Tags: Gretzky

DT&L: Schedule

Before Week 1

You can complete this deliverable by visiting the “Before We Begin” page on ShannonWeb.

Week 1, Class 1 | Why DT&L?

Discuss During Class (Wednesday)
  • Introduction to DT&L
    • DT&L Project
    • Team Organization
    • Project Focus

Week 2: Class 2 | Alumni Day

Monday: MLK Day, No Class

During Class (Wednesday)

  • Discussion with DT&L Alumni
Deliverable(s)

Week 3, Class 3 & 4 | Snow Day || Innovation Hub (Walsh Library, 1st Floor)

During Class (Monday)
  • Snow Day
During Class (Wednesday)
  • Innovation Hub Introduction

Deliverable(s)

Week 4, Classes 5 & 6 | Digital Tools || Gretzky Portfolio & DT&L Project Expectations

During Class (Monday)

  • WordPress Overview

During Class (Wednesday)

  • Gretzky Portfolio & DT&L Project Expectations

Week 5, Classes 7 & 8 | Deliverables Review || Overview of Strategic Foresight | Futures Thinking

Review Before Class (Monday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course

During Class (Monday)

  • Review DT&L Deliverables expectations

During Class (Wednesday)

Introduction to strategic foresight and its importance in contemporary society and business. We begin discussing foresight, strategic planning, and future thinking. Techniques such as scenario planning and trend analysis will be introduced to help us anticipate and prepare for future scenarios.

Review Before Class (Wednesday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
During Class (Wednesday)
  • Definition and principles of strategic foresight, its history, and real-world applications
  • Understanding strategic foresight and future studies
  • Techniques in strategic foresight: Scenario planning, Fringe sketch, etc.
  • Importance and use of strategic foresight in various fields
  • Practical examples of strategic foresight
Deliverable(s)
  • Gretzky Portfolio (WordPress) initial setup (including “About Me” page) due before Saturday at 11:31p ET
    • Range is a primary resource supporting the development of your Gretzky Portfolio
  • The Fourth Turning Is Here, Part II

Week 6, Classes 9 & 10 | Generational Change || Visit With A Futurist

Review Before Class (Monday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course

During Class (Monday)

We are living through a period in which disruption is not driven by any single technology, ideology, or policy choice, but by the interaction of demographic change, accelerating technological systems, institutional strain, political volatility, and a shifting global order. These pressures are intensified by generational turnover, as emerging cohorts bring new expectations about work, authority, risk, and technology into systems designed for earlier eras. Because these forces are compounding rather than additive, understanding this moment requires openness to change, adaptability to rapidly evolving conditions, the ability to envision alternative institutional arrangements, and the capacity to sustain judgment in the face of uncertainty. Rather than forecasting a single future, this analysis maps the present conditions that make certain futures more plausible than others, helping students understand why many institutions feel simultaneously overwhelmed, brittle, and resistant to change, and why developing the capacity to respond thoughtfully matters as much as predicting what comes next.

Review Before Class (Wednesday)
Review the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
During Class (Wednesday)

Deliverable(s)

Week 7, Class 11 & 12 | Demographic & Social Forces

Review Before Class
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course

During Class

We will examine how aging populations, declining birth rates, migration, and generational turnover are reshaping labor markets, social expectations, and institutional legitimacy. We will explore how demographic pressures strain pension systems, healthcare, and public finance while simultaneously altering attitudes toward work, authority, and credentials. The discussion highlights growing intergenerational tension and declining trust in institutions, emphasizing how demographic realities constrain legal, technological, and economic change in ways that are often invisible but deeply consequential.

Deliverable(s)

Week 8 | Spring Break (No Classes)

Week 9, Classes 13 & 14 | Technological Acceleration & Digital Infrastructure || Economic & Institutional Pressures

Review Before Class (Monday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course

During Class (Monday)

We will shift from individual technologies to system-level acceleration, with a focus on artificial intelligence, platforms, data extraction, and algorithmic decision-making. We will analyze how innovation now outpaces institutional adaptation, producing regulatory lag, accountability gaps, and systemic fragility. Rather than asking whether technology is “good” or “bad,” this section emphasizes how scale, speed, and embeddedness reshape power, resilience, and human judgment across society.

