(live blognotes @ErasmusMATES) on #skills shift effect on #education & #training

Live blognotes MATES workshop on future skills education needed

This blog post refers to the future of education. In the near future (now actually) we need to set up professional learning that addresses the skills needs that emerge from the innovation-driven transition affecting different jobs. As a result, learning becomes effectively lifelong learning, and it becomes mandatory, as many jobs change constantly. This means universities must make their curriculum more dynamic in roll-out to cater to immediate demands, or ensure professional long learning. 

In this workshop, the European skills gap address is sketched. The field is specifically shipbuilding, but the notes I took are related to something that all educators interested in a pan-university or pan-training-organizational might find useful.

Everything between square brackets refer to my own ideas or questions [ ]

Julie Fionda Deputy Head of Unit Skills and Qualifications (DG Employment EC)

Great quote by Margaret Mead (Yeah!) We are now at a point where we must educate our children in what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our schools …”

• A future of transitions
• Changing jobs more frequently
• Content of work changing faster (by 2022 54% of the
  
  
  
  existing workforce will need up/reskilling (Davos world economic forum)
• Changing tasks more than redundant jobs ‘cobotisation’ (2022 machines/algorithms 42% humans 58 percent, huge shift (now 17%)

Which skills and where: diverse skills across Europe.

Cross cutting messages: digital skills (90% of all jobs now require some digital skills, including manual jobs), knowledge becomes less important (but navigating and applying the knowledge is increasingly more important than the knowledge itself)

Problem solving and critical thinking become more important (for themselves and as co-workers)

STEM disciplines are necessary, but the creatives are needed to say what the engines must do in terms of feelings, ethics, …

Sector specific skills: skills intelligence is often quite poor at individual level. Very important decisions are made on patchy information and pre-conceptions, that is why skills intelligence is one of the pillars in Europe.

Skills agenda in Europe high priority.

[skills intelligence: graduate tracking – blockchain certification from a learner , predicting future skills based on AI]

Education training systems need time to get people certified and credited, yet there is an immediate need to provide people with specific skills now. This also means we need to look at skills across the board (transparency across all levels, European, national and regional level)

Sectorial skills – European projects (Wave 1 – 2017, Wave 2 – 2018, Wave 3 – 2019)

Europass (certification ! informal and formal !): a suite of documents and services to improve transparency of skills. Over 130 million Europass CVs filled in (2005 – 2018), this will be renewed and testing it from June onward [ask Inge!]. The new Europass: web-based documentation tools, fact-based trends

More information on trends in your sector, connecting with learning opportunities, signposting for recognition of credentials, making it easier to identify the right candidates (to understand their qualifications, to trust their documentation is genuine and to have them find you).

Big data analysis of skills needs (roll out by 2020): Tens of millions of online vacancies, what are the skills sets they require, how does this vary across Europe, what trends can we see, first data March 2019, CEDEFOP expertise.

Graduate tracking: question on whether also tracking for informal learning after graduation (professional learning). Yes, this is done by Europass and it would be a service offered by Europass that can be embedded in a project so that both formal and informal certification can be validated by all and kept and/or provided by learner themselves. The Europass solution would be rolled out and available by 2020. Would be vocational tracking as well as university-related tracking, but admittedly the vocational tracking is more of a challenge.

Skills panorama (look at the picture for link).

Brain drain, movement of skilled labour in Europe, where are people going, where from, challenges and successes, independent study and mutual learning [here informal certification]

Transparency and recognition of qualifications: European Qualifications Framework (EQF), credentials, and international qualifications, blueprint qualifications, digitally signed credentials.

Looking for implementable projects and that it makes an impact on a strategic level.

Find out more: Julie.fionda@ec.europe.eu (and see picture with links )

Qualifications across nations/continents.

[our InnoEnergy skills3.0 bottom up approach, starting from the sector reports provides a more realistic market realistic overview of the skills needed]

ESCO skills taxonomy will be released as update in 2021.

Lucia Fraga Lago presents MATES findings (16 months of work)

Objectives: digital skills, green skills, 21^st century skills, gender balance, VET standards and governance, ocean literacy. Transversal skills like these gain importance.

