Until teleportation becomes the norm, frequent travel is simply a fact of life for leaders in the modern business world. As companies continue to grow more reliant on foreign markets, face-to-face meetings remain essential, especially when managing a global team. Tools like Skype have helped bridge global communication gaps, but no technology can supplant in-person interactions — with your team or with your family. In the meantime, you’ll have to find ways to maintain a healthy family-travel balance, which is no simple task. The hardships of the road Travel inflicts a number of stresses on family life. Missing out on the day-to-day bustle — from soccer games to keeping up on your kids’ schooling to basic conversations — can easily disrupt your family dynamic. It sometimes feels like reentering family life is the hardest part of being gone. You have to tread lightly and be careful not to upset decisions made in your absence. I know the struggle all too well. On average, I spend 50% of my time on the road, and it’s not uncommon for me to visit five offices spanning three countries in just four days. This isn’t easy on my family, but we’ve found ways to strike a balance and ensure that a busy itinerary doesn’t keep me from actively participating in my kids’ life. Here are five steps I take to minimize travel pains and maximize family time: Think in opportunity costs. There’s only so much time in a day, so you will inevitably have to make sacrifices. You’ll miss family events, so you need to determine which ones are acceptable and which ones are nonnegotiable. For instance, I have traveled on my own birthday four of the past five years, but I haven’t missed any of my three children’s birthdays. Prioritize quality over quantity. You have limited time at home, so you need to make the most of it. Although you might be exhausted after a trip, staying bedridden won’t make your absence any easier. Make your health a priority overseas, and you’ll be energized to spend quality time with your family when you return. Stay connected. Once your kids are old enough to have email, keep in constant contact with them while you’re on the road. A quick text or note shows that you care and are still engaged in their lives. I also make sure to check my kids’ grades online and even set up online quizzes on Quizlet to test their knowledge of European countries and capitals to keep them connected to my travels. Keep your bags packed. Having a travel bag ready to go will shave hours off the packing process and free up more time for family. This simple practice means I can catch my kids’ soccer games 30 minutes before I have to leave for the airport. Bring your family along. Obviously, your family can’t travel alongside you all the time, but you should occasionally invite them to join you. This opens their eyes to new experiences and gives them a taste of what your life is like on the road. In the end, preserving your family life while traveling the world is all about prioritizing. Leading a global team is a worthwhile endeavo, and so is making time for your family. You might have to skip watching sports or having a drink with the guys, but you’ll be happier for it. It won’t be easy, but with a bit of planning and dedication to your family, you can be a world-class parent and business leader at the same time. Jason Popp is the executive vice president of international at GES, an event marketing company that connects people through live events. With more than 20 years of experience, he combines operational and direct P&L management with rigorous strategic thinking. Follow him on Twitter at @jasonpopp. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: Overworked and overwhelmed? Your answer starts with what you can control How the right routines (for you) help you show up at your best Feeling rushed? Break the habit of hurry and overwhelm Are you suffering from "rush" syndrome? Take this 7-point quiz The "rush syndrome": How it affects your health and your job 5 ways to balance family and leadership-fueled travel originally published by SmartBlogs

(Photo: Flickr user Katherine Lim) When you sit down at a restaurant, it’s one of the first questions your server asks: What would you like to drink? Likewise, when you’re welcomed into someone’s home, it’s usually one of the first things your host asks: Would you like anything to drink? There’s a reason why beverages are such an important aspect of the food industry and day-to-day life — in part due to the biological need for hydration, the topic of beverages is a menu category that touches every consumer, across all day parts and all segments. In Datassential’s newest MenuTrends Keynote report on non-alcoholic beverages, we combine powerful data from MenuTrends, our industry-leading menu database, with opinions and behaviors from consumers, and data from operators. The following is just a sip of the insights included in our newest report detailing today’s beverage landscape. After tap water, brewed coffee is the most consumed beverage If you’re one of the many people who start every day with a coffee in hand, you probably won’t be surprised at this survey takeaway: brewed coffee is the most consumed beverage after tap water. More than 40% of adult Americans report drinking coffee on any given day, resulting in a higher daily incidence rate than bottled water, juice, and carbonated soft drinks (CSD). Consumers’ top two perceptions of coffee include its great taste and the fact that it provides a wake-up jolt of caffeine. Coffee consumption is highest in the morning (with 54% of people reporting that they drank hot coffee during breakfast), and then tapers off until spiking again in the afternoon. Thus, coffee isn’t just a big player at coffeehouses and breakfast establishments - operators have around-the-clock opportunities to attract customers. Some operators have capitalized on this with post-lunch happy hour discounts to attract business from people needing an afternoon pick-me-up. Starbucks has offered the Frappuccino Happy Hour, where the blended beverages are half-off from 3 to 5 p.m., and similarly, Dunkin’ Donuts has offered 99-cent coffees and teas in the afternoon. Consumers want premium, natural ingredients Healthy eating