Review Before Class (Wednesday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • How Has U.S. Health Spending Changed Over Time? (Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker)
    • Puts hard numbers behind healthcare’s long-run affordability problem. Supports data-driven discussion of sustainability and tradeoffs between coverage, cost, and resilience.
    • FAIR: Resilience, Adaptability
  • Digest of Education Statistics (Finance + Outcomes Tables) (NCES)
    • Primary data for tracing tuition growth, public funding shifts, and institutional cost structures. Enables students to move from “opinions about college” to measurable trends.
    • FAIR: Flexibility, Resilience
  • The Long-Term Budget Outlook: 2025 to 2055 (CBO)
    • Shows how demographic change, interest costs, and program obligations squeeze public capacity. Anchors “institutional strain” in credible long-horizon projections.
    • FAIR: Resilience, Adaptability
  • Fiscal Monitor: October 2025 (Issue Page) (IMF)
    • Frames fiscal strain as a global governance problem, not a U.S.-only story. Useful for comparing how different systems distribute risk and sustain public services.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Adaptability
  • Household Debt and Credit Report (Center for Microeconomic Data) (New York Fed)
    • Tracks household balance-sheet pressure, where risk transfer becomes visible. Connects macro strain (prices, rates) to micro fragility (delinquencies, precarity).
    • FAIR: Resilience, Flexibility
  • Global Inequality Data (World Inequality Database (WID)
    • Provides the empirical foundation for discussions of inequality. Helps students connect distributional outcomes to institutional legitimacy and political stability.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Resilience
  • Trust in Government (Topic Hub) (Pew Research Center)
    • Documented long-run decline in trust and partisan differences, key context for why institutional reform is so difficult. Supports discussion of legitimacy during stress.
    • FAIR: Resilience, Adaptability
  • Confidence in Institutions (Historical Trends) (Gallup)
    • A long time-series on institutional confidence that students can compare across sectors. Useful for connecting economic strain to cultural and generational attitudes.
    • FAIR: Adaptability, Resilience
  • Competition Matters (Antitrust/Competition Insights) (FTC)
    • A stable FTC hub for competition policy, enforcement themes, and consolidation framing. Grounds platform power debates in real regulatory work and constraints.
    • FAIR: Flexibility, Adaptability
  • Anti-Monopoly Research (Open Markets Institute)
    • Frames consolidation as a structural power shift that changes bargaining, prices, and innovation paths. Helps students see market design as a legal and institutional choice.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Resilience
  • The Rise of the Superstars (Special Report) (The Economist)
    • Explains why scale advantages concentrate profits and influence in a few firms. Connects “efficiency” narratives to systemic fragility and governance challenges.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Adaptability
  • Don’t Abandon JIT; Revamp It (Harvard Business Review)
    • A concrete case of the efficiency–resilience tradeoff: lean systems are fast, but brittle under shocks. Helps students operationalize “resilience” beyond slogans.
    • FAIR: Resilience, Adaptability
  • Risk & Resilience Insights (McKinsey)
    • A practitioner-facing view of how organizations redesign for volatility, compounding risk, and uncertainty. Useful for translating concepts into institutional strategy language.
    • FAIR: Resilience, Imagination
  • Global Risks Report 2026 (Publication Page) (World Economic Forum)
    • Synthesizes cross-system risks (economic, geopolitical, technological) and how they interact. Useful for teaching why optimizing one variable (cost/speed) can amplify systemic failure modes.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Resilience

During Class (Wednesday)

We will delve into the economic strain on core institutions, such as education, healthcare, and public services, many of which operate under increasingly unsustainable models. We will examine cost disease, rising debt, inequality, platform-driven consolidation, and the shift of risk from institutions to individuals. A central theme is the tension between efficiency and resilience, and why systems optimized for speed and cost often fail under stress.

Deliverable(s)

Week 10, Classes 15 & 16 | Legal & Regulatory Environment

Review Before Class
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • World Economic Forum – Agile Governance (PDF)
    • Introduces agile governance as a model for regulatory systems responding to rapid change.
    • Law often lags innovation. Agile governance explores how institutions might anticipate rather than react.
    • FAIR: Adaptability, Imagination
  • Regulatory Policy & Governance (OECD)
    • Global standards and frameworks for improving regulatory design and quality.
    • Institutional design determines whether regulation produces stability or friction.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • The Three Challenges of AI Regulation (Brookings)
    • Identifies complexity, speed, and uncertainty as core barriers to effective AI regulation.
    • Regulatory lag is structural, not accidental.
    • FAIR: Flexibility, Adaptability
  • Mapping the Regulatory Landscape for New Technologies (Lawfare)
    • Explains fragmentation in U.S. oversight of emerging technologies.
    • Jurisdictional conflict redistributes risk and shapes enforcement gaps.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2024)
    • Decision overturning Chevron deference.
    • Judicial philosophy now plays a larger role in shaping regulatory authority.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • West Virginia v. EPA (2022)
    • Expands the major questions doctrine.
    • Signals judicial skepticism toward expansive administrative authority.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Major Questions Doctrine (Cornell LII)
    • Clear explanation of the doctrine shaping modern administrative law.
    • Judicial limits affect the pace and scope of regulation.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • EU AI Act Overview (European Commission)
    • Risk-based regulatory framework for AI in the EU.
    • Global divergence increases compliance complexity and geopolitical tension.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • EU AI Act (Official Text) (EUR-Lex)
    • Full legal text of the AI Act.
    • Regulatory language signals societal priorities around risk and oversight.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Translation of China’s Generative AI Measures (Stanford DigiChina)
    • English translation of China’s generative AI regulations.
    • Regulatory models reflect institutional philosophy and political systems.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • E-Commerce Negotiations (WTO)
    • Ongoing negotiations over global digital trade rules.
    • Digital sovereignty collides with cross-border commerce.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Section 230 Overview (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
    • Explains intermediary liability protections.
    • Liability allocation determines who bears platform risk.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • Rule of Law Index (World Justice Project)
    • Measures rule-of-law strength globally.
    • Legal legitimacy underpins market and democratic stability.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Law and Finance (La Porta et al.)
    • Foundational study linking legal systems to economic development.
    • Law structures incentives long before disruption becomes visible.
    • FAIR: Flexibility

