Learning & Employment Data: Self-Sovereign Infrastruture

up next we've got uh spencer ellis from the colorado department of higher education on a panel with alex kaplan from ibm blockchain shannon liu from jobs for the future and michael torrance from matlow state that's colorado hey welcome thank you all so much thanks for kicking it over um thanks for joining our panel today on learning and employment data self-sovereign infrastructure as mentioned my name is spencer ellis and i'm the director of educational innovation at the colorado department of education i'll be your moderator for this session um i wanted to start with a big thank you to the east denver team for an amazing event so far so much going on i see our panelists filtering in here thank you jonathan for getting this queued up um so much going on so many activities so much to do i could have filled my entire weekend with the uh the events of the of just east denver so thank you all so much um it's been fantastic um and i'm learning a lot that's that's to say i'm learning a lot too so thanks again for for the fantastic event i also got my conference swag that i wanted to show off you can kind of see there which is great if you haven't gotten yours um you know you're eligible to to use your voucher it looks like michael michael got his which is great so uh put your order in if you haven't just a little plug for that but i love it thank you all so much for your hospitality this has been a great event um so just a little bit more about the department of higher education which is one of the state agencies that russell and lou were speaking about here in the state of colorado we are a state agency led by our executive director dr angie pacioni under the bold vision of governor polis who i think is joining for an overwatch match later or something like that uh league of legends league of legends is what it is and uh so we at the at the cdhe um and in the state of colorado work with our educational institutions as we strive to achieve the state education and economic work uh and workforce goals we do this by investing in innovation and leveraging technology for better experiences for learners and for systems for our institutions and in particular serving those who need it the most obviously the pandemic has disrupted higher ed for those who are who are engaged in any sort of courses or maybe taking classes online currently you know this firsthand and it's forced us to think about how we better serve those who need it the most so this has been a conversation not only with the department of higher ed but throughout the state of colorado what we're hoping to do is harness the disruption that higher ed has experienced and help it evolve into the next generation of higher education and workforce preparation so today we pulled together this panel of experts to help us discuss opportunities and challenges in higher ed and what role data plays in this innovation conversation so let's get let's get going with our fantastic panel uh we'll have each panelist introduce themselves and i will call on you all so make sure to unmute yourselves um we'd like you all to start with your name a little bit more about your job and or organization and finally and probably most importantly in the spirit of denver innovation festival your favorite fantasy creature that is not a spork marmot so we know the conference mascot is a spork marmot what is your favorite fantasy creature uh that is not a sport marmot so we're going to start with my colleague at the colorado department of higher education michael vontae michael hi everyone uh great to be here with you all thanks for having us my name is michael vonte i'm the senior director of research and data governance at the colorado department of higher education probably more and more leaning into that second half of my title as the days go by being able to think about how we leverage the data that we have to answer a whole host of questions and improve our practice and improve policy down the way um in terms of animal you know for some reason uh falcore from neverending story is just really in my brain today so i'm gonna go with that killer choice and my dog looks a lot like that particular creature so i have a deep appreciation thank you michael um next we're going to kick it over to sharon sharon would you like to introduce yourself hi my name is sharon liu and i'm an entrepreneur in residence at jff labs works together with a national not-for-profit organization jff jobs for the future which focuses on tech accelerating technology and other new models that will make our education and workforce systems more efficient so that um we can provide opportunities for all and i'm really not like creative or imaginative in that way but i wanted i got special permission from spencer to actually um i guess give a rebuttal on the spork so i do a lot of backpacking and i find this work to be one of the most ineffective tools for eating and so this is actually my favorite eating thing for um and you can see that it's actually long so that you can eat out of like the freezer bags and like the problem with sporks is that you can accidentally pierce the bag um and so this one is actually got a silicone lip which makes it easier to scrape from the bottom of titanium and also bags but this one's gotten eaten by a crow when i got attacked on a trip that i was on but anyhow my favorite eating utensil sharon thanks for turning that question on its head we appreciate it and uh hopefully john and the east team are listening so that they have a future fodder for next year's conference mascot um great we are going to pivot over to michael torrance president michael torrance so michael would you like to introduce yourself oh absolutely uh thank you for having me michael torrance president motlow state community college in lynchburg tennessee what do i do every day everything from picking up a piece of trash to making sure that we connect with state agencies and businesses in the industry for the purposes of how does the vertical integration of technology improve the human condition that's what i'm really focused on which includes gaming ai and all those good things that we're going to talk about here in a little bit i did the little test where i could find out what my spirit animal would be i thought that i was gonna be a unicorn but i am not i am a hummingbird uh so it's fitting after i read the descriptors of the hummingbird so i'm a hummingbird that's that's pretty cool thank you president lawrence and so many cool things going on in tennessee i know uh your your board of higher ed is very progressive and very uh innovative in their policies and their practices and uh we've collaborated with them on a couple of projects in the past two so thank you and welcome to the hummingbird uh finally we have rick from ibm rick are you with us on audio yes i am i'm having a little trouble with the video there sorry about that no problem at all this is rick goldgar i'm the global solutions executive with ibm i've been working