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

Why do I need to be charged to be the expert? Someone's got to check its work. It's great at doing research

It's great at being that assistant and accomplishing tasks that can be time consuming, but it's not infallible

We can't trust it to that level yet. Maybe someday, but we still need to be the experts. We can't offload that to the machines

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New data shows that about 70% of US workers feel unprepared for today's workforce that raises a bigger question

Is the problem education employers or how we think about skills altogether today?

I'm joined by Ryan Lufkin the VP of global strategy in structure

He has spent years helping companies and institutions rethink how people actually become job ready and we're getting into what's broken and what needs to change

Ryan welcome to write about now

Awesome thanks, right? Hey Ryan and Ryan you got to get started already man. We're like brothers from another talk to me man

Instructure what that word means we're the makers of canvas canvas learning management system

I'm like this point about half of all the college students in North America and about a third of all

K-12 students in North America use canvas on a daily basis and learning we're all about

Instruction instructors the name of the company. It's funny. You wear it. You wear a canvas shirt to Home Depot and people are like

Oh, you give me flashbacks to college be wearing an instruction shirt

Many people know I always like to explain that connection. I did recognize that in our notes and that name I was twitching a little bit

I'm not sure

Well, it's funny. You can tell all good their educators were at designing courses in canvas if they were like

I love canvas or all I hate canvas. You're like yeah teacher probably wasn't using it right. Yeah

That's your point of view I guess it's probably how literate they were with technology and a lot of times

How much support they had and what is a good online course or a good hybrid course look like?

I think too often especially if they learned really rapidly at the beginning of COVID our solution grew rapidly because people had to move online

And over the course of about two days you tell the educators that we're giving a lot of support and a lot of resources and

Really trained what good look like and then the ones that were kind of thrown into it without that support our goal

It really hasn't proved over the last five years of that level of online learning and course design

There's some meta talk there. I and the meta of the fact of the teachers weren't prepared to use the software

Appropriately and we're talking about how workers in general feel unprepared

You talk about this pace of change that started in six years ago March of 2020 and that pace of change hasn't slowed

Just when everybody thought oh COVID's over we can take a breath November 30th of 2022

Open AI launched chat GPT and we got everything got turned on and said again the last read from that have been just

Incredibly fast paced evolution of how do we use this technology of a chart in some of the seven stages of grief going through all of that

We're really in the acceptance phase with AI now and how are we applying it appropriately?

Study percent of workers feel unprepared. What does that really mean?

We've got this kind of schism between education that in many ways is still really dealing with academic integrity idea

This idea that AI is just for cheating versus businesses that are trying to figure out how we optimize our jobs with these tools

And in many cases don't feel like universities are preparing them for them

You've even worse than k12 when you look at k12 and there's a kind of an anti-technology and education movement going on that ignores

Some of the more glaring benefits of using technology to reach people that have

Suspility challenges and rural and frankly just maybe are missing school things like that

We've got to get everybody on the same page and Google announced a really great program

Trying to provide free AI education to six million educators across the United States

We are getting ready to release some courses around AI literacy and even the detractors

Those educators that are scared of AI or double-demons that we're not using AI

Honestly taking the AI literacy course

At least understand how these tools work then you understand what they're capable of

And then you can actually make the more informed decision about how deeply do you want to use these tools

And put you in a better position to help your students understand how to use them ethically

How to use them effectively things like that

If we're going to learn something for the sake of learning and for teaching ourselves how to problem solve

Are these the problems that we should be solving?

Do we need to learn calculus?

Do we need to learn things that AI can do?

And we'll forcivably be around unless we all go back to the old ages because

Power goes away or something or the life I go the way

Are we really teaching what we should be teaching in?

Why do we still need to learn the things we learned 30 years ago?