During Class

Law is both a stabilizing force and a source of friction in periods of rapid change. We will analyze how legal systems often respond reactively rather than proactively to technological and social disruption, creating enforcement gaps and jurisdictional conflicts. We will consider how evolving judicial philosophies, administrative authority, and global regulatory divergence shape incentives, distribute risk, and signal societal priorities, often after underlying systems have already transformed.

Deliverable(s)

Week 11, Classes 17 & 18 | Domestic Political Dynamics

Review Before Class
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • Public Trust in Government: 1958–2025 (Pew Research Center)
    • Longitudinal data tracking six decades of declining trust in the federal government.
    • Trust is the stabilizing currency of democratic governance. Its erosion alters legitimacy, compliance, and policy durability.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Confidence in Institutions (Gallup)
    • Annual tracking of confidence in major American institutions.
    • Institutional weakness feeds distrust, reinforcing cycles of fragility.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • 2025 Trust Barometer (Edelman)
    • Global survey of trust in government, business, NGOs, and media.
    • Distrust is systemic, not confined to politics alone.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Truth Decay Project (RAND)
    • Research examining declining reliance on facts in civic discourse.
    • Governance becomes reactive when shared facts erode.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Global Risks Report 2026 (World Economic Forum)
    • Identifies governance failure and polarization as systemic risks.
    • Domestic instability now acts as a global risk multiplier.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Government at a Glance 2025 (OECD)
    • Comparative data on trust and government performance across democracies.
    • Institutional design affects governance resilience.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Democracy Report 2025 (V-Dem Institute)
    • Empirical analysis of democratic backsliding worldwide.
    • Polarization and executive overreach undermine long-term planning.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Freedom in the World 2025 (Freedom House)
    • Annual assessment of political rights and civil liberties.
    • Institutional erosion unfolds gradually through weakened norms.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Harvard Youth Poll (Harvard IOP)
    • Survey of young Americans’ trust and political engagement.
    • Generational shifts shape future institutional legitimacy.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Stanford Politics and Social Change Lab
    • Research hub studying affective polarization and democratic norms.
    • Emotional polarization undermines coordinated problem-solving.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Local Election Officials Under Pressure (2025) (Brennan Center)
    • Survey documenting stress facing election administrators.
    • Administrative capacity is foundational to democratic resilience.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 (Transparency International)
    • Global corruption index measuring public-sector integrity.
    • Perceived corruption accelerates distrust and policy instability.
    • FAIR: Resilience

During Class

Our discussion focuses on declining trust, polarization, and short-termism within domestic political systems. We will explore how governance increasingly becomes reactive and crisis-driven, undermining policy coherence and long-term planning. The discussion highlights feedback loops in which institutional weakness fuels public distrust, further eroding the capacity for coordinated and durable solutions.

Deliverable(s)

  • P2: DT&L Project Interim Report Due Before 9:48p ET

Week 12, Classes 19 & 20 | Geopolitical & Global Order Shifts

Review Before Class
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course

During Class

We will examine how the global order is moving toward multipolar competition marked by trade fragmentation, techno-nationalism, and strategic rivalry. This discussion emphasizes the fragility of globally optimized supply chains and the reclassification of technology, data, and energy as strategic assets. Legal systems, business strategy, and domestic governance are analyzed through the lens of global power dynamics rather than isolated national choices.

