Why is #AI useful to pro-actively prepare #learners in a changing world? #skills

Preparing for my talk today at Online Educa Berlin, after a great workshop-filled day yesterday (one of the workshops was on preparing for the 4th industrial revolution guided by Gilly Salmon - https://www.gillysalmon.com/presentations.html ) and a wonderfully inspiring and ideas provoking workshop with Bryan Alexander looking at methods to predict parts of the future).

Below you can find my slides for the session at Online Educa Berlin looking at ways that Artificial Intelligence can be used to pro-actively prepare learners for the skills of the future.

It covers the steps we have tackled at InnoEnergy with the skills engine. In the talk I will share our approach, and how this differs from what was previously done. The slides are rather minimal, but if you download the talk, you can look at the notes in the slides to get the full picture.

Building the Skills Engine: our dreams realise the future from Inge de Waard

Yes a learning engine: demo is ready, but #AI and #Learning challenges ahead #TBB2019 @InnoEnergyCE

If you have ideas on ensuring continuity in pedagogy when clustering courses (research), on certifying across corporate and university learning (blockchain/bit of trust certification), on opening up industry academies to decrease L&D costs (HR and L&D), ... please think along and respond to the challenges mentioned at the end.

People in high and common places seem to agree that the world is in transition, especially workplace learning, as innovations keep changing what is possible. As I am working on one such an innovation (the skill project of InnoEnergy), I am at the one hand very excited about the new opportunities it might open, yet at the same time concerned that the complexity is bigger than expected.

First: have a look at the demo screencast here. It shows the overall idea, and ... this might immediately give rise to questions.

Today the Business Booster event (TBB) is opened, and with it, the skill project demo is launched. The skillproject (we still need to get a brand name for it), is combining AI and learning for the sustainable energy sector. But in essence, once we get the sustainable energy sector mapped with this tool, others can follow. 

AI and learning? What does it do: the project identifies industry needs (AI-driven), pinpoints emerging skill gaps in the sustainable energy sector (AI-driven), analysis the existing workforce to know where urgent skills gaps are situated (AI-driven) and then refers employees to a personalized learning trajectory addressing their skills gap (part AI, part human support). The goal of this project is to ensure that employees of the sustainable energy sector stay futureproof in a quickly changing working environment. Let's be honest, it sounds cool, but ... the challenges are multiple. 

The emergence of a Learning Engine

The skillproject helps realize the emergence of a learning engine, an intelligent career-oriented engine which knows your own skills and which signposts you to where you want to go with your career by suggesting a personalized learning track.

In the Learning Engine you simply type in “goal: become Director of Innovation’s in offshore wind energy which courses?” and the engine immediately returns a tailored, personalized learning track consisting of a variety of certified, business training from both universities, corporate academies, open educational energy resources and coaching options to send you on your way. This will allow professional learning to surpass the limits of classical, university-based learning.

Challenges

In order to get our engine to come up with the best, most-tailored courses, we need access to industry academies, as well as university courses. 

Learning-to-Learn capacities. Once we signpost learners to a cluster of courses, they need to take them (the familiar 'take the horse to water' comes to mind). But even if the learners are taking the courses, 

Granularity for course clustering: clustering courses to keep on top of your field of expertise is one thing, but then what is the granularity of those courses? Micro-learning is an option, and modular learning will become a clear necessity, as all learners have different existing knowledge, which means they all need different parts in order to upskill what they already know. 

Ensuring pedagogical continuity, even OU finds that a challenge. Great, so let's cluster modules. But then, how can we link these modules together, Do we believe in the non-pedagogical support (e.g. hole in the wall from Sugata Mitra already dates back 10 years), or do we need to find a solution to provide pedagogical continuity that fits with this new assembly of short modules, and courses coming from different sources (both university and industry)?

Certification across the learning ecologies: to blockchain or not to blockchain. Once we start learning across institutes, we need to keep track of that what we learn, by keeping tabs on the actual learning: corporate academy learning, university modules, hands-on training, workplace learning... one solution is to embed blockchain in education to keep track of all learning. But this is easier said than done, and open standards and trust might be an issue to consider (bit of trust initiative offers good reading). 

Feel free to send questions, comments, share your own projects... let's get together.

