be a key area of investment - which brings us to the next point.

A new global survey commissioned by Intel, which interviewed 3,136 business leaders across 17 countries and several industries, showed that 63% of respondents said that the pandemic has had a positive impact on D&I in their organisation.

People, not technology

The vast majority (89%) of leaders surveyed agreed that technology would make achieving D&I goals easier.

But the right technology is no longer merely a nice-to-have; it is critical to the future of inclusion.

According to the leaders who indicated that the pandemic had a positive impact on D&I, technology made a number of key differences.

First, 46% found that remote working and digitalisation made it easier to recruit employees from under-represented groups, while 45% claimed that accelerated digital transformation has led to the adoption of new tools that support inclusivity, connectivity, and engagement.

Additionally, 43% indicated that a hybrid workforce enables companies to adopt a wider variety of D&I-informed practices.

The importance of data should not be understated either, both for driving initiatives and for measuring their effectiveness - almost half (49%) of respondents think that technology could provide data and analytics for accurate tracking and progress.

There's no doubt that technology is an effective enabler of D&I. However, it must not - and cannot - be the main driver for change. This critical role needs to remain with business leaders themselves.

Our report reveals that the one key challenge to successfully achieving D&I goals is, in fact, a lack of stakeholder buy-in. Low levels of interest from senior stakeholders or having no dedicated D&I senior lead emerged as the number one barrier (32%) that could prevent companies from achieving their goals.

Another challenge, as cited by 31% of respondents, is the inability to attract and retain employees from underrepresented groups, and a proportionally low talent pool from under-represented groups in their area or industry.

Just as D&I is for the people, we the people must ask ourselves: how can we step up in order to address the issues that stand in the way of a truly diverse and inclusive environment for all?

Technology cannot solve these problems. At most, it can only empower us to find the solution.

Putting people first

It's important to acknowledge that the impact of the pandemic on D&I was not entirely positive.

Leaders who noticed a negative impact observed that under-represented groups were disproportionately affected by the pandemic, particularly employees with disabilities and working mothers, who lost their jobs or left the workplace at a higher rate than other groups.

Of this group of leaders, 32% also indicated that other challenges have taken attention away from D&I.

Global events like the pandemic and major shifts in how we work will likely always have unintended consequences on corporate cultures in ways that may put D&I initiatives at risk.

But while the way we work may change, the need to put people first won't.

By actively prioritising D&I for the benefit of the people of a company, and with the help of innovative technology, we can create lasting D&I initiatives built for wherever and however people work.

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The Future of Diversity & Inclusion: It's a People Thing

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As the importance of D&I in the workplace rapidly grows, organisations are introducing more and more initiatives with a much broader impact on the business. Leadership teams are finding themselves increasingly focused on metrics and quotas. And all of us are navigating the "future of work", as well as trying to understand the role that D&I will play.

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How to nurture a caring school community

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How to nurture a caring school community

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Even when topics move into more controversial areas, co-author and Senior Research and Evaluation Manager Milena Batanova says the lessons learned through this intentional work allow students to focus on individuals rather than get caught up in differing opinions.

"We need to remember that this work is about people and skills rather than specific content," Batanova says. "It's about the process and what it takes to try to understand people, to learn about them, and to be generally curious to develop the skills to take that care further."

How educators can begin to work with students around biases, challenging topics, and caring:
1. Start small
Students might be itching to dive into big topics, but before tackling what can be vulnerable subjects, students need to trust each other and their teacher. Part of that work can be done by creating class norms so students have a shared understanding of expectations.

The other piece is building a foundation for caring by starting with smaller issues. Making Caring Common Project Consultant Kiran Bhai, an HGSE alum, says this is helpful to manage the many issues swirling in current events that students want to tackle.

"The gut reaction from teachers is they have to say something to show they care, but it's better to build relationships so students know they can come to teachers to talk about those issues," Bhai says. "Later on, you can have those discussions with the whole class."
2. Show and tell
Games and other activities aren't just an excuse for fun. They can also be useful tools for students to share their identity with their classmates and build community. As a school counselor in New Mexico, one game Bhai plays with elementary and middle school students is the "news ball" game. At the end of the week, students and teachers share one piece of news about themselves that brings a piece of their identity into the classroom. Each sharer also explains how they want their community to respond, perhaps with clapping or a hug after class.
3. Caring for everyone
One of the biggest challenges for students when it comes to caring is not just learning how to care for others, but specifically those who are different than them.

"It's really about caring about certain kinds of people," says HGSE alum Glenn Manning, senior project manager for Caring Schools. "Not just the people in your circle already, but really focusing on caring for those who are different than them and who are marginalized."

One way to help students expand their circle and practice the important skills of asking questions and listening deeply is through activities like a portrait project. Students can conduct interviews with a member of their community they don't know well and share their learning with their class. It shows students that caring isn't just an individual act but "it's about a community's experience of caring for others and the common good," Manning says.
4. Talking, and listening, across differences
Too often when students begin to tackle difficult topics, the focus turns to the individual rather than on the issue being discussed. So, modeling not only listening but questioning is important to keep students focused.

"The goal is not to have a debate around controversial issues," Manning says. "It's not arguing. It's about talking about important topics in growing levels of difficulty and really learning how to listen to understand."

