Rapid Shift to Digital Workforces
In early 2020, SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021), ensnared the world. As the virus quickly spread, all organizations—companies, governments, schools, nonprofits—had to shift their operations to digital models and approaches, almost overnight.
At this point—good or bad—every organization knows where it stands in terms of its ability to function as a digital entity, especially in terms of functioning with a digital workforce. And as the global workforce shifted to remote work, intelligent personal assistants became another nearby device, always accompanying workers as they do their jobs.
This unprecedented transformation to a digital workforce has challenged and changed the workforce in many ways, perhaps permanently. According to Arenas and Silver-Malyska (2021), citing a 2020 study, more than half of all employers in the United States anticipate that remote work (i.e., working from home or somewhere other than a traditional office) will likely remain after the coronavirus pandemic is over (pp. 50-51). It is, thus, a good time for employers to consider the needs and possibilities of advanced technological approaches to training and skill development for the modern workforce.
In 2018, when the initial chapter, “A Roadmap for Developing Computer-Mediated Solutions for Workforce Learning,” was written for this book’s first edition, it was noted that Google, Facebook, and many other companies were developing innovative situational and contextually aware solutions for personal mobile devices. At the time of this writing, looking back over just a few short years, this point was certainly an understatement—far exceeded by many innovations in this space since that time.
According to Lee (2017), digital technology has reached the point where its possibilities are limited more by human imagination than any physical constraints. What can be accomplished by software, which has become a digital medium for creativity, far exceeds what can already be accomplished today, even without further technological improvements (p. 92). This headroom for what we can accomplish with digital technology is a good thing, especially now that technology plays an outsized role as we individually and collectively reorient our lives in response to a global pandemic—as we reorient to a new normal.
This chapter looks at contemporary computer-mediation approaches—how the current use of artificial intelligence and machine learning can inspire the creation of situationally aware human-computer interactions—to identify ways of approaching training and skills development in the modern workforce. It begins with a review of situated learning and informal learning theories to develop an educational context for situated computing. It then covers contemporary technologies for developing situated computing systems. Then, the chapter aims to provide a conceptual roadmap for developing situated computing solutions for workforce education using existing technologies, referencing examples from commercial product offerings.