[15:08] Thank you. how much, how involved is the economist team been since the early days of starting with the two courses that you mentioned to now having this lovely portfolio, as you call it? Is the economist team still involved in shaping each course before you bring it to market?
Fionnuala Duggan
[15:26] We was all very efficient way working with the newsroom. As I'm sure you know, the newsroom's time and journalistic time was incredibly scarce. So one of the difficulties in creating these courses was how to involve the newsroom in such a way that they had the right level of influence and the right level of oversight, but we didn't take up too much time because they're incredibly stretched and very busy. But the courses that didn't have a a strong involvement of newsroom. So the way that works is we start out, we do a lot of research every time we try and do make a new course. We research the markets. We research our readers. find out what topics they'd like to learn from the economists. So we have a continuing background in market research going on all the time. And then once we've picked a topic, we have an idea of what the next course would be. Once we pick the next course, we then identify who will get involved. And we sit down with colleagues when they're available to really kind of throw around the topic and try and think about how we're going to structure it. What's going to be included, what's going to be excluded, what our view is going to be in different aspects. And then that goes into the design documents for the course, and which we work on with our instructional design partners. And then we work with selected editorial colleagues to flesh out the design in much more detail. Economist Education has got the condit editorial staff on the team on a full-time basis who have worked around the group. So people who contribute to the newspaper also work with the EIU potentially and with the FAD. They're not very strongly aligned with the economist journalistic values. And then we work with chosen journalists at the newsroom. They might be, course, founder, which is one of the key roles or they might be a supervising editor. So every course and every topic is different. So we work that they're involved with into the course. We develop all the outside videos, podcasts, writings. We invite external speakers to come in. We found Eric Schmidt. We found, I mentioned before, Daniel Kahneman. We've had Kevin Rudd and a host of other extraordinary people have come and contributed to our courses. And then we put the whole thing together and bring it out to market. Before it goes on, of course, it's subject to economist editorial scrutiny, economist fact checking and data checking. And, you know, every, all the newsroom tools are applied to make sure that it's a perfect product.
Ruairí Doyle
[18:17] I'm just wondering, as it's a relatively new pillar for the economist group, right? In the last three years, given your experience from the digital transformation days, culturally, how has it been in terms of Economist Education growing and becoming more tangible inside the organization? So I hear you that the newsroom are involved in curating and preparing the courses, but is there a loop back in terms of impact of these courses and is it just as much something that's talked about internally and alongside other pillars like news, subscriptions and different things like that.
Fionnuala Duggan
[18:59] Look, mean, economist education is still pretty small by comparison to the newspaper, which was founded in 1843 so it's still pretty small. But we have, we have great relationships right across the group. We work with the newsroom, as I said. We also work with our colleagues in Economized Impact who work with large corporations on thought leadership projects. And very often we work with them on a key account basis to bring out our education products and roll them into a package. So, you know, there are lots of different ways of collaborating across the group for our business. In our B2C goods market, which is mainly performed with marketing, we also collaborate with colleagues who do customer acquisition for the newspaper. So there's many, we have many, touch points and points of collaboration with the group.
Ruairí Doyle
[19:54] You mentioned across the lovely portfolio, there's a diverse range of courses today. Do you have your own favorite? My favorite? Yeah, your own favorite and why?
Fionnuala Duggan
[20:06] I have a really soft spot for the writing course because we made that in the middle of pandemic. And it was, you know, and we got with Lane Green who's the person who's edited, I'm just looking at my shelf up there, the style guide, writing with the colorist style guide. And he just re-edited it and he was videoed in his home and the video all had to be redone again because he had such a mess with the video press time around because it was so difficult to do everything. But it's a fantastic course. We've got all the journalists in there talking about things like writer's block and how they get going with when they're stuck and their tips for getting something done in a hurry. It's a great course because it's, it has a kind of, a little bit of a, I hate me for saying this, a little bit of a homemade feeling, but the structure is incredibly strong. And it's also, we've got phenomenal feedback on it and lots of people are so grateful for it because it's really changed the way they approach writing It's not just about writing, it's about thinking. It's like, what do you want to say? How am going to say it? And who's it for? And what do I want? What happened after? They read this and of I've said this. or put this in a PowerPoint deck it's actually, it's a really useful skill to have, foundational skill, and it's a really great force. And it's got a good reputation because the economy is so well known for a good writing.