Project structure is iterative, currently in planning phase: stakeholder mobilization, baseline report on current skills gaps, analysis fo paradigm shifters, lines of action.

http://whowhomates.com for full report 176 experts and stakeholders commit to contributing to the strategy, organized in 8 thematic groups.

Input sources: 242 publications and 149 projects bibliographic, state of the art compilation, 2 rounds of regional stakeholder workshops [did MATES use AI for this]

Methods: description of current status in both sectors, value chain approach, mapping of relevant occupational profiles (based on ESCO), mapping of relevant Education and training programs across Europe, and identification of gaps in Education and training programs and skills shortages.

General challenges: aging workforce, young people not interested in the industrial maritime sectors, women are under-represented, and there aer few gender statistical data.

Mapping of occupational profiles (those that are very directly related to this field – shipbuilding). 35 primary (e.g. metal workers, welders, machinists…), and 25 supporting occupation profiles (e.g. civil engineer).

Relevant education and training programs across Europe (450 programs found) few programs directly targeted at shipbuilding industry, majority are VET programs addressing first phases of specialization only (mainly metalworking), few training schemes provide specific apprenticeships like advanced welding etc. , only 17% of the programs are English or bilingual and mainly higher education programs.

Skills shortages: specific technical gaps is highest, but also in language skills, health and safety.

[question: 450 programs found, but how do you solve the personal need of each worker, and how do you connect it to different parts of these programs?]

Info: mates@cetmar.org Lucia Fraga @erasmusMATES

On my question regarding: “who does a mix-and-match of existing programs and courses to the skills needs that are situated? Response of MATES and University of Amsterdam: multidisciplinary, dynamic curriculum development, multi-disciplinary curriculum building, more modulated, blended in terms of in-classroom teaching and on-site training. The MATES Lucia Fraga: we are going to tackle this step by step [so Skills3.0 project of EIT InnoEnergy might be leading in this]

#Blockchain in #learning exploring for #validation of lifelonglearning #certification

This is the first part of a series on Blockchain for Learning posts. In this post I am giving my (current) overview of Blockchain options from industry, a second post will focus more on the academic side (including impact on universities), and I will add a philosophical post on it as well).

Background and project

As I am working on the learning bit of the skills 3.0 project (a multi-disciplinary project combining AI, HR, learning and learning certification, see basic slides here), I have been gathering some Blockchain-for-Learning solutions as well (exploring options before adding them to the project slides). 

Main idea for using Blockchain (open or closed) for learning

What I am looking for is a stackable certification solution, which blockchain for learning or education can provide. This stackable way of organising or linking learning could enable a validated, personalized certification procedure covering both formal learning (e.g. certification, degrees, micro-credits) and informal learning (e.g. badges, skills, experiences). Practically: each learner has a learning wallet or portfolio, and you - as a learner - can add each learning step as you 'earn' it and you are issued a certificate/badge of what you learned by a learning authority/individual/group).  

Why is this useful?

Remember how each one of us has to give proof of learning whenever we want to change jobs, or when HR sets up these profiles that are so complex, that you wonder whether you will ever fit in? Well, in an ideal world this blockchain-for-learning solution might shed some light on both your formal credits, as well as your experiences throughout life and even your emerging interests (e.g. blockchain basics). It is a bit like a LifeLongLearning Accreditation On Steroids. 

So the blocks of this blockchain would be all instances where you learn, this could be study hours, but also workshops, reading, interactions with experts, papers, patents, peer groups of practitioners ... 
The idea is to support personalized learning when people are reskilling or upskilling their competencies and knowledge and adding a layer to it so their training and learning can be certified in a secure and digital fashion. 

Its technology, so there are heated debates

With all new technology, the heated debates emerge as well: what is the best, what are the upsides, who is a true believer, who is a true cynic... all of this I keep for a post later on this month. For now, just to give an idea, I am focusing on what is out there. Which is more than I had imagined. 

Blockchain you say? 