To help students practice these skills, they can begin with easier topics, like vegetarianism. A student would share a statement they believe in, like "I believe everyone should be a vegetarian because of animal rights."

Then, the rest of the students have the chance to ask a clarifying question. The key is that students work on controlling their emotions and learn to respond in order to better understand a point of view, not interject their own beliefs.

"We're trying to prepare young people for a democracy where people will have differences of opinions," Manning says, but where students can still build "communities that care and trust."

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Think Your Students Don't Care About Others?

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A new report finds people actually do tend to care for each other - despite their differences.

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While many organizations have implemented traditional workplace technologies to drive better work outcomes, many are currently cautious about embracing new intelligent technologies that are more experimental in nature. However, they see the opportunities ahead. Forty-two percent of business leaders expect that over the next 2-4 years, technology will help drive better organizational outcomes by nudging workers and teams to perform better.

The new fundamentals

Enable technology to work on the worker (and the team). The traditional view of technology as a substitute or supplement for human labor is too narrow. Moving forward, you need to harness technologies that help your people and teams become the best possible versions of themselves. This means nudging them to learn new behaviors, correct old behaviors, and sharpen skills. For example, successful and error-free surgeries in the operating room (OR) require finesse, but determining the exact amount of pressure to apply on the instrument is challenging for surgeons. Technology provides surgeons with smart scalpels and forceps that allow them to gauge and adjust pressure in real time, subsequently improving precision and patient outcomes.

Use interventions and nudges to make humans better. Technology can also aid humans in improving on things that are "fundamentally human." Given the traditional view of technology as a substitute or supplement for humans, it's ironic to think of technology being used to make humans more human. Yet that's exactly what we're talking about here. Technology can help us get better at what we already do best-things like driving well-being, practicing emotional intelligence, and fostering creativity and teaming, which are things technology itself can't do.

Helping humans become better versions of themselves is a worthwhile endeavor on its own. However, from a business perspective, it has the valuable fringe benefit of making people better at their jobs, thereby boosting engagement and performance. Building on the surgery example from the previous fundamental, technologies are also monitoring care team members' time in the OR and cross-referencing that time with error data for the relevant type of surgery, to deliver alerts about fatigue risk. Not only does this improve outcomes for the patient, it also improves well-being for the surgical team.

Scale insights for greater impact. Beyond the individual and team impact, this technology-human team collaboration can also drive impact through insights at scale. All this technology, whether it's used for nudging, collaboration, training, or another purpose, creates data "exhaust." This data is a powerful tool all on its own. Following the surgical example, technology aggregates the data about finesse adjustments, time in-surgery, and errors, to draw insights across an entire hospital or health system to inform changes to workforce practices like shift length, scheduling, or equipment investments. This type of information could then be used to elevate performance and outcomes across workers, teams, the organization, and the ecosystem.

This imagined future isn't just possible; in many cases, it's already here. And its potential impact is even greater when applied not just to individuals, but also to teams (and to networks of connected teams pursuing adjacent goals). The result is improved performance, learning and development, communication, and collaboration. Executives who responded to the Deloitte 2023 Global Human Capital Trends survey believe in the benefits of enabling technology and teams to collaborate to drive outcomes, with one in three reporting an increase in financial performance as a result of their approach to technology and team collaboration.

Current experiments: What leading organizations are exploring

Humu analyzes company data and worker feedback to identify changes likely to improve workers' happiness, performance, and retention. The technology is like a virtual personal coach, using AI to mine worker surveys and other data inputs to identify which behavioral changes could help workers and organizations reach their goals. It then sends workers tailored nudges that appear in email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams. The nudges are aimed at changing behaviors, often with explanations or links to research about why the behaviors matter. As workers (and the people around them) report improvement, machine learning helps the system move on to additional goals.

Ultranauts is using Teams and Slack bots to eliminate barriers that made it challenging for neurodivergent people to find a home in tech companies. The company's CEO empowered employees to create their own personal "biodex"-a quick-start guide to working with them so people with diametrically different styles can immediately understand how to best collaborate.

Drishti's action recognition technology, which is enabled by AI and computer vision, allows DENSO, a Japanese auto component manufacturer, to generate real-time, continuous analytics on manual tasks performed by its production employees. The resulting data set gives production managers the ability to quickly identify and eliminate bottlenecks, improve processes, boost efficiency, and prioritize tasks. Drishti CEO Prasad Akella noted, "We've found that employees at factories are excited to use Drishti because it helps them train continuously without interference from a manager. The system nudges the line associate when a mistake happens, giving him or her the opportunity to fix the problem, unbeknownst to anyone else."

Dawn Avatar Robot Café in Tokyo has robot servers that are operated remotely by people who can't leave their home due to disability, childcare, or other reasons. These remote-controlled robot avatars were designed to make the workplace more accessible, giving the remote café workers more opportunities to interact with others and expanding the pool of potential café workers.

The path forward

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While many organizations have implemented traditional workplace technologies to drive better work outcomes, many are currently cautious about embracing new intelligent technologies that are more experimental in nature. However, they see the opportunities ahead. Forty-two percent of business leaders expect that over the next 2-4 years, technology will help drive better organizational outcomes by nudging workers and teams to perform better.