It was great to present alongside Professor Martin Bean To an audience of colleges and universities including some former colleagues. This was a busy session at City of Glasgow College around shaping the future of education.
Thanks to the team at canvas by Instructure for facilitating this session.
A summary below for folks who could not make it along.
Martin laid out well the challenges facing global education. Generally we are far too slow to embrace innovation and deal with disruption. This has been familiar cry over the 38 years I have worked in the sector but more critical now than ever.
We may not appreciate challenges like
"Today is the slowest day of the rest of your working life" But there is a truism here, change is becoming ever more rapid.
I summarise below some of Martin's gems but you really should get hold of his latest book ToolKit for Turbulance
There is a re-skilling emergency across the world
https://www.weforum.org/publications/putting-skills-first-a-framework-for-action/
While LinkedIn and others are busily mapping opportunities and candidates to skill descriptions and using AI to provide tailored learning solutions and microcredentials for learners. The established providers of learning are moving too slowly.
Knowledge and skills are a currency. The workforce need regular updates and current students need courses that are regularly reviewed, updated and delivered flexibly. Paper diplomas are old currency and current validation processes too slow.
Useful examples to have a look at
Australia developing a digital skills passport to be used across life long learning.
https://www.education.gov.au/national-skills-passport-consultation
Even tied into migration policies
https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au/consultations/draft-core-skills-occupations-list
In Europe the Europass continues to be developed
https://europa.eu/europass/eportfolio/
Digitally native Learners are moving to online platforms - examples 8 million Google professional certificates through Coursera , Salesforce and their Trailhead Academy Futurelearn in UK with 14million users
Institutions often spend to much time focusing on their physical estate and do not realise that investment in their digital estate can deliver real value to their learners.
The final challenge -
Surely, Scotland with a new tertiary system should be looking at a digitally enabled skills passport/digital wallet for learners in Colleges, Universities and work based learning. It would support employers and life long learners and make candidate search and opportunity discovery easier for all. ( I know a few Scottish innovators in this space who would agree)
My own reflection too much time and energy has been spent in changing the policy landscape and not enough time has been spent on looking at some of these system level changes in Scotland. It's easier to shuffle around agencies and lines of responsibility than to deliver real change in system.
I followed up with a session focussing on how these challenges could be picked up in Scotland and what solutions institutions should be putting in place. On the day I focused on challenges and vanilla solutions for broad audience. The presentation also covers how we used Canvas by Instructure to future proof our delivery. I've redacted delegates inputs on day - feedback was really positive.
I look forward to supporting future sessions.
