Category: Human Behavior

Impact Lab > Human Behavior
Big Problems, Brain, Coding Schools, Culture, Economy, Education, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, New Viewpoints

The Sorry State of Higher Education

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It’s dismaying how easy it is to screw up college.

I don’t know exactly when, why, or how it happened, but important things are breaking down in the US higher education system. Whether or not this system is in danger of collapsing it feels like it’s losing its way, and failing in its mission of developing the citizens and workers we need in the 21st century.

This mission clearly includes getting students to graduate, yet only a bit more than half of all US students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities complete their degrees within six years, and only 29% who start two year degrees finish them within three years. America is last in graduation rate among 18 countries assessed in 2010 by the OECD. Things used to be better; in the late 1960s, nearly half of all college students got done in four years.

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Exploring the Future of Jobs and Education

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On November 7, 2014, I attended the “Idea Jam – Innovating for the Future” session put on by the Pacific Center for Workforce Innovation in San Diego. The purpose of the session was to identify the major challenges to the San Diego workforce in the coming years and to generate audience participation in visioning exercises to explore new and innovative workforce development ideas. The event was held at Colman University, and major sponsors were SDG&E, Qualcomm, the Eastridge Group, Point Loma Nazarene College, and Cal State University, San Marcos.

To get our creative juices flowing, Master of Ceremonies Susan Taylor, San Diego’s TV news icon, introduced futurist speaker, Thomas Frey, of the DaVinci Institute as the keynote speaker. It is difficult to do justice to his very visual presentation of images of break-through technologies, but his statements alone created much food for thought about the future. He stated, “We are a backward-looking society…the future gets created in the mind. The future creates the present…Visions of the future affect the way people act today.” He rhetorically asked, “What are the big things that need to be accomplished today?

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Computer analyzes images to teach itself common sense

At Carnegie Mellon University computers are running a program that analyze images to learn common sense.

A computer program analyzes images 24 hours a day to try to learn common sense.  The aim is to see if computers can learn, in the same way a human would, what links images, to help them better understand the visual world.

 

 

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Women have evolved to be ‘indirectly aggressive’: Study

Women are more likely to form social alliances and then manage threats from outsiders through social exclusion.

In a lab at McMaster University in Ontario, researchers took 86 straight women and paired them off into groups of two—either with a friend or a stranger. There, a researcher told them they were about to take part in a study about female friendships. But they were soon interrupted by one of two women.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Human Behavior, Latest Trend

Top 20 people skills you need to succeed at work

“People skills come down to how people interact with each other.”

While being qualified for a certain job, having the ability to lead a team, or having extensive and highly developed technical skills are crucial to your professional success, it is also imperative that you have great soft skills – more commonly known as “people skills.”

 

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Human Behavior

The value of being the “weird” job candidate

Don’t be afraid to be weird (you probably are) — at least you’ll be remembered.

Hedwig von Restorff, a German psychologist, made an important, though not very counterintuitive, discovery in the 1930’s: things that somehow stand out are remembered more easily than typical things. Suppose we read the following list to a group and then asked them to recall it:

apple, truck, necklace, tomato, glass, dog, rock, umbrella, butter, spoon, Lady Gaga, pillow, pencil, chocolate, desk, banana, bug, soup, milk, tie

 

 

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Analysis, Human Behavior, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

How much money do people with your personality make?

Whenever presented with a theory like Carl Jung’s theory of personality types (which Myers and Briggs formalized into a personality test) it’s important to remember that you are in possession of a unique set of neurons whose synapses fire in unique patterns that cannot easily be slotted into one of sixteen “types” from which one can draw conclusions about your destiny. (Infographic)

 

 

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Analysis, Birth, Brain, Human Behavior, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Why first-born children are smarter

First-borns around the world, it turns out, have higher IQ’s.

According to a new study “those born earlier perform better in school” and, it’s because of the parents. Parents simply go easy on their later-born kids, according to data analyzed by economists V. Joseph Hotz and Juan Pantano, and as a result, first-born children tend to receive both the best parenting and the best grades.

 

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Analysis, Business, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, Latest Trend, Science & Technology News

Life as a Teenager in 1994, 2014, and 2034 – What a difference a generation makes! – Part 2

Futurist Thomas Frey: Our teenage years have always been a time of great awkwardness, super hormones, and bad decision-making. But lately these years have moved even further down the path of supreme weirdness.

 

 

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Analysis, Business, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Entrepreneurs were more likely to cheat and shoplift when the were teens: Study

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, was arrested in 1977 for a traffic violation.

We see entrepreneurs as successful, self-made men and women. We value their innovation and charitable endeavors. Yet we also associate plenty of negative characteristics with entrepreneurs,stereotyping them as selfish and out to make a profit at whatever cost.

 

 

Continue reading… “Entrepreneurs were more likely to cheat and shoplift when the were teens: Study”

Discover the Hidden Patterns of Tomorrow with Futurist Thomas Frey
Unlock Your Potential, Ignite Your Success.

By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.

Learn More about this exciting program.