I will point to what was called the strawberry conundrum

JGBT 3.2

If you ask it how many ours were in the word strawberry, it would tell you two

And you'd say go back and maybe look that again

And tell me how many are there and they would say there are two ours in the strawberry

Of course there's three ours in the strawberry

And they could not figure out because essentially large language models are a black box

You don't know what's going on inside there

They could not figure out why it hung up on that

And it wasn't until the next model 3.3 came out

They fixed that that's the reason that we all need to be experts

JGBT has a high

Opensity for what we would call hallucination

More often it's confidently incorrect

What it's trying to do is give you what you've asked it for

Some cases it makes things up

It'll make up links sources

It'll make up whole sets of information

Because it's just trying to give you what you want

And if it doesn't find it or doesn't spend the time to find it

It just kind of makes it up

You don't know exactly why

But when we are the experts

We can double check that work and say

Oh, you know what?

That's all right

And let's go back and fix it

Let's not perpetuate that strawberry conundrum

What's really scary is that next generation that takes that approach that you're talking about

And says

Why do I need to be JGBT's the expert?

Someone's got to check its work

It's great at doing research

It's great at being that assistant

And accomplishing tasks that can be time-consuming

But it's not infallible

We can't trust it to that level yet

Maybe someday

But we still need to be the experts

We can't offload that to the machines

Even things as simple as math

Is direct in black and white

When I think of what you just described

And I agree with it

By tell people there still will be jobs

Because of what you said

And discernment

And humanity

That has to be overlaid on the top of these things

There's not only just that

As long with certain factual

Applications in the real world

But when doing 10 plus 10

Or A squared plus B squared plus C

Equal C squared

It even at advanced levels

That's fairly black and white

Are you saying that math is done wrong

By JGBT?