on excuse me um learning credential network and blockchain work for the last several years i was also formerly cio cto protects education and a lot of technology background as well um spirit animals i don't know but i i kind of been interested in octopuses or octopi lately they seem to have distributed intelligence in their tentacles well well put yes distributed and one of the most clever animals that i've seen i've seen them do some wild things so thank you so much rick we're so glad to have you here um great so now you all know a little bit more about our our panel and kind of the great experiences they're bringing here and so i'm gonna throw out our first question for this panel and um whoever would like to go first is well going to go first our first question give you a little bit of a setup so the state of colorado and other states of course we talked about texas tennessee um collect a lot of data sets collected a lot of different information um in in tandem with institutions of higher education or other state agencies so the question is what are some of the challenges and opportunity around data governance and interoperability with regard to your clients your constituents your stakeholders in education workforce or democracy you know i'll take a first stab at this but also we're very interested to hear from from all of our our colleagues um you know as spencer has mentioned and as governor polis maybe said earlier today you know we're doing a lot of exciting things here in colorado a lot of um great organic energy around well-governed responsible data sharing and what that can mean and what we can harness by by being able to do that and so in terms of the challenges that we face um and and what that means going forward i think being able to navigate that um making sure that we have the trust of individuals as we're doing that that important work um as we talk about self-sovereign identity and all of the other exciting aspects of this space it's important that uh we again as the state move forward in that well-governed responsible way and making sure that we never lose the trust of individuals as we're doing these these things together and and hopefully um really telling an exciting story about a person's experience and and hopefully what we can do as the state to make people's lives better michael yeah that was mentioned in the previous session just a moment ago about the in particular self-sovereign identity and identification at the state level well i'll take a stab at following my esteemed colleague michael squared right that's us well um the the idea of policy uh as a representative of those of us within any state to provide governance that's based on trust is really important so you know thinking through how our clients look at data share and as an institution preparing those who come through us to have the requisite skills that are needed and prepared for those skills that are going to be expected once we put them out into the job uh placement areas throughout the state or throughout the country etc for us it's really really important to think through not what we are teaching or creating in terms of skill based learning as it's tied to web 3.0 but what's the expectation once they get out there uh one of the things that's important for us to recognize right now is the world did not stop because of covid business and industry their expectations are not going to decline because of covid they are actually going to accelerate because the way that business is going to be post this this this mess that we're in thank you president torrance i think um you know this has been going if you've been following the discord at all especially in the the state of colorado channel people have been talking about skills in particular and i know that this is a trend in higher education um hopefully a trend that's here to stay but the conversation has evolved right away to skills so i'm glad that you raised that point so i'm just going to add something um to what michael and michael have said and i think it's really interesting because we always say we want the learning records and the employment records to be interoperable and that we should follow these data models and you know this will achieve greater efficiency across the system and serve individuals better and i think that largely that's a well-founded hypothesis but one of the things that as we work with workforce systems across the country and institutions across the country that we that is something that i think technology developers should keep in mind is that the capability of individual like one-stop career centers or individual community colleges or small training providers or even small and medium-sized enterprises vary greatly and um some of the things that we are building are very complicated and difficult and expensive to implement and to the extent that we can make sure that um whatever platform application or data model we're proposing is actually easily accessible and easily implementable and provide appropriate professional development for that i think that we can we can work towards a greater adoption but more than that we can get adoption in places where there have there are greater concentrations of those kinds of individuals that we would like to serve so thinking about populations um that have like low technology or internet access or low income or traditionally underserved populations thanks sharon yeah i know i noticed um in our state a number of institutions have uh particularly higher education institutions have thought about this concept around uh um virtual student services and i think you know the ease of use like you said kind of uh brings us to greater adoption for these services that could be at the fingertips or so we think they're the the fingertips of all of our colorado residents how do we make it easily accessible in that nature and let's see here do we still have you with us rick would you like to weigh in on question number one go ahead rick if you can can you hear me yep okay thank you yes uh yeah i think uh there's been some great comments there i'd like to add a few things just from my experience and and also where i think things are going so when i was at texas education agency texas as you mentioned one of the states has been very involved with gathering data for many many years probably started the original system for student level k-12 data about 35 years ago or more now i went through a process that we did to create something called the texas student data system to update automate and integrate that across the state for all the districts and that was something that the state did internally but there was still the issue there that prior to that this data went to the state and then didn't go back to the to the education of these after that now the data goes to the state and back to the education entities but there's still a question of whether the data goes to other people as well so i think that there's a big need to make sure that the data is available with permissions of course to