continues to trend, and so does healthy drinking. Consumers are moving toward healthier beverage choices and are interested in beverages with premium ingredients and natural sweeteners. More than 40% of consumers are interested in beverages that use premium ingredients, such as locally-sourced coffee, heirloom and artisan teas, and cold-pressed juices. When it comes to that morning cup of joe, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of descriptors that indicate a premium offering: words like "local" and "certified" are among the fastest growing coffee terms on menus. Take Chick-fil-A, for instance, which created a website to promote its "coffee with a story" campaign highlighting its specialty-grade coffee and the actual farmers that grow it. Increasing health awareness has also affected other beverage categories, like soda. The greatest barrier to consumption for soda is the fact that people view it as an unhealthy choice with too much sugar. Operators are responding by offering healthier alternatives and a wider variety of beverage options. Earlier this year Burger King stopped marketing diet soda as a beverage choice for kids’ meals, instead showcasing better-for-you options such as fat-free milk, apple juice, or chocolate milk. The move toward fresh and healthy has spread throughout the industry as Burger King, Taco Bell, and Panera Bread have all recently announced plans to eliminate artificial flavors from their menus. With only 4% of consumers perceiving soda as a healthy choice, beverages such as green juices and teas have become popular choices on menus. Nutrition-rich greens, like kale and spinach, have also increased their presence on beverage menus, often used in green smoothies. On beverage menus, kale has grown more than 400% since 2010. Coconut water, a trendy beverage for hydration, has increased more than 200%. Matcha green tea, kombucha and alternative nut milks, such as almond and soy, are all trending. Experimenting with new flavors In lieu of mainstream soda, many operators are capitalizing on the craft/small-batch soda trend. Incorporating natural, seasonal flavors into house-made sodas can appeal to consumers who are looking for a more unique, healthy drinking experience similar to that of craft cocktails and mocktails. Using seasonal flavors and natural ingredients in house-made sodas appeal to more than a quarter of consumers. Nontraditional soda flavors, such as lavender and blood orange, are just some of the rapidly- growing trends operators and manufacturers can explore. Flavors are integral to beverages, and beverages are an integral part of any operators’ offerings, but even those who aren’t necessary looking to transform beverage options will find that many of our flavor insights can translate to innovation on food menus. That’s just a sampling of our MenuTrends Keynote report to wet your whistle on the wealth of insights we’ve gathered on non-alcoholic beverages, including details on consumer behavior and motivations for beverage categories ranging from shakes and smoothies to enhanced sports drinks. Maeve Webster is the senior director of Datassential, a supplier of trends, analysis and concept testing for the food industry. For more information about ordering the MenuTrends Keynote Non-Alcoholic Beverage Report, contact Brian Darr at brian@datassential.com. __________________________________________________ If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about the food and beverage industry. We offer 14 newsletters covering the industry from restaurants to food manufacturing. Related Posts: Cool beer, wine and cocktail trends to quench summer thirsts Prepared foods report: New consumer behaviors hone in on fresh, healthy and sustainable Sneak peek: Appetizer report featuring key consumer insights, trends How coffee can give your restaurant a jolt Report: What do food industry operators want and how do they buy? Beverage trends: Consumers gulp down coffee, natural, seasonal and premium originally published by SmartBlogs

My son is all grown up now and studying hard at university, but when he was a small boy and was naughty I remember the following dialogue. Me: "Reece, why did you do that?" Reece: "I don’t know." Me: "But Reece, you know better than that." Reece: "I know, Dad" Me: "Well, if you know, why did you do it?" Reece: "I don’t know." As adults, how many times do you find yourself or others doing what they know full well they shouldn’t do but doing it anyway? At Mindful Presenter, every week we go into businesses and see professionals: Reading slides Avoiding eye contact Delivering information as fast as a bullet train Speaking in a robotic "corporate" tone They know it’s not the best way to share and present their ideas, but they do it anyway. Highly intelligent, creative, responsible and talented professionals suddenly lose their personality and true sense of themselves as they turn into the corporate spokesperson. Why is that? There seems to be a fascinating phenomenon driving the issue. Often, we are called in by executives to help their people present "more effectively, with impact." We are asked to help teams to be more dynamic, engaging and to articulate their message with purpose and absolute clarity. For the most part, we are given a long list of concerns and weaknesses about the presentation styles and performance of key people. We don’t believe there is a cast iron template for great presenting, so we do whatever we can in advance to witness how these people present. We achieve that by sitting in on company presentations as observers and do nothing else but that — observe. Recite.com They are right Nine times out of 10, the initial brief was spot on as we witness presenters rambling, reading slides and being very obtuse. They are also wrong Then we get them into the training room as delegates and often something miraculous happens. Suddenly, they become engaging, entertaining and powerful speakers. Why is that? What we’ve found is that when you allow them to be themselves, and I mean their real selves, you see them shine as gifted orators who already have most of what it takes to present an idea with real impact. All they needed was encouragement, support and a safe environment to be