I think it's the reasoning behind it

One of the things that's really important about math

Isn't just getting the answer

It's actually having the logic and reasoning behind

How do we get from here on there

There's a whole blooms taxonomy

If you're in education you understand what blooms taxonomy is

It's this skill tree

And there's a new blooms taxonomy that actually says

Okay, these are the skills that are going to be

Easily replaced by AI

And these are the skills that aren't

These are the human skills

And they're problem solving

They're creative thinking

They're communication

They're consensus building

They're things like that

And that's why to your point

We will always have jobs

We will always have the ability

Because we need to be able to connect with other humans

While we let AI do the more mundane tasks

And in some cases

Yeah, it might get math wrong

It might get very convoluted

The idea of an accountant giving up control of their books

Or understanding the formulas

And letting them run without being able to double check that

Is scary

And not every job needs advanced math

If we're marketing

I don't use advanced math on a daily basis

But there are occasions

When it's important to have that reasoning

That logic

If math

Is still fairly critical learning

And important

To keep in the curriculum

What are the things that should be changing then

I don't want to pretend that what we were doing 30 years ago

But I do hear some of the subjects

And some of the stuff

And I'm like

That's the same thing

Someone with a higher pay grade

Smartly me knows

If that's what they need to be learned

And I'm like

That is not real life applicable

When does K-12 become more

Preparatory for the real world

Versus the standard topics

That we've always taught

Because it was important 30, 40, 50 years ago

That we did that

That's where the tension

Especially in K-12 comes right now

There's this kind of

Undercurrent of anti-technology going on

But then our STEM scores

Are going in the toilet

How do we address the STEM

Science, technology, and math

Science, technology, and engineering math

How do we do that if we're not going to actually leverage technology

And the teaching of those things

Meanwhile you've got a group that's pushing

That we should be teaching cursive again

And why are we teaching cursive and knowledge school

No one writes long form letters

During the Civil War

When they would write the pen, put in letters

We don't do that anymore

There's been a lot of news articles on that lately

Who's pushing that and why

How does that benefit us

There's a really great story

I was at California System meeting

And we had a panel of educators

It was a professor of product design

And he said, okay

We used to spend the first 60% of a course

Designing a product

Doing specs

Doing market analysis

Doing all this stuff

The last 40% kind of analyzing the work

Presenting to each other things like that

Now AI

We can do that

All of that within the first 10% of the course

Come up with an idea

Have AI help us do a product design

Have it do the research around that for us

Now he makes his students actually reach out

And contact experts in the market

Set up a meeting

And present to them this idea

And get their feedback

And I always say if I call my daughter

She won't answer the phone

She'll text me right back

She's a junior college

She does not answer the phone

She doesn't pick up the phone

He's pushing those students

To lean back into those more human skills

Reaching out, making connections

Setting up a presentation

Presenting your thing, collecting feedback

Those things that AI can't easily do for us

That's really the focus

It's kind of that evolution in teaching

We're not necessarily teaching

Entirely new things

But we're doing it in more innovative ways

That lean into those human skills

And not just assigning 20 page papers

That kids are going to use AI to write

Are schools teaching the wrong things

Or just teaching them the wrong way

It's the wrong way

Really it comes down to the assessment of mastery

How do we actually know whether or not

Somebody has learned that skill

How do we make sure that sticks in their brain

Isn't just I memorized these data points

I took the quiz

I dumped those memory points out of my brain

And then move on to the next thing

How do we really teach skills

That's the biggest challenge right now

Was educators

Who were already underpaid

And underappreciated

And school classes that are too big

Are being asked to evolve how they're teaching

Fundamentally redesign their courses

And then measure those outcomes

In truly significant ways

That can then be reported on

To the Department of Labor and things of that

That evolution teaching online

And with technology

During COVID

We need to address this the same way

And we need to provide educators

The resources they need

To involve how they're teaching

With AI

With preparing those students

Because it's not going away

And I think those educators

That I can opt out

We've had students say

I want to opt out

You're not going to be able to opt out of AI

There's a way more

That just drove past people's houses

They don't get to say

You don't get to drive past here

Nope

That ought to maybe cars driving on the street

You're going to be involved with AI

At some level

Understanding it

Embracing it

Understanding the ethical aspects

Of what are really important

Talking with Ryan

Lufkin

The VP of global strategy

Instructure

Ryan

You kind of teed this up

Your tea and all my notes up perfectly

I really like this

You're an excellent guest

Skills versus degrees

It seems like

We're in a skills based economy

Versus a degree based economy

And I don't know if degrees

Hold the same value they used to

You can prove me wrong

What skills actually matter most right now

We've talked about those human skills

And how important they are

I will say

I'm still a big believer

That the degree

The associate degree

The bachelor's degree

The master's degree

They are still the preferred currency

In hiring

And then there's a reason for that

Because they're not just about

The hard skills generally

The math

They include the soft skills

Working with groups

Being empathetic

Early consensus

Communication

Like all those things

They're incredibly important

Those human skills that we're talking about

They embody all of those

A year or two ago

You saw a lot of businesses

Kind of pro

That they were

Taking out

A degrees

Or requirement for

Hiring

And what you saw is a lot of them

Slowly reintroduce that

Because

It really is the best

Parameter

Whether or not a person is prepared

To enter the modern workforce

That said

Because of this pace of change

We live in a world

That we all need to be lifelong learners

Every single one of us

That means

Go to school for 12 years

Or 16 years or 20 years

Then we would go to a job

Not in the same job for 30 years

Then we would retire with our pension

And I mean that was our parents' generation

That doesn't exist anymore

The average tenure at a job is about three years

They're saying, well, we're going to work until we die

There's no pensions anymore

It's incumbent on us to prepare ourselves

To be upwardly mobile

Within the job market

By constantly training new skills

And in most cases, employers aren't owning that

The college and university system still owns

That upscaling and re-skilling of adult learners

And they really have done an amazing job post-COVID

Especially of rolling out new credential programs

Because you can actually roll out a credential program

A certificate program

Without all of the

regulatory requirements

For under-creditation

That a standard college program needs

In many cases

It's the same or similar content

Repackaged in more bite-sized chunks

So you can go and take a three or four-course certificate

But then that certificate

I can post a LinkedIn

I can post an employer and show, look

If you look at my LinkedIn

I've got certificate and data

Driven marketing from E. Cornell

I did an AI regulation and compliance

Course from Oxford's Ed Business School

I'm doing my masters right now

With Arizona State University

Because to me, I enjoy learning

It's one of those things

But it's also that way

That you qualify yourself for

Being up in the mobile in a job

That's one of the things that we've shifted towards

And it's not necessarily breaking it down

To the component skills

We have it all agreed on like a skills taxonomy

That makes sense to everyone

And a lot of the old skills taxonomies

Are really outdated

They don't capture a lot of the more modern skills that we need

Not quite there yet

But getting those certificates

That'll demonstrate

For employers that I'm a learner

I want to evolve

And like these skills

We're getting there

Pretty quickly

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I always say we got in there