Ruairí Doyle
[21:30] And it's often assumed that, you know, as we go through our education, be it post-primary, be it university, that we just pick up these skills and we're amazing writers, right? And it's not something that you can take for granted. These are skills you need to develop and learn like anything else.
Fionnuala Duggan
[21:48] No, I completely agree. But it's something you can develop and learn. And actually, my kids who are at university are learning the opposite. They're learning academic writing, which is how to write very long, unrelated sentences. If you're in an environment where everybody's using chat GPT, but you've actually got the skills to structure your thinking and structure your sentences in a way that it makes them sound like they've been written by a human, then you're really going to stand out. It's a very interesting time for writing and journalistic skills.
Ruairí Doyle
[22:18] Fionnuala, you mentioned earlier the diverse range of courses that Economist has in its education portfolio today. Is there one that's the pick of the bunch for you or one that's your favorite?
Fionnuala Duggan
[22:33] You know, we really like the writing courses a lot, it's a really vibrant course. So many journalists were involved. It was written by Elaine Green, who's just re-guided the Economist Writing Guide, one of the really popular books on writing, so the Economist Style Guide. And he's also written books in his own write-on writing. He writes the writing column in The Economist. He's perfectly qualified to do this. We videoed him during the pandemic, so all the videos were done in his house and it was all looking very kind of slightly shaky camera and a little bit homemade. But actually it's a really fun course, of great exercises in it. One of my teams, a new team members did it the other week and he spent enormous amount time in it and absolutely loved it and totally transformed his writing. So it's also such a core... part of what The Economist does, which is clear and concise writing. And also in my view, it's an even more important thing to do now, because in the world of chat GPT and LLMs doing writing for you, you know, if you are able to get your thinking straight and really understanding who you're writing for and differentiate yourself in that way with, you know, high quality writing, it's going to be a very helpful way of standing out as an executive or as a leader. And so, it isn't just about the actual writing, it's about getting your thinking straight in the beginning and trying to work out why it is you want to forces you to think about why you want to make these points and in what order. So it's really, it's more really about thinking and then communicating through words. So, we, we really love that course and it's our most popular course.
Ruairí Doyle
[24:24] It reminds me of a tool I sometimes use. Not when it's, you know, we've all types of emails and communication that we need to do every day. But sometimes if it's the end of the day and it's a big topic and it requires some critical thinking and I'm not sure where my headspace is at, I'll just close the laptop and I'll come back to it in a couple of hours or the next day. And I find it's those moments where I'm walking the dog or doing something else that something clicks and I realize, and yeah, it's kind of, it's time critical thinking that can make a message more. succinct and powerful.
Fionnuala Duggan
[25:00] That's absolutely right. Also it's going to have more impact because you're going to be really behind what you're thinking about. What you've to your mind. And chat GPT is very often a really great, fast solution. But in this day and age, you really need to work hard to find really the best solution that you're capable of. Our other courses around the critical thinking course and the data visualization course also cover some of the materials in that course. So the critical thinking course is all around trying to distinguish signal from noise, trying to think through the implications of decisions. And there's a technique in it, which is called a pre-mortem, where you actually sit down and think about what could go wrong. Instead of doing a post-mortem when it's a bit too late, you actually do pre-mortem and if there's some lovely kind of ways of thinking about making decisions and lots of approaches that are suggested by the people that teach that. And these things are all kind of really valuable things to have us to incorporate into your life.
Ruairí Doyle
[26:15] I'm going to borrow the pre-mortem right away. It's a great framing. It's a really good framing. With regard to, you know, artificial intelligence, chat, GBT, all of the LLMs that are around at the moment. Your course, Applying AI in Business, I think is the title of the course. How do you stay up to date with that type of content in an industry that is changing by the hour, by the day, so fast? How do you guys stay up to date with?