themselves. What’s in the way? It’s not PowerPoint as many would have us try to believe; it’s a cultural thing. Every organization has its own unique culture, which, simply put, is a collection of values, attitudes and beliefs that are manifested in the way people think, speak and act. It starts at the top and rapidly becomes all pervasive and the lifeblood of a business. In many organizations today, people simply don’t "feel safe" presenting. It’s the way things are done. Many companies have hugely powerful visions and values in the written sense of the word, and we hold the view that every presentation should be aligned to those values. Are they? No. Many presenters think they are aligning to values and say they are, but when observed from the outside in, they are often delusional. In fact, in a typical workshop of eight delegates, when you ask them to remind you of their company values, we very rarely find more than half who can. That presents an interesting dilemma and challenge in its own right for most organizations, but when it comes to the way they communicate and present their ideas, it really is the heart of the problem. More often than we would care to hear, our brief is to help people to "just get straight to the point." I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard executives say they are not interested in connecting, stories and engagement — they just want the facts. The brief they give us to help their teams present more effectively simply isn’t aligned to their own values. If all you really want is for people to get straight to the point, you should just ask for an e-mail, a one-to-one discussion or a document sent to you. You really don’t need 10 people in the room to hear the facts. The leader’s role Ditch the templates Templates are so 1990s. They stifle creativity and free thinking and only serve to ensure that every presentation is the same and boring. Allow your team to present their ideas in a way that works for them. By all means, give them an idea of your preferred approach and structure, but then just let them get on with it. Corporate templates achieve nothing but stroking the ego of the person who created them and making everyone the same. Your logo really doesn’t need to be on every slide either. Data is dull We see so many presentations where all the senior management team want is the data. Data is often quite easy to attain so if that’s all you really want, just ask for it privately. When you ask for a presentation, also ask for the highlights and the story behind the data. You really don’t need reams of numbers, and if you do, ask for it before or after the meeting. Be real A common listed value we see in many businesses today is "human," which always strikes me as a little odd because of course that’s what we all are. Yet it’s set in the context of encouraging employees to be real, authentic, to be open and to keep things as simple as possible Interestingly, people are human all day long until some stand up to present — then, they adopt a robotic and monotone personality as they read slides to the most important person in the room. Help people to be themselves, encourage and support them to lose the "corporate speak" and to enthuse, engage and educate you by simply being themselves. Perfection drives anxiety One of the most common requests we have on our workshops is people seeking to answer difficult questions more effectively when presenting. On further discussion, we find that a common trait in business today is that presenters believe that they are expected to be perfect and to know the answer to everything. The greatest cause of presentation anxiety we see today is the belief that it is unacceptable to not be able to instantly answer every question which is asked of them. It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job, you simply can’t know everything. We need to let our people know that it’s perfectly fine to say, "I don’t know but I’ll find out and come back to you." Involve everyone Have you ever noticed that when someone in the audience asks a question, the speaker tends to answer only the questioner? Well that’s great for the questioner, but what about the rest of the room? The best speakers will answer the question making eye contact with and engaging everyone in the room. Encourage your people to do the same. Lose the ego We all want to look good; it’s human nature. When we are presenting to colleagues and, especially, those more senior to us, we want to look and sound confident, clear, knowledgeable and inspirational. It’s completely normal, and it’s what fuels us to do the best job that we can. Where it becomes an issue is when it’s competitive. In other words, when someone in the room chooses to become the "sniper" and shoot the presenter down because they are more senior, want to look good themselves or simply like the attention. Encourage everyone to leave their egos and seniority at the door and just listen, support and engage with the presenter. Help them to be the very best they can be. Maurice De Castro is director at Mindful Presenter and a former executive at companies such as Interflora and Direct Line Insurance. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s e-mail list for our daily newsletter on being a better leader and communicator. Related Posts: How not to present: Lessons learned from "The Big Bang Theory" Simple steps to successful presentations The 4 presentation attributes every leader needs Moving up the value chain of public speaking: Expert, interpreter or catalyst? 3 superpowers of public speaking Your culture drives your presentations every time originally published by SmartBlogs