the people who need it and i also think that over the history what's happened very recently you mentioned skills capabilities i think that some new standards for learning credentials like uh the the clr standard from ims open badges and more recently the open skills work that's going on to try to standardize the way skills are represented and how they're mapped to learning credentials is very critical for that sharing [Music] spencer can i jump back in right quick please do um i couldn't help but think about the commercial what's in your wallet and so the idea of putting the credentialing or the skills that are akin and keen on being connected to what the workforce expects from us but even more more so uh what is it that's going to be necessary for us as human beings to be successful not just in the workspace but just operating within our communities so that the idea of you know literally what's in your wallet uh how how can you function and operate successfully in the spaces that are being created today thanks president torrance and yeah i mean i'm glad that you mentioned that too because it gives me an opportunity for a quick plug for a couple of our bounties that are available through the state of colorado channel and so for those of you who are kind of looking for um opportunities to what i've been saying is hack higher ed um it would be great if you could take a look at the the discord channel um and one of the one of the bounties actually out there is is around a credentialing wallet um this concept of a wallet so um the other is around something that sharon mentioned which is this learning employment record and how do we do a better job of telling the story of a learner on a lifelong kind of trajectory we know that learning experiences happen all the time they happen in the classroom co-curricular experiences they happen at this conference people are learning a lot of stuff so how do we how do we sort of do a better job of telling the story of learners and the skills that they're building so thank you for bringing that up um all right we're on to our second question and our second question is given this audience of global innovators we have people from i don't remember how many dozens of countries but all over the world uh i think something like 6 000 participants correct me if i'm wrong one of you uh east conference uh coordinators um but given this vast audience what radical challenges need to be solved at the intersection of web3 innovation statehood higher education self-sovereign infrastructure skills kind of all these concepts that we've been discussing what are the radical challenges that you see out there for for folks i'm not gonna call on anybody so you're gonna have to either give me the the winky eye or uh just go ahead and speak up well i'll i'll i'll do a first go-around and and please others um you know i think one of the the radical things that we still need to tackle um in thinking about the education space the post-secondary space higher ed space more broadly is um and michael mentioned it the these skills and the the um being able to quantify these skills being able to have these skills available to an individual and having giving the that individual the ability to express those skills in a digital wallet in these other ways and being able to do that translation of kind of a traditional post-secondary education space to the skill space and being able to work with our workforce partners and people in industry and being able to see the value of these skills so i know this is you know conversations that all of us are in uh day in and day out and trying to crack this nut and being able to tell that story better and so any help that anyone has on those fronts i think is always welcome and and being able to to again tell that whole student experience and help them be well positioned for their futures um okay so i'm going to add to that by also plugging some resources that i didn't create so i think this is fair um i think that people who are interested in the education and workforce connection um there are should should consult a couple of really great resources so one of the resources is um a paper that was recent a white paper that was recently released it's on um the t3 innovation hubs ler i guess resource hub and it's one specifically dealing with self-sovereign identity and then an earlier paper that was um written by the digital credentials consortium that sort of led by mit that talks about digital credentials generally and then i think there's a section in there that talks specifically about some um identifies some of the technical issues that need to be resolved and i'll just point out across both papers i think a couple of the key questions are related to um i guess the issues of privacy by design um and and like how individual data stores are managed given a sort of plethora of like privacy regulations but also um i think a philosophy where we do actually want to promote individual privacy and give individuals agency um and then the issue of like sort of reliable decentralized identifiers so if people could solve those technically that would be super um but i think um i'll i'll add to my answer by saying in addition to the technical issues i think there are some design questions that we want to be asking ourselves i think a lot of why we claim that learning and employment records and digital wallets are important is because um to what um michael said about the wallet we want people to have have and hold their credentials and be able to exchange them for additional opportunities but i would challenge you if you are a developer thinking about building an application or some kind of platform for this to really really try to understand um like what does it mean to provide economic opportunity for everyone not just people who have devices or connections but even thinking about digital literacy or some of the i guess systematic barriers that we have in our systems that are not related to technology and to really confront equity by design and to think about like how can you then take this tool um that we're creating and use that to advance yourself and you know a couple of key questions i might ask is you know is what i'm building functional outside of a context where um social capital exists right um and how how does a person um get this and then get the next thing after and the next thing after i don't know if i can answer those questions but um i i think those are really important in the context of this conversation oh this is rick can you all hear me i'll i'll add to that uh from sharon gilsher um the the one of the critical things i think needs to be sorted out and i think some of this is policy uh and some of this is technology uh is the value of credentials i think we're seeing a sea change in how credentials are valued these days uh you know some years ago if you had a degree from the university that was a great thing today if you have a a certificate from a programming school you're probably earning as much as the people who have those