As an instructional designer at a real estate board, I question whether standardized online courses adequately address the diverse experiences, backgrounds, and knowledge gaps of professionals completing mandatory continuing education. While these courses help learners meet professional development requirements, completing the required hours often times does not demonstrate meaningful learning, and it also might not help in enhancing their professional practice.
By 2035, I optimistically predict AI-supported professional development that moves beyond pre-designed courses. Learners can identify professional challenges or topics of interest, answer a few questions posed by the adaptive platform so it can assess their prior knowledge and then generate relevant content, practical scenarios, and assessments. This would allow experienced professionals to explore complex situations while newly-licensed ones develop foundational competencies.
At the same I find this idea fascinating, it also scares me, since this future raises questions beyond technological capability. Macgilchrist et al. (2020) demonstrate how imagining alternative educational futures can reveal the social values embedded in technology. Their work has me considering whether AI personalization would genuinely increase learner agency, or actually introduce new forms of technological control. Selwyn (2024) also challenges assumptions about AI’s educational potential, raising questions about the continued importance of human judgment.
I still remain optimistic of this envisioned future, but one that requires deliberate choices. As Veletsianos et al. (2024) suggest, imagining hopeful educational futures involves considering justice and whose interests technology serves. By 2035, could personalized professional development empower diverse learners while maintaining educational quality and professional accountability?
References
Macgilchrist, F., Allert, H., & Bruch, A. (2020). Students and society in the 2020s. Three future ‘histories’ of education and technology. Learning, Media and Technology, 45(1), 76–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1656235
Selwyn, N. (2024). On the Limits of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Pedagogikk Og Kritikk, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.23865/ntpk.v10.6062
Veletsianos, G., Houlden, S., Ross, J., Alhadad, S., & Dickson-Deane, C. (2024). Higher education futures at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 21(1), 43, s41239-024-00475–0. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-024-00475-0
AI Transparency Statement
I used AI to help me gather sources for activity 7 and assignment 3. I told Co-pilot what topic I was interested in writing about, fed it with the readings of unit 3, and asked that it give me at least three peer-reviewed sources that I can read. All sources it suggested turned out to be real, and I have started reading them, but haven’t used any in this particular post. I also used Co-pilot to review this writing for clarity and coherence.