The affordability of college education, conjoined with the discussion of the public and/or private value generated by that education, has never been a more important topic. If we believe that society must educate the global population in order to create a better world for present and future generations, then it is critical for those of us in higher education to understand the role that technology has to play in enabling post-secondary learning for all. A recent case study of Arizona State University’s online campus, ASU Online, conducted by the ASU Walton Sustainability Solutions Initiatives and its Global Sustainability Solutions Services, determined that online education not only provides greater access to higher education offerings but also has become a cornerstone element of the institution’s sustainability plan generating socio-economic value and benefits for the degree-earner, the institution and the greater economy. The case study began when Dell approached ASU in mid-2014 with a request to analyze the sustainability impacts of information and communication technology, or ICT, in online education as part of its Dell 2020 Legacy of Good Plan. Dell wanted to understand the role of ICT in generating net positive progress in a variety of industries, including higher education (work that is also currently underway in conjunction with Business for Social Responsibility [BSR] through its Center for Technology and Sustainability). Our study resulted in several significant conclusions: the online and "immersion" (traditional, campus-based, face-to-face) models are rapidly merging; most online and immersion courses will utilize the exact same technology base; the ICT intensity varies little between the two modes; and the socio-economic benefits of online education dwarf its environmental benefits, however important they are. We conducted this study from the perspective of a public research university, in our case the largest in the nation under a single administration, which comprises four campuses, 83,000 students (13,000 online) and more than 3,000 faculty. To determine the net positive value, our research team estimated the environmental costs and benefits of online education, with a primary focus on net carbon benefits as well as near and long-term socio-economic benefits, using the acquisition of an undergraduate degree as the baseline unit of analysis. From an environmental benefits point of view, a student choosing a fully online degree saves 30 to 70 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (the standard measure of greenhouse gas emissions and a primary concern of the ICT industry) over immersion students. These savings are largely driven by eliminating transportation to and from class and, most important, through a significant in classroom construction. It should be noted that classroom space represents less than three percent of total building space on ASU campuses. Unless the research university itself becomes virtual, most of the other 97 percent is still required. Accessibility and net worth On the socio-economic side of things, we found that benefits accrue from accessibility. Most students choosing the online route simply would not get a campus-based degree. Using existing research on the economic upside of a post-secondary degree, we estimated as much as $550,000 worth of lifetime benefits for each student that earns an online degree. That half million dollars covers increased life-time , greater net worth at retirement, avoidance of costly social services, and contribution of positive social services on the part of the better educated citizen. ASU Online was originally created six years ago to increase access while providing a new revenue stream, and with the reduction of state and federal funding, the importance of new revenue sources cannot be understated. There was some concern that ASU Online might "cannibalize" its typical 18 to 25-year old student base. Instead, ASU Online accessed a large, growing, global market, enrolling students who tend to be older, working, married parents who tried college before, stopped, want to start again, and must work asynchronously. Over six years, ASU Online has developed a profitable, new revenue stream that helps support the overall operations of the enterprise with an envisioned future student population of 200,000 students annually by 2030, 100,000 each through immersion and online modes. Accessibility also means equality. A key, driving principle of the ASU model is that an online degree should be indistinguishable from an immersion degree. Nowhere on the degree or transcript is it specified whether the degree was attained through immersion or online mode. The curricular content of immersion and online degrees are identical. The courses are designed, developed, and delivered by the same top-notch research faculty. The intent is to ensure that an online degree is of the same high quality and rigor as an immersion degree, anchored in advanced research and delivered by qualified expert faculty. Affordability and the impact on the institution and faculty The education system has many stakeholders: students, parents, faculty, university administration, technology providers, public and private employers, and the greater society in which the university is embedded, including the metro area, state, country, and planet. All of these stakeholders incur costs and accrue benefits from higher education. The prevalent concern about ICT, and the online learning modes enabled by ICT, has been on its impact on the affordability of higher education for the student and, often, the parent(s) of the student. But, the impact on affordability for the faculty, institution, employers, and greater society are also interesting questions. For example, at what point do the diminishing costs (to the student) of an online degree negatively impact faculty? At $480 per credit hour, a degree through ASU Online costs roughly the same price as in-state tuition, certainly making a degree more affordable for out-of-state students. While it is not necessarily more affordable to the in-state student, it is still a good value in today’s market. If the price were reduced due to market forces to $120 per credit hour, the education would be more affordable to students, wherever they might be. But, as one ASU executive noted recently, it is doubtful that ASU could afford such a change. It would be difficult to incent faculty to design and deliver courses, resulting in further degradation of quality of the education. The value of the degree earned would not likely bear up under the scrutiny of accrediting institutions, eroding ASU’s position as a provider of high-quality online degree education. Higher-ed’s ICT-enabled future Higher education is undergoing radical, disruptive innovation, due to a wide