When I was in college

Definitely learning soft skills

I would dare say

Make this statement, Ryan

I have made more money per GPA

Than anyone

That I went to school with

I had the lowest

I graduated 2.0.1

I was one point away from

Not graduating

On a calculus test

Mainly because I never went to class

I have started with the highest grade

I get was in 90

Because I deducted 10 points

So I had to essentially

Make A's on everything

Because to just to pass

The class essentially

Because I was bored

I'm an entrepreneur

That's the thing

Partly ADD

I know I'm hired different

But it taught me absolutely nothing

Now here's what I learned

You nailed it

The soft skills

People coming to consensus

Absolutely

Probably we was worth the money just for that

However, I might could have learned that

And gotten further towards

Where I want to go

Doing something different

If different ahead existed

What's cool now

Yeah, to your point

There are more educational opportunities

More paths

To find

Yourself into a well-paying job

Than there ever have been in the history of the world

And the biggest challenge is finding out

What do you want to do

And then finding

Through all the noise

What's the best path to get to you

And it's not always a two or four year degree

But I was the same way

I'll be honest

A diagnosed ADHD

Miss class a lot

On academic probation at one point

What you learn is

All of a sudden you're like

It clicks and you're like

Oh, if I go to class

If the teacher knows my name

If I do the basic studying

I will graduate

And those are the things

It's those social skills

College is almost about

As much as learning what you need to do

To be successful

There's a lot of kind of noise around

Employees not being prepared for

A little job

They don't want to come to the office

They don't want to show up on time

They don't want to spend the time there

What college does is train you that you need to be

You need to be here

From this time to this time

You need to make connections with the people

That your bosses

Your educator and your peers

And those are what make you successful

That model applies

In the workspace in ways

That we're really kind of just

Starting to really appreciate

It was we do the debate between

We're not working in person

Work how do we make sure we judge that

One of the challenges I faced too

Is I had a job working for an

Agency when I was a senior in college

And I was like

Well, why do I need to

I've already accomplished my goal

Which is getting higher

And why do I need to finish

And that was it odds for me

But my first job was working for

Cokes at agency

In the Western United States

Writing 22nd

Customized radio bumpers

For Leadville, Colorado

And Boisee, Idaho

And St. George, Utah

Things like that

There were four interns

And that's what we did

All of those can be done by AI

By one person now

Entry level job

That really got my foot in the door

And got me hired by the agency full time

And was the start of my career

It's now gone

What are schools doing

To provide more experiential learning

To better prepare students to bake that leap

And then what are businesses doing

To maintain those entry level positions

That's one of the biggest challenges

Right now that people need to be talking more about

Yeah, great points

I do want to talk about Canvas a little bit

Workers falling behind because of tech

Or because of how we train them

And it seems like Canvas is helping close that gap

The goal really is to provide this framework

For students to understand

How they know we get learning

We've added some AI features

And things like translation

And discussion summaries

That save educators time

And help keep students on track

But the bigger aspect is

We provide this open architecture

We work with Google and Gemini

And Microsoft and Copilot

And Claude and Anthropic

The big players

For schools, they want that choice

What do we plug in

What would make available

Based off of the contracts we have

And the organization that we want

Our goal really has been

To be the framework that supports all that innovation

Make sure that they meet

The unique requirements of education

Accessibility, privacy, security

Those are non-starters for education

We are governed by very strict laws around student data privacy

And accessibility

And so how do we make sure that these tools support that

We support K12, higher ed

And more increasingly

The government and corporate space as well

People graduate and say

I really like using Canvas

Why don't I have something like that here in my job

We've moved to support that as well

That lifelong learning approach is incredibly important