Fionnuala Duggan
[26:59] That's going to be difficult. We're going to have to update the videos quite often in that course. I mean, some of the material in the are around framing artificial intelligence, where it's come from, and it's sort of understanding its trajectory and therefore where it might be going and the pace of change as well as understanding those things. And then there's stuff around putting it into the context of how you use it in your job. We talk about the LLMs and the... and where they are right now, how to use them, how to get the best out of them, of from engineering, but also how to understand what you might need to add to what the LLMs offer you. So what other inputs and information you might need, when they might be wrong. And also how you would apply critical thinking to the output of the LLMs. So it's actually putting all the different things together. So yeah, so to answer your question, we will be updating that course. We update all our courses on different timeframes as you would imagine. The writing course doesn't need to be updated as much as others, but we keep a very close eye on updating them.
Ruairí Doyle
[28:06] Do you see, or have you seen yet, either in Economist Education, a role for AI LLMs to play in creating course content or enabling the consumption of course content. I'm interested in your views and thoughts around that.
Fionnuala Duggan
[28:24] Sure. mean, as far as creating course content, not really, not yet. We're still in the world of human written, human thinking, human writing, humans on videos. At the premium end of executive education, which is where we are, we're really distilling, condensing the key points or the key facts of all these subjects. So, what we're trying to do is give people really time efficient ways of grasping these key concepts and learning these key skills. Now look at other parts of the executive education and of the education business more broadly. There's a lot of activity around, I guess, and thinking around using AI to create more generic learning materials. So let's say for primary school curriculum or something where the materials are more likely to be commoditized and the classroom experience, is it very important that peer-to-peer interaction is also very important and practicing and exercising is very important part of learning the materials are as key, but what we're doing is using our, know, pre-materials to create materials as an intrinsic part of the learning, which makes the learning then more efficient, quicker, faster, more pleasurable for our audience. Our audiences, have to be said, mid-career executives, the majority of them have got two degrees. So we're talking about quite an educated group who probably want a more, you know, a learning experience that is tailored for them.
Ruairí Doyle
[30:23] Given your background in experimental physics and your experience in, you know, digital transformation now education, I'm curious, you personally, in this age or advent of AI and LLMs, are you optimistic, cautiously optimistic, pessimistic? You know, where do you sit in the kind of fence of what this technology is going to do for humanity.
Fionnuala Duggan
[30:58] Look, in education, it's got enormous benefits, enormous potential uses in education broadly, across the broad education sphere. The key, know, one of the most effective ways of teaching is actually one-to-one. And in the fullness of time, you can imagine that you have, you know, the ability to provide much better one-to-one tutoring with the assist in an AI assisted kind of So there are the other enormous things that really happened with education is the democratization of access to education in the two. Once you've got stuff in the cloud, anywhere it can be downloaded for zero costs. So there's huge, there have been enormous benefits already with online in the education sphere generally. So I'm enormous optimistic about the impact on education. that AI is going to have for those reasons and many other reasons. One of the challenges of education is to get high levels of engagement. They don't find the materials boring and they don't engage. You have to work very hard to get engagement. Each has a good teacher can get great engagement in a classroom. That's the material they're online. It's much harder to get that kind of engagement. But once you have AI enabled, you're going to be able to get better engagement as well. And feedback as well. Feedback and nudging platforms are extraordinary for any. And let's say you're doing a platform and you're feeling all, you're doing some online work and you're feeling all alone. And it's been like doing Duolingo when it pops up, it says, you haven't done your whatever today, but then you're going to jump on it. So, you know, these kinds of nudging things are extraordinarily effective at keeping people going, making people feel like they're not alone. It might not be learned, might be peer-to-peer interaction on their platform. So actually, they can always find that technology already has that and will be able to to improve engagement with education, learning outcome, democratization of education. So I think it's going to be noticing helpful. Just to say, just to be clear, I think the best model for education is actually a hybrid model, person and computer. People are doing their education technology, they walk into classrooms, the primary school kids, they say, gosh, there should be laptops on every desk and there should be a robot there by the front. For guessing that the teacher actually does an enormous amount of the teaching by being a human, by encouraging, by being warm, by giving feedback. But where technology has helped is that the technology has supported the administration of the teaching, where the teacher may use platforms for assessment or reading platforms homework or parent teacher or anything. All those administrative things can be taken away. It gives more time for actually one-to-one interaction. So, you know, the one-to-one interaction or the one-to-many interaction, supported by technology, is going to be the hybrid solution that works best. But in poorer countries, where they don't have as many teachers, just having access to the material in itself is wonderful. No, I'm usually I'm usually I'm optimistic for education with AI.