variety of factors: the scale of the global challenge; the cost of an education; its changing cost/benefit ratio; the silly assertion that education is strictly a private good; the corresponding abandonment by the public sector of its historic social contract to provide an affordable public education; and the emergence of new business and pedagogical models enabled by new ICT technologies. The future we see at 2030 or 2050 is a world that will continue to be characterized by increasing complexity and diversity. The higher education market will grow radically and expand globally. ICT-enabled models will make education available to all citizens of the world. The higher education market will segment into a wide variety of niches and business models differentiated along dimensions of discipline, competencies, degree focus, price, and quality. The higher end might continue to be the Ivy League and its imitators. The lower end might be rapid, MOOC-style courses available from not always trusted sources. Quality degrees from public research institutions such as ASU that are of high value are likely to occupy a significant niche, delivering the same quality education it does today in immersion, online, and hybrid modes. As this evolution takes place, it is incumbent on the leaders of our universities to experiment aggressively with online education in order to maintain our public institutions relevance in a new age. Quality higher education has long been recognized as a significant contributor to a life well lived. Broad, global access to it is necessary to enable nine billion people to live well on our planet, within its resources, by (a commonly cited benchmark year for global sustainability goals). ICT will play a critical role in making post-secondary learning affordable and accessible to all. Dan O’Neill is a senior sustainability scientist and general manager for the Global Sustainability Solutions Services at Arizona State University. In this role, he connects the sustainability needs of local and global stakeholders to the knowledge and delivery capabilities of ASU and its global network of partners through the delivery of real, practical, effective sustainability solutions. This article is a content collaboration with eCampus News. The article also appears on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more. Related Posts: Higher Ed Conversations: Containing the costs of a degree The disruptive innovation that will skill up America Why college students need social media business courses and tools to succeed How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? Redefining smart Affordability and sustainability through ICT-enabled education originally published by SmartBlogs

Disruption is probably one of the most overused buzzwords in education, yet few seem to know what it means. In higher education especially, there’s a tendency to take an exciting technological advancement, call it a disruptive innovation, cram it into the classroom experience, and then hope that efficiencies will magically appear. But a disruptive innovation doesn’t necessarily entail a technological breakthrough. In fact, in our most recent work in higher education called Hire Education, Clayton Christensen and I underscore that there is true disruptive potential in online competency-based education (CBE) aligned to workforce needs even though the parts of this whole are not at all new. We’ve all heard of workforce training, competencies and online learning. They’re not new phenomena, but online competency-based education is revolutionary because it marks the critical convergence of multiple vectors: the right learning model, the right technologies, the right customers, and the right business model. The theory of disruptive innovation helps illustrate how the inertia of academia inevitably makes way for upstart disruptors, such as online, competency-based educational programs, to seize a market of untapped connections between learning and work. Most institutions get locked into the complex orchestration of resources, priorities and processes of not just one but three very different, costly and conflicting value propositions that center on teaching, research and facilitating a social community of students. In this complex orchestration, it becomes impossible to parse the exact costs of producing these interdependent lines of business. And there’s no way that technology will somehow magically disentangle these locked business models to create a newly efficient model of higher education. Meanwhile, there are a growing number of students who are finding themselves over-served by these augmented, bundled services. Nearly 71% of U.S. "college" students do not participate in the residential college experience that we tend to glorify; most of them commute, work part-time, have family commitments, or do not have the luxury of majoring in a field that has no direct relevance to their future employment goals. These students are often looking for flexible, cost-effective and streamlined programs that move them ahead in their working lives. Linking students to employers through online CBE Online CBE providers plant themselves squarely in the midst of these nontraditional students and center on a single, simpler value proposition: to serve as the critical missing link between higher education and the workforce. It turns out that employers cannot gauge what students can actually do from a list of courses and letter grades. Diplomas serve more as a sorting mechanism for general proxies for potential talent. Competencies, on the other hand, are clear about students’ precise skill sets, dispositions and capabilities. There are explicit learning objectives that, for instance, delineate that a student can evaluate the credibility of online resources, or apply financial principles to solve business problems, or create and explain big data results using data-mining skills and advanced modeling techniques. For students, competency-based education is hard. They’re not able to get away with a merely average understanding of the material; they must demonstrate mastery — and therefore apply dedicated work toward gaining mastery — in any competency. Online CBE providers take this rigorous learning