Working on the #LearningEngine matching #learning to #skillgaps #skills

Forget the search engine, ravel on the emergence of the Learning Engine (admittedly it is still a dream in progress, but we are getting closer)

What made search engines so innovative decades ago? 

They created connections. Connections between online users and content. The search engine developers did not produce a lot of content, but they referred to content from outside providers, and that was what made it special: the immediate connection. It connected supply with demand, connecting small and big businesses, individuals and groups. The service built upon existing new developments that each of the content producers provided. 

Content free and available. A great big benefit of the content that comes up in the search engines is of course that it is free, ... which is a lot more difficult if you are trying to build a learning engine. Professional courses are rarely free (MOOCs notwithstanding), and in a lot of cases even the courses themselves are behind closed walls: e.g. online courses only available for employees, for registered students...

Search engines are great, but Learning Engines are becoming a really urgent demand

The shift in our professional society is no longer about jobs that disappear due to automation, it is about jobs diversifying through the demands of change, driven by innovation. Learning to learn is becoming essential to being employed and moving forward (or at least it seems that way for some of the jobs in sectors driven by innovation and change). 

In order to learn how to do a variety of jobs, we need to learn, and we need to personalize each of our learning journeys based on our previous experiences and skills, both hard and soft skills. This is where the Learning Engine comes in and takes shape. At InnoEnergy I am now co-developing learning for real life jobs. At present ‘addressing the skills gap’ is all the rave. LinkedIn is investing in its Economic Graph, Burning glass and alike are gathering data on Skills, countries and regions are building skills taxonomies (e.g. Nesta ), that can be used either in manual brainstorms and in Artificial Intelligence driven projects. 

If you take into considerations these latest tech-innovations and options, it isn't difficult to imagine a true personalized Learning Engine. 

The challenge is how to build a Futureproof Workforce? Maybe a Learning Engine

With the Learning Engine in my mind it combines innovation, AI and learning skills for the sustainable energy sector (as EIT InnoEnergy works within the sustainable energy sector). Basically, the project identifies industry needs, pinpoints emerging skill gaps in the sustainable energy sector, analysis the existing workforce to know where urgent skills gaps are situated and then refers employees (or employee groups) to a personalized learning trajectory to alleviate their skills gap. 

The combination of these steps should ensure that the employees of the sustainable energy sector stay futureproof in a quickly changing working environment. 

This project helps to realize the emergence of the ‘Learning Engine’, an intelligent career-oriented engine which knows your own skills and signposts you to where you want to go with your career by suggesting a personalized learning track. 

Just imagine that you go to the Learning Engine and you simply type in “Director of Innovation’s in offshore wind energy” and the engine immediately returns a tailored, personalized learning track consisting of a variety of certified trainings from both universities, corporate academies, open educational energy resources and coaching options! Personally, I think that would be quite a catch!

Learners mix and match already

In a way, we already see this shift towards a more quilted professional learning in the MOOC’s which are taken by professional learners to enhance their career opportunities. Those career-minded employees register for MOOCs developed by universities as well as businesses, and they take a few courses here, and a few courses there. Soon employees will be able to link different course certificates to ensure a future-proof career (whether we should be using blockchain in Education to validate the learning trajectory is something else (see some mails on this here and here).

Corporate academies will need to open part of their courses: are they willing?

As the project evolves, it is clear that the AI engines are running and becoming smarter as additional data is fed into the system. But the main challenge is still: how to get access to course descriptions so we can signpost learners to those courses. If we don't have access to courses, even descriptions than we cannot send learners to them. 

I would think that corporate academies would benefit from sharing some of their courses: if they form a network, they will no longer need to develop all the courses, they could 'swap' or agree to develop specific courses and find other courses for their employees at competing companies. Because although they are competing, all of them have basic courses for their employees, and those course costs could be cut by coming to a course-development agreement. 

(picture from http://wwwdev.kpbsd.k12.ak.us/departments.aspx?id=37724 )

(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]

#OEB15 keynote Cory Doctorow we are living in a surveillance state

If you can see a sci-fi novelist, blogger, and technology activist at work using a wonderfully harsh Canadian accent …. you need to stretch your fingers, massage your brain and prepare for some quick thinking.

Cory wears a nice reversed white and black jacket over his skull-pirate t-shirt and it suits his stage presents. So, Cory Doctorow.