degrees and you don't need a degree so that movement and the value and how to characterize credentials and how to manage that value i think is a is a pretty thorny problem but also really really moving fast right now well obviously i'm going to simply concur with what my colleagues have said i'm looking for especially the conversations having with people in the communities as we look at uh equitable um transferable usable uh credentials and skill sets uh how that impacts regional economic and community development and when i walked around and i looked through people's credentials that work within our service area within our state it's amazing that that's really not a pathway that people have taken who may have those jobs those positions so understanding what that means and the impact that it has for a skill to be affixed to who you're recruiting to come into your state who you're recruiting to come into your community whether it be at the city a micro metro or just a broad county wide area and then so so that's one challenge the second one i would say is let's light up the dark fiber you know i don't know if we all are fiber hunters or if they're devs out there who like actually can fiber hunt but when you drive in your vehicle if you ride your bicycle if you're taking a walk through your community and you know that there are nodes or linkages or dark fiber someplace and it's not lit up and these typically impact more impoverished areas or areas where i guess we just don't think that it needs to be lit up but it's just a matter of literally opening up the box plugging in a couple of uh wires and lighting it up so that people can have access as sharon is uh denoted and michael is denoted as well i think that's a really important caveat as we go forward you can't have access if we simply don't turn it on thanks for that president torrance and rick before that too you know you all raised a few points that really caught my attention and sharon one of them that you raced was this this notion of digital literacy which i think president torrance you were just kind of alluding to that even to have the opportunity to gain digital literacy there are some infrastructural changes that have to be to be made and rick um you really kind of put that nicely when you mention this duality of like the technical and the policy challenges um that are that are out there for folks either in education or in state government and so i'm just wondering um you know as we we come we're coming to about five minutes maybe um some closing thoughts from all of you but um you know additional calls to action for state government or higher education um you know we kind of talked a little bit about some of the some of the uh challenges and opportunities that the innovators at this conference could tackle what are some of those other broader objectives maybe policy based or infrastructure based that you all started to to pull the threat on it's 3d and michael i won't let us have a long pause and silence this time around right um it's it's 3d and it's it's within it's embedded in the questions that have been asked today uh we are looking for designers dreamers and doers um if you reference star wars and yoda you either do or do not there is no try so the conversation that we're having today goes beyond simply just talking about and creating this exciting and most potent dialogue it is about now that you don't now that we know let's do something with the information see something do something uh this is rick i'll i'll sort of follow on to that and say that you know uh since i've spent a fair amount of time in government in a fair amount of time outside of government that uh there are challenges on both sides uh on the government side uh they're historically although i think it's changing and places like colorado is a good example there is historically a certain inertia and that has to do with just how how rules and laws are passed and how they're conservative about keeping things to make sure that things don't get corrupted but that that has to change uh to deal with how fast society is changing today and then on the business side i think that uh there's a uh obviously a strong capitalist and commercial motive uh behind a lot of folks who are doing a lot of work uh but you know the the the value to the citizens is very high here and uh i think that that a lot of times what people get at least in companies they over focus on the bottom line and not so much on the public value and i think if you focus a lot on the public value as a business you'll find out it helps your bottom line i'll just add quickly um the whole purpose of the interoperability of records um and connecting data um should actually not be lost that we are actually connecting people that work that you know it work on the data side on the in the education system the workforce system in the public sector and the private sector and so as you solve these problems i think it's really important to work on them together um so to michael's point like do something but do it with other people who are also interested in doing it because i think that broadens your perspective and allows you to have a product at the end that can actually serve a greater number of people i don't know if i have anything else to add all of that was fantastic so i will just ditto and second all of those things well michael i hope you were taking notes because everything that all the secrets that they gave us today you and i go and we just implement it all throughout the state of colorado so thank you all very much big thanks to our panel um fantastic perspectives uh the quoted the quote of the day came from michael it was a reference to yoda so thank you so much michael president torrance for for that but in all seriousness i think we've been given kind of this uh this charge from governor polis dr petroni our executive director to be bold and to think bold and so with that artistic liberty we're going to try and push as hard as we can on a lot of these issues and we love the heath denver community to help us out in moving this into the next phase so thank you again so much to our panelists um we are are just about out of time if you all want to catch us on the discord channel please do there's a state of colorado discord channel or you can find us on twitter or a number of other medium we will send some of the resources out either in the chat or on the discord chat so um thank you again to our panelists and i think we are kicking it back over to matt's now thanks matt hey everybody great job yeah that was fantastic well we appreciate you matt uh thanks for having me thank you very much uh at least i'm happy that i got the quota of the day well that's a great uh great job and a lot of uh really fantastic work that you all are doing in sort of your respective uh respective sort of state and government positions and representing in higher education this is amazing it's amazing to see you know government and education getting behind all of this technology so thanks for all your support