experience and marry it with ever-improving online technologies. The resulting ability to scale and modularize learning enables online CBE to narrow the skills gap in ways that traditional forms of postsecondary education cannot duplicate. Why scale and modularization matter Scale is important for various reasons. There are already various offline CBE providers as well as community colleges that create on-demand learning pathways to mitigate workforce shortages, but they lack the ability to replicate those programs in a cost-effective manner. Online CBE, however, is already comparable to or lower than the cost of community colleges for students, in large part due to a new kind of architecture of learning. Technology in this case sets into motion modularization. When learning is broken down into competencies — rather than by courses or by subject matter — modules of learning can be easily arranged, combined and scaled online into different programs for very different industries. Although most of the current development of CBE programs is occurring in traditional degree programs, online CBE is almost more powerful in the way that it can be used to skill up students for new and emergent fields that don’t necessarily end in a specific credential or a degree. This will be vital for the millions of nontraditional students looking for more direct and cost-effective pathways to and within the workforce. Imagine a future in which students and working adults will be able to take a mere handful of modules — as opposed to a degree or certificate program — to skill up and move up the employment chain. Traditional institutions will have a tough time competing for student tuition dollars, not only because these modules will be tailor-made programs for positions that are in demand, but also because these will be engaging, mastery-based learning experiences at a fraction of the price. The idea of scaling a one-on-one in mastery learning experience had been unfathomable to Benjamin Bloom in 1984 when he introduced his work on the 2 Sigma Problem. It was clear to him that students tutored individually in a mastery-based format were able to perform at two standard deviations above the average of the control class, with obvious advantages in their abilities to problem-solve, apply principles, analyze and be creative; however, Bloom simply could not imagine a way of scaling such a tutorial. Only the wealthiest might be able to take advantage of this kind of learning. But now, technology in the form of smart learning platforms and data analytics equip instructors with clearer profiles of their students. It is as though each student has a personalized tutor, but in this case, one tutor can serve many more students at a time because she can efficiently gauge the students’ level of understanding and intervene only when necessary. These data-driven interactions between teachers and students actually become tailored, richer teaching moments and more cost-effective interventions. Critics nevertheless insist on denigrating such routes aligned to labor market needs as narrow, vocational training for single dead-end jobs — not careers. This is an oft-repeated and false dichotomy: job training in no way prevents students from learning how to learn for a lifetime. And in a knowledge economy, attaining a first job is a major inroad to other, life-changing opportunities as well as increased wage earnings premiums. It is unlikely that from here on out, four years of college will last anyone a lifetime. All of us will have to continually retool — some of us for jobs that don’t even exist yet. The number of alternative learning providers singularly focused on a simple value proposition such as creating pathways to jobs in demand will only grow. Agile and adaptable online CBE workforce solutions have the power to produce a separate and possibly even more powerful set of industry-validated learning experiences that could supersede the traditional degree. Now that would be truly disruptive. At the time of this writing, Michelle Weise was a senior research fellow with the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation. She is now executive director of the Innovation Lab at Southern New Hampshire University. This article is a content collaboration with eCampus News. The article also appears on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more. Related Posts: Higher Ed Conversations: Containing the costs of a degree Affordability and sustainability through ICT-enabled education Why college students need social media business courses and tools to succeed How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? Redefining smart The disruptive innovation that will skill up America originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartBlog on Education in collaboration with eCampus News will bring you monthly point/counterpoint-style blog posts about top issues in higher education. This month, two experts’ weigh in on containing the costs of a higher-education degree. The disruptive innovation that will skill up America by Michelle Weise, executive director of the Innovation Lab at Southern New Hampshire University Affordability and sustainability through ICT-enabled education by Dan O’Neill, a senior sustainability scientist and general manager for the Global Sustainability Solutions Services at Arizona State University Join the conversation on eCampus Symposium. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering Higher Education, College and Career Readiness, Leadership and more. Related Posts: The disruptive innovation that will skill up America Affordability and sustainability through ICT-enabled education Why college students need social media business courses and tools to succeed How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? Redefining smart Higher Ed Conversations: Containing the costs of a degree originally published by SmartBlogs

