Focused on AI/digital transformation and its potential benefits, challenges, and future trends for postsecondary and the workforce ecosystem. Includes topics such as: recognizing student patterns, supporting persistence and completion, and improving education and employment recruiting through marketing and data-driven approaches.

• • How AI is reshaping the work-learn-earn ecosystem.
  • Implications of generative AI, such as ChatGPT and Bard, for postsecondary educator and trainers and for employers.
  • AI enhanced decision making and reporting.
  • Worker and learner skill development in the age of digital transformation and AI automation.

Focused on creating a holistic learning experience for adult learners by aligning education and curricula with various models: CPL, CBE, accelerated learning, and the changing face of credentials (micro, stackable, work/skills-based, etc.) that support adult learners and workers.

• CPL best practices, programs, and models.
• Online and hybrid learning best practices and how to leverage them to deliver positive post-completion outcomes.
• Roadmaps for noncredit credentials/continuing education.
• High school to college: innovative programs.

Focused on an education-to-employment ecosystem that fuels equitable economic mobility and community prosperity for adult learners and workers by aligning diverse stakeholders: education and training providers, employers, industry groups, workforce developers, government agencies, and mission-aligned organizations to make a positive difference for adult learners, workers, and their communities. 

• Regional strategies.
• Apprenticeships.
• Forging productive cross-sector partnerships.
• Listening to worker voices and making them the basis of systemic improvements.

Focused on higher education, workforce innovation and transformative partnerships which have the capacity to support reform at the state, regional, and national levels.

• Looking ahead: The Carnegie Unit.
• Affordability, e.g., innovative financing, Pell Grant, etc.
• Higher education policy trends, specifically as they relate to adult learners and CPL.
• Grant-funded work and outcomes that could benefit the skills ecosystem with greater awareness and practice.

Focused on working toward racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic equity in access to and completion of postsecondary education, including recruiting and retention, development of skills, and acquisition of the continuum of credentials and degrees that deliver high-quality employment, earnings, career advancement, and other positive post-completion outcomes.

• How successful adult learners can uplift entire communities.
• Providing meaningful support in the broader effort to support social justice.
• How attracting, educating and upskilling adult learners and earners fits within the context of today's broad inequities.
• Demonstrating measurable DEI results.

Focused on strategies to effectively support adult learners (including special populations such as veterans, incarcerated individuals, etc.) from enrollment through persistence and completion.

• Supporting adults with limited resources.
• Supporting adult learner well-being and mental health.
• Adult learner generational approaches: Gen Z, millennials, Gen X, and beyond.
• International/global learners.