Schools are increasingly surveyanced places, but this means that learners are negatively impacted by the idea of what is good and bad learning. Eg. Website pages that have been blocked for learners, but this flies in the face of digital learning. As kids are exploring information and content.

This means we are filtering pages, censoring pages for repressive regimes. We are offshoring our kids clicks to war criminals.

But kids (time rich and cash poor) will find solutions, but this means that they are not really learning digital skills, but marginal digital solution finding.

So what if we will give them real life challenges: which pages would you catalogue, and what do you think about the pages that they are not allowed to be seen.

Freedom of information act: explore that

Research companies by using the internet, and give that to the journals, magazines… which will make them fully digital citizens.

Children are the beta testers of the internet age.

It matters what we teach our kids.

Macbooks: laptop was equipped with software that would harvest the clicks of all the kids (in the most affluent high school of USA).

Now school administrations provide laptops, with those types of software.

The surveillance state are increasingly spreading to all digital users. They want to take the inkjet model into every home. Making it difficult to build tools without giving them some money (standardisation).

Digital locks are now used in cars to make sure that every garage owner buys the readers. And this pressures those garagists to buy parts with particular stores… which should be seen as a felony

But it is not restricted to cars, it is part of the complete ecosystem we live in and in which (John Deers tractors, with software from Monsanto).

Also inside of the body. The logbook of continuous blood glucose meters… so human beings are turned into inktjet printers.

The rules that prohibit people from downloading their own data generatied by these softwares, makes them objects without rights.

We only have one methodology to see whether security works: making it transparent.

We need to ask for a knowledge age that is enlightened, to free people in our society.

Cory gives example of STazi, then NSA spionage, … so there is a productivity gain in surveillance due to data recording devices.

(inge: add this to the telepathic slides)

And, strangely enough each one of us is actually paying the companies that get these data for this data (mobile plans).

In our own living memory, people that are seen as right, which first were people that could go to jail, social inclused… the way we as a society changed to a more open social attitude, we made things transparent. But how do we do this?

ICT literacy is thinking critically on how they stand on the digital data, the social implications of this data… all foundational, future fights will be fought on the internet. So it is pivotal to make our world more transparent, especially the security software… and to make people critical and smart and above all subversive on how they use the technology around them.

Computers have brought new powers to us, but producers prohibit access to your own data.

Although computers can have really safe encrypting software, our kids must just learn to use it.

 People care about security, so that is a good thing.

Electronic frontier toolkit (Inge look it up).

We need better tools, and social

Living in an age of surveillance: total control of the means of information: why is the computer not doing what you want it to do.

Improving digital citizenships: should be lead by institutions, so as teachers the only thing we can do is to teach them how to ask critical questions, to demand evidence-based proof. Digital citizenship is crucial, but there is a lock on personal data. Digital locks have been put on so much, how can we see where to unlock them: it is a matter of policy and skills.

At present non of us know how much of our data is shared or owned by whom.

Security services should be on the side of the users, not on their own existence only. 

@ectel2015 Using MOOC and CLIL with 16 - 17 year old students instruments & set-up

Just arrived at the EC-TEL conference in Toledo, Spain. And finalised a second set of slides together with my colleague Kathy Demeulenaere (GUSCO), focusing on a project set up by GUSCO school (k12) to integrate MOOCs into CLIL lessons.

The overview paper is available through Academia here. And sharing the abstract:

In this HybridEd workshop paper the authors will share a pilot project that combines Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) with external (i.e. not self-developed) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) to en-hance LifeLong Learning (LLL) skills in a blended learning environment (MOOC and classroom). The target population of this project consists of upper secondary students attending those secondary school curricula that normally result in college or university entrance. These upper secondary students follow a MOOC of their own choosing. Their MOOC learning performance in terms of language use and digital skills is monitored via generic lifelong learning rubrics and teacher-student mentoring

The slides are in a beta form of course, as we will reflect upon them in the next two days. The presentation will be on Friday 18 September in session 2 of the HybridEd workshop - 5A from 17.15 - 18.30 in the La Mancha room (if I am correct?) and ... I must say I like La Mancha, any connotation with the wonderful Don Quixote is energizing.

Have a look at the slides, they contain links to instruments as well, so might be nice.