As a sports fan, I have often thought about how certain built-in realities of the professional game impact the likelihood of a particular player’s potential for success. For example, the height of a basket in basketball places a premium on tall players; even guards and wing men are typically well above six feet tall. Similarly, football offensive linemen who can block well but are nowhere near the standard 300+ lb. weight that has become commonplace in today’s NFL are almost assured that they will not find a job in the premier football league. This same reality applies to the classroom. Out of necessity, we have created a set of standards and parameters for schooling, and tend to define smartness and intelligence in those narrow terms. We focus on particular academic areas, such as language and mathematics, and account less for students’ abilities and interests in other disciplines. Moreover, we use testing measures that cater to visual, linguistic and logical learners over those who would benefit from a testing environment that allows for oral testing, dialogue, and/or movement, to choose a few. The kids who grow up thinking that they are smart are oftentimes the ones whose talents and gifts are rewarded by schools and teachers. By rewarded I mean that they are most capable of navigating effectively through the school system and demonstrating mastery of content in the way that it is presented to and then asked of them. In contrast, "weaker" students are often hampered by a lack of confluence between their abilities and the instruction that they receive, as well as what they are allowed to do in order to demonstrate their abilities and knowledge. For example, suppose I asked students to produce a product, such as a painting or a building model, or to develop a computer program or write a song instead of jot down information. How might that level the playing field? If you are not sure, think about the young men and women that were either your classmates or your students that were valedictorians and/or regularly awarded and recognized in school. These were the kids who were featured in your class yearbook that were "most likely to succeed." Now think about the "class dummies" that struggled mightily to perform to any meaningful standard. Once you have your list, consider where all of these people are in life today and what they have been able to achieve professionally and otherwise. You will likely find that the success-failure continuum has shifted somewhat over the past many years, perhaps even drastically. (The internet is replete with lists of school age "failures" that have taken the world by storm and achieved great success.) Life and the marketplace can be powerful equalizers. This is not to suggest that we have it all wrong or that academic achievement is a poor predictor of future success. I am saying, however, that we need to broaden our definition of intelligence and how to promote such intelligence so that we can produce "smarter" students with a greater collective sense of efficacy and confidence. There are many ways by which to do this. These include teaching to different modalities, differentiating and assigning creative projects that offer students various ways by which to shine. It also can include having open conversations with students about intelligence and smartness, so that they become better self-advocates while also not getting down on themselves to the point that they see themselves as failures before the game of life has truly begun. Naphtali Hoff (@impactfulcoach) served as an educator and school administrator for over 15 years before becoming an executive coach and consultant. Download his free leadership ebook at http://impactfulcoaching.com/freebook. Read his blog at impactfulcoaching.com/blog. If you enjoyed this article, join SmartBrief’s email list for more stories about education. We offer newsletters covering EdTech, Higher Education and more. Related Posts: Linking educational silos Maintaining balance 4 R’s of summer school: Keeping the momentum going Is delegation a nasty word? Hybrid roles: Making a whole out of two halves Redefining smart originally published by SmartBlogs

The volume of data associated with communications in the financial services sector has exploded in recent years. But as firms allow communication to take place across more channels, a recent survey from Smarsh finds compliance efforts are not keeping pace. Nearly one-third (32%) of firms that allow business communication through employees’ personal social media accounts do not have supervision or social media archiving solutions in place to monitor those messages. The compliance gap doubles to 64% when it comes to text messages - even as regulations call for the timely capture and production of e-communications upon request. "You’ve got advisors and brokers communicating with their customers and communicating with business partners in the office all over text messaging because it is easy and its everywhere. The problem is most organizations don’t have the means to capture, archive or reproduce those communications,’ explains Smarsh founder and CEO Stephen Marsh. "Out of all the questions the survey asks and all the different aspects of compliance gaps, text messaging is the biggest risk area for many firms." These compliance gaps and other industry trends are highlighted in the Smarsh 2015 Electronic Communications Compliance Survey. Why do these compliance gaps exist? Managing e-communications has become more complex and firms are utilizing tools and protocols to manage these growing pains in different ways. Nevertheless, firms are failing to delivery requested information to regulators in a timely manner. The three most commonly cited reasons were: Difficulty in searching across multiple applications and locations - 46% Lack of familiarity with the necessary technologies - 45% Inadequate staffing resources - 39% Cybersecurity ramifications FINRA and the SEC recently issued guidance related to cybersecurity risk and preparedness. Recent high-proile attacks also have made cybersecurity a hot topic at financial services firms. According to the survey, 83% of respondents participated in conversations about risks related to cybersecurity in the last year and 58% expect their role to change as a result of managing such risks. "The electronic communications archive is no longer simply a check-the-box technology used to fulfill regulatory requests for firm data. Instead, archiving is now playing an increasingly important role in overall cybersecurity strategy and efforts