Deliverable(s)

  • Level 3 Artifact Due Before 9:48p ET

Week 13, Class 21 | Ethical & Cultural Undercurrents

Easter Monday: No Class

Review Before Class (Wednesday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • Machine Bias (ProPublica)
    • Landmark investigation into algorithmic risk scoring in criminal justice.
    • Demonstrates how responsibility becomes obscured when software systems mediate decisions.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Algorithmic Accountability for the Public Sector (AI Now Institute)
    • Explores procurement, oversight, and governance gaps in public-sector AI adoption.
    • Grounds ethical debate in institutional realities rather than abstract principles.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0) (NIST)
    • Framework for identifying and managing AI risks across the lifecycle.
    • Provides a structured way to ask where accountability resides and what risks are measurable.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • Surveillance Technologies Overview (ACLU)
    • Explainer on modern surveillance systems and civil liberties risks.
    • Shows how autonomy erodes when monitoring becomes ambient and normalized.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Artificial Intelligence Topic Hub (EFF)
    • Collection of civil liberties analyses on AI and digital rights.
    • Connects platform power to the lived experience of privacy and speech constraints.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Public and Expert Views of AI (Pew Research Center)
    • Survey research comparing public and expert perceptions of AI.
    • Highlights generational and experiential differences in trust and risk perception.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • The Frontier Firm (2025) (Microsoft Work Trend Index)
    • Research on human-AI collaboration and evolving workplace models.
    • Illustrates how professional identity and judgment shift when AI becomes embedded in workflow.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • Edelman Trust Barometer (2026)
    • Annual global trust survey across institutions.
    • Ethical outsourcing occurs amid declining institutional trust and legitimacy.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Global Risks Report 2026 (World Economic Forum)
    • System-level overview of interconnected technological and societal risks.
    • Places AI ethics within the broader context of structural fragility and systemic stress.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Recommendation on the Ethics of AI (UNESCO)
    • Global normative framework emphasizing human rights and dignity.
    • Reasserts that certain moral decisions should not be outsourced to automated systems.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Framework Convention on AI (Council of Europe)
    • A legally binding treaty focused on human rights and the rule of law in AI governance.
    • Moves ethics from voluntary standards to enforceable institutional commitments.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • AI Index Report 2025 (Stanford HAI)
    • Comprehensive annual data on AI, deployment, and policy.
    • Explains why ethical pressure intensifies as deployment accelerates globally.
    • FAIR: Adaptability

During Class (Wednesday)

Ethics in this discussion is grounded in lived experience rather than abstract theory. We will explore how responsibility becomes diffused as decisions are mediated or made by systems, platforms, and algorithms. We will examine shifting norms regarding autonomy, privacy, dignity, and professional identity, asking who bears risk, who benefits, and who decides in a world in which moral judgment is increasingly outsourced.

Deliverable(s)

  • DT&L Final Projects Due Before 9:48p ET

Week 14, Classes 22 & 23 | Interactions, Tensions, and Feedback Loops

Review Before Class
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
During Class

We will integrate our prior discussion of systems to show how disruption is compounded by reinforcing feedback loops. Students analyze how technological acceleration, economic inequality, demographic pressure, and institutional weakness amplify one another, increasing systemic risk. Attention is given to leverage points, small interventions in governance, transparency, or design, that can produce disproportionate effects in complex systems.

Deliverable(s)

  • Complete Review of DT&L Final Projects in Preparation for Discussion

Week 15, Classes 24 & 25 | Plausible 5–10 Year Macro Futures || Framing Questions for Future Focus

Review Before Class (Monday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • Global Risks Report 2024 (World Economic Forum)
    • System-level mapping of interconnected global risks.
    • Demonstrates how overlapping risks generate multiple plausible futures.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Resilience
  • Strategic Foresight Program (OECD)
  • Government-focused foresight and preparation tools.
    • Models preparation without prediction.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Foresight Toolkit for Resilient Public Policy (OECD)
    • Applied scenario and stress-testing framework.
    • Provides method, not just theory.
    • FAIR: Flexibility, Resilience
  • Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) (RAND)
    • Framework for policy decisions without reliable probabilities.
    • Encourages robust rather than optimal strategies.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • World Economic Outlook Hub (IMF)
    • Macroeconomic outlook and policy framing.
    • Anchors managed adaptation in economic realities.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Technology & Innovation (Brookings)
    • Research on governance and technological change.
    • Connects institutional reform to tech acceleration.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Technology and International Affairs (Carnegie Endowment)
    • Geopolitics of AI and emerging tech.
    • Illustrates fragmentation and techno-nationalism.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Resilience
  • GeoTech Center (Atlantic Council)
    • Digital sovereignty and strategic competition.
    • Shows how standards and alliances drive divergence.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • Trust Barometer 2026 (Edelman)
    • Cross-country institutional trust data.
    • Trust erosion shapes governance futures.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Public Trust in Government (Pew Research Center)
    • Long-term trend data on civic trust.
    • Quantifies legitimacy decline.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Freedom in the World (Freedom House)
    • Tracking democratic backsliding globally.
    • Institutional strain alters legal and political systems.
    • FAIR: Adaptability, Resilience
  • Our Common Agenda (United Nations)
    • Blueprint for institutional renewal and cooperation.
    • Offers a recalibration pathway.
    • FAIR: Imagination, Adaptability

During Class (Monday)

Rather than predicting a single outcome, we will discuss several plausible macro-level trajectories for the next decade, including managed adaptation, fragmentation and divergence, concentrated power amid declining trust, and human-centered recalibration. We will learn to recognize elements of each future already emerging and to assess trade-offs among efficiency, legitimacy, resilience, and growth. The emphasis is on judgment under uncertainty rather than forecasting precision.