And we want to make sure we're there to support

Institutions as they go over that

I try to be reflective

Outside of my own curiosity

And skill set

Or whatever I'm interested into

And then sometimes I step back

Called empathy college

Just understanding other sides of it

But it's a lot to digest

It is intimidating

I've got Claude and ChatTBT for the best answers

I kind of like that answer better

Than this one

Visually lightweight and prognosticating my age

How long I live

I do think it is overwhelming

Because I'm very good with change in adapting

But I go damn

This is a lot to take on

To understand how to apply it

There's this constant stream of new innovations

And new things coming out

Bores laws that acceleration of technology

Innovation

And Bores laws out the window with a

It's so rapid it's insane

There's announcements like

Cla

Which is an open-source large language model

There was a person that said okay

I go out and make me a reservation for dinner

And it went out

And it tried to access the website

Website wasn't working

So it gave itself a voice

And it called the restaurant

And made the reservation

And that freaked everyone out aggressively

Because it accomplished the task

That it was given

And it did so by

Going outside the bounds of what

The person asking it to do the task

Thought it was possible

We all want jives

We all want the virtual assistant

That we've been promised forever

That you click a button

And say

Oh make me a reservation

Go do that

But be a flight to cancun

If we're going to go to hotel on a restaurant

Set all that up

And then let's go

We all want that level of ease

But with that comes risk

And that's where we're in this kind of phase right now

Of how much do we trust these tools

To be autonomous

And how much do we really need to

To continue the oversight

But it's a lot

It can be very, very overwhelming

And you almost have to shrink your bubble

Into the world that you control

And that you have aspect

And kind of ignore a lot of the other noise

How do you think

Employers should think

differently

About training and onboarding

In this day and age

A really good friend Troy

Who was in a car accident

And suffered a dramatic brain injury

And was out of work for about a year

And when he was ready to go back

He would do these interviews

And they'd say, well, do you know AI

And he would say

What do you want me to know about AI

And they'd say, well, do you know AI

And what came clear very quickly

Was that they didn't actually know what they wanted

They wanted someone with skills

In using AI and adapting these tools

To come in and help them

Deliver that kind of innovation

He reached out to me and made a conversation

I sent him some courses that he could take

And he upskilled

Quickly and then got a job

Pretty rapidly from that

But we're in this position where

A lot of college universities aren't necessarily

Taking ownership of teaching AI literacy

And employers aren't necessarily taking ownership

They want these graduates to come out

With these skills to help them

We need both sides to take ownership

Of training students on AI literacy

And how they use these tools

Effectively and ethically

Across the board

The other aspect is

There's this old adage that I've heard

From a lot of employers

That are like, well, what if we train

Our employees and they leave

The counterpoint is

What if you don't train them and they stay

We need employers to really own

The upskilling and recently of their employees

To make their workforce better

And not hide behind the fear

That those skill employees

Will then take that training and go somewhere else

Yeah, that's very flawed

We've seen both sides of it

We've come up in this innovation realm

But we're also part of the analog world

By the way, a lot of old employers

People thought

Very scarcity driven

That scarcity mentality

I think is really important

To acknowledge

And I think what you're seeing is

As the average age

As we cycle through

The older leadership

We're starting to get that more innovative leadership

And a lot of industries

That previously were very focused on

Coming back in the office

Let's not use technology

We're being forced to really adapt

To the modern world

In a way, if you want to keep a good employee

You're going to have

Flex flowers

You're going to have

Good technology support

There's these new requirements for students

They're just very different

Than when we came out of college

Or entered workforce

These tools

Have an empowerment component

How much they unlock

I came up in the ad agency business too, Ryan

I worked 20 years plus

15 work

For other agencies