by reducing and consolidating data silos across a growing number of content channels, and identifying risky communications or activity proactively - before they become serious and potentially damaging issues," Marsh explained in a noted distributed with the survey results. Nearly 60% of respondents answered that they were mostly to completely confident in their ability to prevent and detect cyberthreats, yet Marsh cautions that the survey results over the last five years, coupled with events in the marketplace, indicate some of that confidence might be misplaced as many respondents simply don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to their cyber vulnerabilities. Additional survey insights In addition meeting regulatory requests, some 72% of respondents said that message supervision is a "critical tool to identify real risk in their organization." Eighty-one percent believe message supervision "delivers valuable and actionable insights to the business." Firms are also using e-communication monitoring data to aid in litigation or to meet e-discovery requests. To compile its results, Smarsh surveyed 274 compliance professionals in February and March, drawing respondents from both small and large firms with a broad range of compliance-related job titles, from the C-suite to staff level. Sixty-four percent of respondents were RIAs while another 38% were BDs. Related Posts: Smarsh CEO shares insights on social media compliance for advisers, broker-dealers Sneak Peek: OPS 2015 kicks off Monday in San Diego Advisers can make meaningful connections via social media, expert says How Vanguard mixes finance with social media When it comes to the Flash Crash trader, intent matters Survey finds firms need to ‘mind the gap’ in e-communications compliance originally published by SmartBlogs

Engaging students has a variety of topographical looks but one definition: active minds having to adapt, negotiate, problem solve and produce. Student engagement is essential to deeper more complex learning. As you consider curriculum, look for ways to deliver information without being the primary source of that information. One way to create a fully student-engaged learning environment is to allow students to explore content in four brain-based learning areas: Imagination: Students explore content by creating digital or non-digital products where the only expectation is that they create some imaginative resource or connection to the content. An example of a product in this area might be exploring geometric solids as both closed and netted figures and creating a digitally annotated representation of them. Apps like 3D Geometry and Skitch, or EduCreations, are excellent for this type of learning. Curiosity: Students discover and explore a variety of examples of the content and develop "wonder questions" which will guide their research about the content. An example of this learning might be a display of various tools used to measure. Students explore the tools and ask questions like, "Why is a ruler divided into 12 inches when our number system is primarily base ten?" Adaptation: Students create new content and collaborate with others (both inside and outside the classroom) using their research, exploration and discovery. Blogging, ePals, Skype, coding and gaming are all excellent choice for this area. An example might be that students co-create a Minecraft EDU world depicting and explaining the Civil War. Passion: Students become creative through their passions and use content to share their learning of the content. We define passion as, "that which we are willing to endure because it is important to us." An example of this area might be a student who is passionate about animal rights might create a PSA for their cause by connecting the important concepts they have learned to that cause. Joli Barker is an elementary educator at Press Elementary in McKinney, TX. Barker is best known for her innovative classroom model and her book, The Fearless Classroom: A Practical Guide to Experiential Learning Environments. She is an internationally recognized educator who has received several awards and recognitions including Microsoft Expert Educator, TCEA Classroom Teacher of the Year, and NSBA’s "20 to Watch". ***** Tech Tips is a content collaboration between SmartBrief Education and GreyED Solutions. Have a tech tip to share? Contact us at techtips@greyedsolutions.com Miss a Tech Tip? Visit our Tech Tip archive. *****   Related Posts: No Related Posts Tech Tip: Engage students in deeper learning originally published by SmartBlogs

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter. How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? Very well — I achieve a great distribution of performance: 32.2% Well — I could do a little better differentiating performance: 51.71% Not well — most people end up with the same rating: 12.2% Poorly — there’s little to no differentiation in reviews: 3.9% Differentiation Matters. Failure to invest in letting people know where they stand in a candid way causes all sorts of problems. High performers feel slighted. Their morale drops and they may search for other opportunities. Low performers get a false sense of security and don’t improve their work. You’re the leader because you have the ability and responsibility to deliver these messages and ensure the ratings match the performance. There are many proven techniques for tackling the difficult task of fighting grade inflation. Don’t get weak knees when it comes time to differentiate - you’ll pay for it in the long run. Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of "Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results" and "One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership." Related Posts: How well do you push your own thinking before involving others? How effectively do content marketing efforts (blogs, white papers, etc.) drive action by your customers? Where does the biggest threat to your organization come from? How important is a SWOT analysis in your strategic planning efforts? How well do you recognize when something will "trigger" you in a negative way? How well do you differentiate performance in performance reviews? originally published by SmartBlogs