Increasing life long learning skills for upper secondary students using MOOC and CLIL from Inge Ignatia de Waard

Critical #skills define performances across multiple fields

Critical learning/reading/living is an acclaimed skill. With the internet becoming a global content delivery and discussion forum, this skill has become increasingly important for knowledge creation, filtering out crap and manipulation, or simply in order to try and construct your own voice in your own field of interest. As my Personal Knowledge Mastery class facilitated by Harold Jarche moves forward, this is my next reflective exercise. For last weeks topic was on: challenging ideas and why this is a good thing.
This process of constructive, critical action as an interesting journey that fits my current "where do I go from here in my personal and professional life", as such combine my PhD, with a military training option, and a Cate Blanchett interview mentioning doubt and self-reflection. It all fits together in my mind :-)

And for those looking for some great and well-grounded critique on TED talks, look at what the wonderful Audrey Watters writes on the subject (in short: TED talks are about flashing (entrepreneurial) ideas, not getting them questioned - thx for the link Harold!)

PhD journey and becoming more critical

Being critical is also a key aspect of any PhD or research project. Knowing which terms you use, why you select certain methodologies, whether they stand the test of critical analysis, what weaknesses/strengths they have. Looking back at when I started with my PhD I can see how I have strengthened my critical skills. The verbs I use, the arguments I make, the data I collect and how I analyse that data, everything is scrutinized and rightfully so, as this turns simple actions into conscious, meaningful acts. And in order to enhance these critical skills, feedback from colleagues and supervisors is more then helpful. This was not new to me, as I used it to evaluate eLearning and mobile projects in the past, but really improving that skill will have a profound effect on my future evaluations, and understandings. A clear gain from my PhD journey. 

The use of people trained in being critical in the military

In the PKM course an example from the military is given reflecting on the "Red Team University", a university which trains critical people to be send out into the field and use their critical skills to improve field actions and strategies (so those people question the military staff in order to strengthen tactics), here is the excerpt:. 

The school is the hub of an effort to train professional military “devil’s advocates” — field operatives who bring critical thinking to the battlefield and help commanding officers avoid the perils of overconfidence, strategic brittleness, and groupthink. The goal is to respectfully help leaders in complex situations unearth untested assumptions, consider alternative interpretations and “think like the other” without sapping unit cohesion or morale, and while retaining their values.More than 300 of these professional skeptics have since graduated from the program, and have fanned out through the Army’s ranks. Their effects have been transformational — not only shaping a broad array of decisions and tactics, but also spreading a form of cultural change appropriate for both the institution and the complex times in which it now both fights and keeps the peace.
- Andrew Zolli: HBR 26 Sept 2012 

Cate Blanchett and personal critical analysis as a means to grow in one's profession and life

When watching an interview for the Screen Actors Guild with Cate Blanchett on her performance in Blue Jasmine, in the end one of the questions from the public is on self-doubt and reflection. Although Cate Blanchett has performed numerous times on both theater and film stage, she clearly defines doubt and critical thought as defining her expertise, as fine-tuning her performance. A nice interview.

(partially Dutch post) Mobile learning knowledge exchange with educational team of KATHO

KATHO is one of the leading Flemish higher education institutes. It has fully online courses and they are now in the midst of envisioning the future of their educational approach. This educational institution has a fabulous extra: they have a complete cell of 'toegepaste informatica' enabling other cells and departments to form collaborations on eLearning projects.

Jean Claude Callens asked me if I wanted to come over and join them to exchange ideas on mobile learning. It was an honor to be invited to speak for this great institution.

After the presentation a couple of questions were raised, the most urgent and difficult one to tackle was a question raised by Lien Hugelier from the nurses department. She and her colleagues offer online nurse courses, but they (and my medical colleagues) have a problem: how do you monitor and assess skills? She put forward the example of the procedure of taking blood. How can we monitor online whether a student is truly understanding the skill of taking blood from a patient?

So if any of you have an answer to this, or already are using this great way of assessing similar skills in your online education, please share your expertise, for this is one tricky dilemma in my and her mind.

If you are interested in viewing the Dutch presentation on mobile learning I gave at KATHO yesterday, feel free to look (or download) it:

van simpel mobiel leren tot mobiel2.0: voorbeelden en tools

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