There's no better silo world

Than the ad agency business

I made this kind better

But I'm 10 years removed from it

Ryan, you're going to get this

Much like I was out of fish out of water in college

I was a creative strategic account guy

In ad agency

I was a good writer

I think in headlines

I'm a big idea guy

But I'm actually pretty organized

Pretty good account guy

And I understood strategy

It serves me well

Because I was in a very entrepreneurial agency

That actually took advantage of my skills

In most agencies, the fish out of water

I bring this up through my own context

Because Ryan, you got that

Now with AI

Used to be

Okay, how can we get the most out of this person

At the cheapest possible

Give them seven hats

And it was just a financial driven

But now with AI

And the abilities

People can sit in a lot of different boxes

Because AI unlocks a lot of abilities

And skills

Agentic or otherwise

That allows them to do those things

That is an incredible example

I'm going to steal that for later

Because I love that example

Of that salad organization

I remember having an idea

Because I was on the account management side

Like creative idea

I'm like, what if we do this

And I was told stop

Shut up

Not your department

Go talk to the customer

I had been a commercial designer

I had the right to be creative

And it was so funny that

That got shut down

Even the stages within the creative field

Somebody would come up on the head

The writers came up with headlines

The designers came up with maybe storyboards

To pitch the idea

Now you can have the idea

You can actually work with AI

To do the writing

And improve the writing

You can actually have AI create

The storyboards for you

To your point exactly

Now imagine educators

Educators who are

Not necessarily really trained

On how to be an educator

They're really subject

Better experts in their field

I'm a history professor

I know history like the back of my hand

But suddenly

I have the ability to use these tools

To create short videos

To create imagery

To make my writing less dry

Things like that

If we lean into that

If we support that

Holy cow

The potentials are just unlocked

For employees to be

So much more productive

In ways that we know

But we've got to break down that frame

That box

Those boxes that we put people in

Love that analogy

That was a good one

That's a big opportunity

Ryan as we close out here

I got a little rapid fire for you

If you don't mind

Three things

Most overrated skill

Coding

Unfortunately

Most underrated skill

Good clear communication

Is incredible

One mindset shift people need

I really like what you just call that

Around the boxing of organizations

And this idea that

Everybody needs to stay in their box

And not try to cross over

Because they get many great ideas

Have never found the light of day

Because somebody was sitting in the wrong box

Really is kind of

Got me thinking now

I think that's just a great point

Yeah, if we can get people thinking

The leaders going

How do we use AI

To enable our people

To step outside of their boxes

Because they can

What do we unlock

It's good leaders

Being willing to

Be more flexible

Being willing to

Really call out those employees

That are using these schools

The right way

And are using them effectively

Again, modeling what good looks like

Show people what's possible

And encourage everybody else to

Kind of follow that

Freeing of their minds

AI creates these laboratories of opportunity

And if you enable that

And you empower that

Your getting is kind of like

In science and technology

How many more tests can they do

Improve the model

That could change the world

Or at least change the organization

We're just at the point

Where we're building the trust

And we're starting to use these tools

In really creative ways

But they're brand new

And we don't even know exactly

What they're all capable of

If we suspend our fear a little bit

And if we lean into using them

And learning them

I think there's a lot of opportunities

They end up

Ryan, working everybody keep up

With what you're up to

Instructure, Canvas, etc

I'm on LinkedIn

Instructure.com is our website

We blog frequently

And then my boss, Melissa Lowball

Who's their chief academic officer

She and I do a podcast

Called Educast 3000

You've got a huge number

More episodes

I think we have about 41 episodes

You have hundreds

We talk to some of the smartest people in education

And really pick their brains

To make us smarter

It's great

Really appreciate you, Ryan, for coming on

Great conversation

I really enjoyed it

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