Ruairí Doyle
[34:15] Great. Great to get your perspective on that know, as somebody who has a mother who was a teacher, my sister was a teacher. I understood stood, you know, firsthand the amount of work that they had to do. My friends, today who are teachers, too, in questioning their career choice. And, you know, because they they work very hard, they have to deal with all the. elements of dealing with people in person who are developing in their lives. And then they have a mountain of work to do on the side it's really, yeah, it's really encouraging to hear your perspective on the one-to-one, the nudging and the access and how it's actually fundamentally positive from your perspective.
Fionnuala Duggan
[34:51] Yeah, I think there's an enormous amount that they can bring here. Absolutely.
Ruairí Doyle
[34:59] So what motivates you in education? today, what motivates you in economist education or working in the field of education?
Fionnuala Duggan
[35:04] So I love working with business growth and technology enabled growth has been my thing all the way through my career. So I like building, know, using technology or something which exists, for something new, putting them together and making a business grow. That's what I find exciting. I'm lucky enough at The Economist to be able to continue working on a non-executive capacity with some of the startups that I've mentioned to you. So I'm able to, which is something that I love doing as well. So mentoring and working as a non-executive director with startup companies in the field of executive education technology. I do quite a lot stills. So that's also something that I love doing. So for me, it's about building new businesses and doing nothing and seeing the growth come and that motivates me.
Ruairí Doyle
[36:00] Sounds very fulfilling and for any publishers out there who are thinking about developing an education pillar without giving away any of secret sauce, is there any learnings or any wisdom that you would would part onto them?
Fionnuala Duggan
[36:24] So for publishers who are thinking of going into education, you know, you need to do a lot of research, understand your audience. And also understand that education is a different space that there are assets you can bring in. You can bring in things I mentioned before, your brand, your reach, your editorial capability. But you need to understand how to create teaching and how to teach and how to position your courses compassionately against a competition that you'll find. So it is a different business. It's a new business, an interesting business. very interesting with that. But it needs, you know, it needs to be approached with research and with the full knowledge of what you've got and what you need.
Ruairí Doyle
[37:03] Good advice. And last question, I want to be respectful of your time. This is a question we're going to ask all of our guests on this show. Imagine a parallel universe where you never ventured into technology, digital transformation, experimental physics or education. What unexpected career or passion might you be following?
Fionnuala Duggan
[37:27] What would I have done? I would probably be a musician. well, well, a particular type of musician. Well, I'm learning. So I'm a pianist and I'm learning jazz piano. So I probably know my second career will be in the jazz piano.
Ruairí Doyle
[37:45] Very good. Very good. Look forward to hearing you. Thank you so much, Fionnuala. It's late there. Really appreciate you making the time. It was a lovely conversation. Thank you so much.
Fionnuala Duggan
[37:56] Thanks a million. Great to meet you, Ruairí. Thank you. You too. Take care.
Ruairí Doyle
[38:03] And that's a wrap on our latest episode of the Prospectives podcast. Thank you very much, Fenula, for joining us and thank you all so much for tuning in. We will be bringing you new episodes every month, each one featuring a different leader in the world of publishing. So be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube to catch the latest. Bye for now.