Review Before Class (Wednesday)
Read/Watch the following in sufficient depth so that you can participate in an informed discussion and use these resources throughout the course
  • Public Trust in Government (Pew Research Center)
    • Long-term data on institutional trust in the United States.
    • Institutional legitimacy determines whether reform efforts succeed or fail.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • 2024 Trust Barometer (Edelman)
    • Global survey of trust across business, government, media, and NGOs.
    • Trust gaps signal governance fragility and social polarization.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • Freedom in the World Report (Freedom House)
    • Global democratic performance assessment.
    • Identifies where political systems are becoming more or less adaptable.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • AI Governance Research (Brookings Institution)
    • Policy research on regulating emerging technologies.
    • Explores how law balances flexibility with accountability.
    • FAIR: Flexibility
  • AI Index Report (Stanford HAI)
    • Annual data-driven analysis of global AI development and regulation.
    • Enables signal tracking of regulatory shifts and innovation pace.
    • FAIR: Adaptability
  • EU Artificial Intelligence Act Overview (European Parliament)
    • Summary of the EU AI regulatory framework.
    • A live example of structured accountability in emerging tech.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • World Population Prospects (United Nations)
    • Global demographic projections.
    • Aging populations and fertility decline reshape institutional sustainability.
    • FAIR: Imaginatio
  • National Population Projections (U.S. Census Bureau)
    • Long-term demographic modeling for the U.S.
    • Demographics influence labor markets and entitlement systems.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • World Economic Outlook (International Monetary Fund)
    • Global macroeconomic risk assessments.
    • Economic strain reduces institutional room for experimentation.
    • FAIR: Resilience
  • Global Risks Report 2024 (World Economic Forum)
    • Interconnected global risk assessment.
    • Encourages systems-level thinking rather than siloed analysis.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Signals & Forecasting (Institute for the Future)
    • Strategic foresight methods and weak-signal tracking.
    • Teaches preparation over prediction.
    • FAIR: Imagination
  • Algorithmic Accountability Research (Data & Society)
    • Research on platform power and algorithmic governance.
    • Examines diffusion of responsibility in AI-mediated systems.
    • FAIR: Flexibility

During Class (Wednesday)

Our final discussion will develop questions for guiding ongoing analysis. It emphasizes identifying where institutional failures are most consequential, which systems remain adaptable, and how law should balance flexibility with accountability. Students are encouraged to track signals, demographic trends, regulatory shifts, trust indicators, and institutional reforms to develop foresight-driven judgment about where attention and intervention are most needed.

Deliverable(s)

  • Gretzky Portfolio Due Before 10:24p ET

Week 16, Classes 26 & 27 | DT&L Project Discussions

Review Before Class 
  • Review DT&L Projects in preparation for discussion of summaries
Discuss During Class 
  • DT&L Project Summary discussions
    • (Monday)
    • (Wednesday)

Week 17, Class 28 | Course Wrap, Gretzky Portfolios and Future Trends

We will review the course’s key themes and explore potential future trends in digital transformation, AI, and law. We will assess progress since the pre-course Gretzky Evaluation and evaluate future preparedness for personal and professional success
During Class 
  • Review of the major themes of the course
  • Identification and exploration of future trends in digital transformation, AI, and law
  • Assess progress since the pre-course Gretzky Evaluations
  • Evaluate future preparedness for personal and professional success

DT&L: Deliverables

You are responsible for completing the following deliverables this semester.

Engagement

Success in this course will require you to do more than appear in class twice weekly and answer an occasional question. All of my students will be prepared to participate actively in our in-class discussions, as this is a crucial way to maximize their learning from the course. Please review the Engagement Rubric on this site’s Engagement page in the Course Policies section. Remember, conversation “… is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people …” Generally, “… written exchanges are usually not referred to as conversations.” The good news is that Slack will allow us to engage in synchronous or asynchronous written exchanges to stand in for synchronous discussions.

GenAI Reflections

Complete this deliverable by posting to the DT&L Project Blog and the Gretzky Portfolio Blog on your WordPress sites.

You will build a series of blog posts within your Gretzky Portfolio and DT&L Projects that document your creative and exploratory processes throughout the DT&L experience. These posts should go beyond reporting outcomes and instead capture how you are playing around with different GenAI platforms, tools, and modalities, testing ideas, experimenting with prompts, and using AI in ways you have not previously tried.