Any transaction between different parties where the transactions need to be validated, and they are distributed across locations fit the blockchain technology. The data is distributed over a massive amount of people, which would make tracking all the transactions very complex if done manually. Blockchain automates these transactions, and in many cases, they use distributed databases, as well as smart contracts to enable transactions. A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. Smart contracts allow the performance of credible transactions without third parties. These transactions are trackable and irreversible (it being irreversible is one of the topics of debate, for instance, even if you are the author, you cannot change the transaction... so how does this fit in with Personal Data?). However, there is one important factor: the learner should be the one in charge of who can see what from his 'learning experiences and certification', which means she can give or revoke access to personal records. 

A great white paper on it (53 pages), called My Skills Project, written by John Casey from City of Glasgow College is a good read to get acquinted with blockchain for learning, focusing on vocational training (great read!). 

Some features that I feel are key:

• Privacy (well, yes)
• Learner is the owner of all data (others might be as well, but intermittent, while the learner is the owner of all their data. Right to be forgotten is also important, but seems difficult at this point - says my colleague Frederik who knows more about blockchain tech).
• mobile first (you would think this is a given, but ... it still is not).
• Standardization (otherwise it becomes difficult to achieve lifelong learning traceability)
• Bridging formal and informal: this demands a variety of validated certification, including micro-credits, open badges and the like.

Giving some examples of products out there or in progress

Chainscript demo by Phil Komarny (Chainscript from SalesForce): in just 5 minutes Phil gives an overview and live (!) demo of the chainscript on mobile (oh yes!).

SmartDegrees: a mobile tool developed in Spain (the app already exists and has been rolled out in some Spanish Universities, a.o. Carlos III in Madrid). Because this solution seems (at least) a good starting point, I have a meeting with one of its people next week (looks promising, you can see a 2-minute video of what smartDegrees does here, but only in Spanish at the moment). 

A great comprehensive overview of Blockchain overall and with practical implementations in education comes from the Open University (UK), which looks at their plans for smart contracts, micro-accreditation, open badges, ... great 9-minute video. It is John Domingue (director of KMI at the OU) who speaks, and he has just been awarded the fellowship of the British Blockchain Association. 

LearningMachine: from MIT lab, and the good old W3C credentials community group, LearningMachine emerged. This is a full product in market, fully self-sovereign identity. But not sure how open they are to non-classic accreditation, although their video does include 'skills equivalencies' but not sure of the peer recommendations or fully informal learning options. They seem to be more focused on formal education (from government, university, companies). Their 2-minute mobile app can be seen in action here.

Standard-oriented information
CIMEA is the Italian Blockchain for qualifications standard. Their certification wallet service is called Diplo Me, which is still under construction.

DigiCerts is the German counterpart for Blockchain certification standards.

Blockcerts, subtitled "the open standard for blockchain certificates" is a service connected to Learning Machine, and also works towards a standard in an Alliance of major universities (which makes it feel mostly formal in certification). 

Europe is developing a standard embedded in its Digital Education Action Plan, called "framework for digitally-signed credentials". (pdf-document) A mostly theoretical approach, but of interest as it will be linked to Europass and such.

And of course the laudable Open Badges, used by multiple organisations (e.g. The Open University) to certify informal learning (I love this one, but it is of course going against the dominant system).

Some additional sources

Accredible is another, with UK, Netherlands and USA offices. They work across LMS systems, so they seem more LMS oriented. A lot of reading to get the idea, but nice reading. This is more like a certification publisher, not an active certification wallet option. 

The American, Public University system has blockchain lined up as well, but I could not find a bigger description of their project. 

Blockchain is a hot topic, so there is a multitude of courses out there, but one that seems to specialize is the Blockchain Training Alliance . They do not seem to offer specific Blockchain products though.

There are also some standards being developed (nice to keep in mind when wanting to use blockchain in a later stage):

Then there are a couple of blockchain companies who haven't developed a Blockchain for learning solution, but seem to be eager to explore the field:

T-mining (Belgium) - working with Frederik to explore which solution would fit my need best, great people to talk to. 

Wallet services 

Learnovate (Ireland, connected to Trinity College Dublin), wrote a piece about it here.

Looking forward to getting a more in-depth look at these, and considering some of the more academic and philosophic ideas paralleling this technology. If you know of any other solutions, feel free to add them as a comment, or let me know. 

(picture from OpenBlockChain from UK)