Each week, you should include brief brainstorming or creativity sessions that reflect how you explored new uses of AI, what worked, what didn’t, and how your thinking evolved. Over time, these entries should show growth in both your technical fluency and your imaginative use of GenAI. You should update and republish your blogs weekly so they become a living record of your learning.

All blog posts reflecting on GenAI use must comply with the AI Use Disclosure requirements and should thoughtfully integrate multimedia elements (text, images, audio, video) where appropriate. The goal is to use the Gretzky Portfolio and DT&L Project to showcase a broader range of skills, experiments, and creative approaches by the end of the semester, not just polished final outputs.

Gretzky Portfolio

Complete this deliverable by developing your Gretzky Portfolio using Adobe Express and WordPress.

Your Gretzky Portfolio will require you to reconsider the level of preparation you have developed throughout your college experience. In other words, how ready are you for your future in a period of accelerating technological, legal, and generational change?

This is not an exercise about whether you have achieved the grade you anticipated or hoped for, nor is it a retrospective inventory of completed assignments. It is a forward-looking assessment of readiness. Your portfolio should reflect how your personal and professional goals have been shaped by the choices you made in planning and executing this work, including what was achieved, what was deferred or constrained, and how these decisions influence your ability to navigate uncertainty and change. 

Why the Gretzky Portfolio Matters in This Course

The Gretzky Portfolio is built around a simple but demanding question: How ready are you for the future you are entering?

In Disruption, Technology & Law, readiness is not measured by how well you memorize content or by completing isolated assignments. It is measured by your ability to think clearly, adapt thoughtfully, imagine alternatives, and remain resilient in environments shaped by rapid technological change, institutional strain, and generational transition.

That is why this portfolio draws on two core perspectives used throughout the course.

First, the FAIR Framework, Flexibility, Adaptability, Imagination, and Resilience, helps you evaluate how you respond when certainty is unavailable. These capacities matter more when rules lag behind technology, ethical clarity is contested, and professional expectations are shifting.

Second, the course situates disruption within a broader generational context. Many of the tensions we examine are not temporary glitches but symptoms of deeper transitions affecting institutions, law, and trust. The Gretzky Portfolio asks you to recognize these forces and assess your preparedness to navigate them.

By combining foresight tools, intentional AI experimentation, and sustained reflection, the Gretzky Portfolio becomes more than a record of work. It becomes a structured way to think about your future and your role in shaping it.

How You Will Build It

Your Gretzky Portfolio is developed progressively over the semester. The course schedule and calendar guide component due dates, but the larger expectation remains consistent: the work should be cumulative, coherent, and reviewable.

The portfolio combines disciplined structure with freedom of expression. You will complete the required foresight components, but you may present your work in multiple formats (written posts, visual artifacts, narrated slides, audio reflections, short videos, or mixed-media entries) as long as your analysis and growth remain clear.

Core Components and Required Sections

Your Gretzky Portfolio will include a defined set of components that you will develop throughout the semester. At a minimum, your portfolio must include the sections below.

About Me

A concise personal and professional profile that situates your interests, aspirations, current assumptions, and the future you believe you are preparing for.

Gretzky Evaluation: Initial Readiness Assessment

A personal SWOT-style evaluation is conducted at the start of the course to establish your baseline readiness. Your analysis should address, but not be limited to, the following questions:

  • Why are you taking this course?
  • What do you expect to take away from this experience?
  • How would you describe your overall comfort level with using technology?
  • How would you describe your general awareness and understanding of digital innovation?
  • What specific steps or actions do you think are necessary for success in this course?

This effort should help you reflect not only on the current state of your preparation and readiness but also on the path you choose to address the challenges and opportunities for growth and learning this experience presents. Your readiness evaluation will inform the development of the other components of your Gretzky Portfolio.

Foresight Analysis Components

A structured set of future-mapping tools that disciplines how you think about uncertainty, change, and readiness: these tools form the analytical spine of the portfolio. Your portfolio must include the required methods described in the Foresight Toolkit section below, and may include additional foresight tools discussed in the course.

Ongoing Reflections and Digital Artifacts

Entries and artifacts (across text and media) that connect course themes, foresight analysis, and your evolving readiness. These should show your thinking in motion, not just conclusions.

Final Readiness Assessment

A capstone evaluation that returns explicitly to the Gretzky question: How ready are you for your future, and why?

This final section must compare your end-of-semester perspective to your initial readiness baseline. You should assess favorable and unfavorable outcomes, reflect on the choices you made, and articulate a strategy for leveraging what you learned beyond this course.

Your Gretzky Portfolio is the executive summary of your individual plan, outlining your approach to preparing for the future.

The FAIR Framework Lens

Throughout the portfolio, you will use the FAIR Framework, Flexibility, Adaptability, Imagination, and Resilience as a lens for evaluating both personal readiness and institutional response to disruption. These are not abstract qualities. They represent practical capacities required to operate effectively in environments shaped by technological acceleration, legal uncertainty, ethical tension, and generational change. Your portfolio should make visible where these capacities are developing and where further growth is needed.

Foresight Toolkit

Your Gretzky Portfolio must incorporate a core set of foresight tools discussed in the course. These methods are used not to predict a single future, but to discipline how you think about uncertainty, change, and readiness. Required tools may include the Forecasting Funnel, Time Cone, and Scenario Development to explore plausible futures; Axes of Uncertainty and Assumptions vs. Knowledge (AvK) to distinguish what is known from what is uncertain; CIPHER and Fringe Sketches to identify emerging trends and weak signals; and Sources of Macro Disruption to situate technological change within broader social, legal, economic, and generational forces. You may adapt these tools for personal and professional use, but their presence should be visible in your portfolio.

Generative AI and Digital Tools

Because emerging technologies increasingly shape professional expectations, the Gretzky Portfolio requires visible and intentional engagement with generative AI tools, not as shortcuts, but as instruments for experimentation, judgment, and preparation.

You are encouraged, and in some cases required, to explore AI-mediated work across modalities, including text, image, audio, and video. You should reflect critically on how these tools affect creativity, authority, responsibility, and risk, and what responsible use looks like in academic, professional, and civic contexts.

The Gretzky Portfolio Blog

The Gretzky Portfolio Blog supports the Gretzky Portfolio by documenting how you experiment with emerging tools over time. Its purpose is not to polish, but to explore, capturing how unfamiliar platforms, creative uses, and limitations shape your thinking about readiness, responsibility, and future work.

While these entries may intersect with project development, they should also reflect deliberate experimentation and creative play. If you maintain this work as a dedicated Gretzky Portfolio blog section or a separate portfolio tab, it should be clearly labeled and easy to review.

Submission and Reviewability Expectations

  • Your Gretzky Portfolio must be easy to navigate and straightforward to evaluate. Organize your work so that:
  • Your required sections are clearly labeled
  • Your foresight tools are visible and identifiable
  • Your artifacts and reflections are dated or sequenced
  • Your GenAI experimentation is documented in a consistent location
  • Your final readiness assessment explicitly references your initial baseline

DT&L Project

You will complete this deliverable by developing your DT&L Project using Adobe Express and WordPress.

The Disruption, Technology & Law (DT&L) Project is the capstone learning experience for the course. It retains the intellectual framing of the revised DT&L Project Overview, emphasizing systems thinking, ethical judgment, generational analysis, AI mediation, and future-oriented reasoning—while explicitly incorporating updated terminology that reflects how the course frames disruption in Weeks 5 through 12.

Each DT&L Project will focus on a disruptive context selected from Weeks 5–12 of the course schedule. A disruptive context is a sustained area of disruption in which technological change, institutional capacity, legal and regulatory frameworks, ethical tensions, and generational dynamics interact, producing uncertainty, contested choices, and multiple plausible futures. These contexts are not isolated events or single technologies. They are ongoing conditions that generate uncertainty, conflict, and competing future trajectories.

At its core, the DT&L Project asks students to analyze a disruptive context rather than a single technology, company, or legal issue. Teams examine how emerging technologies, institutional capacity, legal and regulatory structures, ethical tradeoffs, and generational change interact within that context to produce disruption. The objective is not prediction or advocacy, but informed judgment.

Most work on the DT&L Project is completed in small teams. Each team is responsible for managing all aspects of project development, including research, analysis, foresight modeling, digital production, and facilitation of discussions. Collaboration, revision, and shared accountability are core learning objectives.

Process transparency is essential. Each team uses a dedicated Slack channel as its primary workspace. Each project team must document all brainstorming, drafts, sources, foresight artifacts, and internal discussions related to the DT&L Project.

The DT&L Project is intentionally developed across a defined digital platform ecosystem. Adobe Express is used to create multimedia artifacts and documentary components. WordPress serves as the public-facing site where the DT&L Project is curated, contextualized, and revised throughout the semester.

Each DT&L Project includes a multimedia documentary component. In this documentary, the team acts as a storyteller, combining analysis with narrative to explain the disruptive context under examination, why it matters now, who is affected, what tensions and tradeoffs are at stake, and how different futures might unfold.

To ensure that foresight remains disciplined rather than speculative, teams must explicitly apply and explain a required set of foresight tools across the semester in relation to their chosen disruptive context.

Phase 1: Preliminary Evaluation – Exploration and Orientation

Teams identify the disruptive context under examination, map key stakeholders, institutions, industries, and adjacent domains, and surface early signals of change and uncertainty.

Phase 2: Interim Progress Assessment – Sense-Making and Refinement

Teams demonstrate how their understanding of the disruptive context has evolved, including refined assumptions and deeper integration of legal, ethical, generational, and AI-related dynamics.

Phase 3: Final DT&L Project Portfolio – Synthesis and Judgment

Teams integrate all prior work into a coherent public-facing portfolio that explains the disruptive context and presents multiple plausible future scenarios.

Phase 4: DT&L Project Discussion and Defense – Articulation and Engagement

Teams facilitate a class discussion of their disruptive context, explain their assumptions and methods, and respond to critique.

Submission and Reviewability Expectations

The DT&L Project is designed as an iterative, transparent, and reviewable body of work rather than a single end-of-semester submission. Students should assume throughout the semester that their work will be visible, revisited, questioned, and refined. Reviewability, by teammates, peers, and the instructor, is a core feature of the learning design, not an administrative requirement.

All project development activity must be documented in the team’s designated Slack channel. This includes brainstorming, draft analysis, source collection, foresight tools, multimedia artifacts, and internal discussion. Slack functions as the project’s working record and is used to assess engagement, revision, collaboration, and the evolution of thinking over time. Work that is not visible in Slack may be treated as incomplete, regardless of its quality at the final stage.

Formal project submissions occur at defined phases of the semester and are posted to the team’s Slack channel or published to the project’s WordPress site as specified. These submissions are expected to reflect the team’s current best thinking at that moment, not a finished or polished final product. Revision between phases is expected and encouraged, provided it is documented and explained.

The final DT&L Project Portfolio is published on WordPress and represents the most complete and coherent version of the team’s work. It should integrate analysis, foresight tools, multimedia artifacts, and narrative elements developed throughout the semester. The final portfolio is assessed holistically, with attention to both the quality of the final synthesis and the trajectory of the work that led to it.

Because the DT&L Project emphasizes judgment under uncertainty, reviewability is not limited to correctness or completeness. I will evaluate how well teams surface assumptions, respond to feedback, revise their thinking, and engage competing interpretations. Strong projects demonstrate intellectual honesty, adaptability, and clarity about what remains uncertain.

Students should plan their work with the expectation that it may be discussed in class, referenced by peers, or used to support course-wide conversations. Public-facing components of the project are part of the learning experience and reinforce the course’s emphasis on accountability, dialogue, and responsible engagement with complex and contested futures.

Grading

The following weights will be assigned to each component of your final grade:
  • Engagement, Diagnostic Reflection, etal (20%)
  • Gretzky Portfolio (20%)
    • Artifacts (10%)
  • DT&L Project (50%)
    • P1 | Preliminary Evaluation (5%)
    • P2 | Interim Report (5%)
    • P3 | Final Project (25%)
    • P4 | Project Discussion (15%)

DT&L: What Should You Expect?

“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” (Winston Churchill)

This course will help you understand Churchill’s quote, particularly the second part. The impact of the development and integration of digital tools is driving change at every level of society, often in ways that are unnoticeable unless you are aware enough to be paying attention. The combinatorial effect of the trends driven by this digital revolution is remarkable, overwhelming, and largely unstoppable. We will not try to “predict” the future here. We will learn to identify technologies and the trends they facilitate so as to anticipate better and forecast future scenarios.

The challenge presented here is not dependent on your ability to memorize facts and regurgitate them in an exam or write a ten-page term paper, all assignments where you have already demonstrated success. This course will push you out of whatever comfort zone(s) you have developed over time, immerse you in subject matter that will be largely unfamiliar, and challenge you to think differently about the future and your place in it.

We will cover an evolving subject matter using technology platforms that may (at least some of them) be unfamiliar. That said, the subject matter of the course is interesting, stimulating, and very timely. We will investigate several emerging and disruptive technologies and the legal and regulatory challenges they present. We will use a variety of digital platforms to interact with each other and the course materials. I will actively engage you through the use of the Socratic Method, both in class and during our discussions outside class. You will have a better sense of my class sessions after you read my perspective on Teaching and Learning.

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” (Wayne Gretzky)

The course will help prepare you to incorporate Gretzky’s perspective in your personal and professional life. DT&L examines several of the many issues and challenges propelled by technology-driven disruption. As noted above, it is clear that the established order in business, and society more generally, faces unprecedented change as a result. Since the legal and regulatory environment, broadly defined, is often among the most significant influencers of outcomes in this space, we will examine the implications of these disruptive technologies on the law as well. The pace and significance of the change we will examine raise profound ethical questions that will be at the core of many of our discussions. In the spirit of disruption, we have, in past semesters, taken a hybrid (or blended) approach to this learning environment that we will be creating, modifying, and consuming over several months.

One last thought for now… the nature of this experience will, of necessity, require you to think differently about where you have been, where you are going, and how you experience learning. It is important that we not only get our arms around the subject matter, but we must also develop strategies for dealing with an unprecedented era of remarkable and rapid change. I expect that we will develop a significantly different, more collaborative environment… one that anticipates that we will actively engage in all of its opportunities.