How Education, Industry, Society and Technology are Converging to Empower Alternative Credentials

How Education, Industry, Society and Technology are Converging to Empower Alternative Credentials

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[Music] [Music] i'm dan mcfadden managing director of edelex and i'm joined today by martin bean martin is the founder and ceo of the bean center previously martin was the vice chancellor and president of rmit university from february 2015 through july 2021 he previously held the position of vice chancellor of the open university the uk's largest academic institution and separately as general manager of microsoft's education products group he has held various executive leadership roles at novell and other companies integrating technology and learning systems in 20 2012 or sorry in 2012 he launched future learn the uk's first at-scale provider of moocs and in 2014 he was named one of the uk prime ministers business ambassadors his career has focused on the intersection of education and technology martin thank you so much for your time today lovely to talk to you again hello dan and hello to everybody listening in today it's a real a real pleasure to be here and can i just say dan i'm just such an admirer of the work that you and your colleagues are doing in this sort of amazing new world of alternative credentials and the future of work it's just a pleasure being a fellow traveler with you well thank you martha yeah wonderful to hear those those words and and like likewise uh admired you from from afar and it's been fantastic to get to know you over the previous years and months well look i i want to come back to that intersection of education and technology and there's so much to to talk and discuss with you today so so let's let's dive into it so late last year you co-authored a review of university industry collaboration in teaching and learning for the australian national skills commission and in that report you identified seven strong clear short-term initiatives or actions that could be taken as well as for longer-term direction reform directions that can make a strong impact if uh if implemented and ultimately this yeah this is a fantastic opportunity but it's complicated right and and i might just read back a brief snippet from that report where you identify that it involves aligning development of skills and education systems accelerating the use of the australian skills classification reforming the aqf the australian qualifications framework and supporting the development of a unified credentials platform so so there's a lot to it and i want to unpack some of that with you but i guess the first question is why now why is now that the best time or right time to tackle these yeah i think it's um it's not so much now episodically dan i think this has been something that's been sort of slowly building for decades now actually is this need for all of us to recognize that um learning is no longer disproportionately from sort of the age of 5 to 24 and then we just get on with work and live our lives we've been talking about lifelong learning for quite a long time but i think when you look at the pace of innovation you look at how perishable hard skills are now how quickly they become obsolete how many changes in job a 15 year old will have now through their life which can be 15 to 20 unlike sort of my era where perhaps you might have had three to five in your career or all of those things are sort of coming together now with the pace of technology and innovation to no longer make it a nice to have to learn for life but to make it a must-have and i think that's been accelerated by covert where i think it became very very clear that it is possible to be able to not only deliver high quality learning which i've known about for decades through digital media and forums and practices but also to be able to give access and engage people at all stages of their lives in meaningful ways down so it's a little bit long-winded to say the report might have come out in december but i actually it's really been building for quite some time fantastic and despite of the the the clear negative impact that covet pandemic has had it is creating a number of these new opportunities and silver linings to that very dark cloud so that's that's great to to think about that context as well so so in in order to implement these these initiatives and direction it's going to require greater collaboration than we typically seen between higher education government and industry so so a couple of related questions on that how what are some of the obstacles we need to be aware of with that and then ultimately more importantly how can we be as successful as we can yep so let's start maybe with the actors that you pointed out so i think for government it's really about making sure that they do two or three really critical things and can i just say dan the department and the minister commissioned this report and they've been incredibly welcoming of peter's and my my recommendations but if you if you look at some of the recommendations the noonan review on the reform of the aqf to enshrine micro credentials um and build a more connected system that's been out for quite some time now so really our big shout out to government in our findings is okay and let's get on with it you you've fully accepted the noon and recommendations so let's just get it done because that's going to create the enabling framework that the second area is for all of this to work we need a common skills currency what i talk about in the report is rich skill descriptors to be used by employers to be used by individuals to be used by education organizations and by government so we're all speaking the same language the skills commission has done a terrific job of taking their first few steps with project jedi in the vocational area but our recommendation is that they be funded and allowed to extend that into tertiary education and beyond them so that we so australia has a well understood rich library of skill descriptors that we can all use and then the third area dan is there's a lot of initiatives being funded right now you've got the national micro credentials marketplace you've got the national credentials platform you've got the national careers institute you've got uh the um you've got the national skills initiative that i and the commission that i've already talked about um we need to bring these initiatives together dan interoperability open standards um uh transparent and effective apis so that data can be written from a variety of sources all of those things really need to be pulled together in these funded initiatives from the commonwealth government and i'm working with them and they are certainly putting a lot of time and effort into making sure that we just do that we do just that so that's the important part there i think for industry dan um they're up for it but they would be the first to say they have to be part of the curriculum design process the program design process and they want to be when we start talking about alternative credentials and wanting them to have immediate labor market impact the more we can get industry working right alongside us to develop them to teach them to provide mentors for them the more valuable those alternative credentials are going to be to uh the individuals and then when it comes to education providers universities tafes higher education providers of any type i think an openness and a willingness to recognize that they have a role to play for the lifelong learner that even though they may have traditionally focused on on a sort of a younger profile of learner government wants them to do it industry wants them to do it we want them to do it you and i dan but they've got to have an openness to doing things in different ways industry wants shorter they want sharper they want more industry enabled they want them to have more direct link between what's being taught with the skills and the skills gaps and deficits that they have to be able to drive their organizations forward to innovate and remain competitive and so it is going to require us as the education providers to engage with them in ways that perhaps we haven't done as much of in the past and now interesting fascinating points there and and on your comment around the interaction and engagement with industry i think traditionally as you said this is not just all starting from from nothing today but traditionally that's the industry involvement has perhaps been more more visible on the vocational side but certainly over the recent years we've seen much more focus within the university sector on engaging that industry sector and really getting getting their input and even on the vocational side dan the feedback that we had through the consultations is that we've got to speed up these skills are becoming you know perishable faster technology is changing at such a rapid rate that we can't sort of build programs together and then let them have a shelf life that is too long because then what ends up happening is the graduates from those programs are again not as valuable in the labor market as we all would want them to be so even in the vocational areas it's about how can we speed up the review and adaptation of those programs is what we heard loud loud and clear fantastic interesting now you mentioned rsd's rich scale descriptors so those are topic near and dear to my heart we're currently involved in two different skills initiatives through the open skills network and really learning a lot sharing collaborating so so on the subject of of rsds and skills more broadly i mean why why are those so important both basically and internationally and first of all dan can i just say thanks for waving the australian flag in those global initiatives the the open skills network and the the facts that you have been you know invited and accepted to be part of their pilot programs i think is just a credit to you but i'm so glad australia is involved because when we talk about these rich skill descriptors they can't be bound to a single state or a nation the more global they are the more valuable they'll be for the individuals and and that's why you and i are both very interested in in the open uh um sort of standards that are emerging out there but the reason why it's so important as i touched on before dan is absent of um really well-defined skill descriptors we're left with really unhelpful labels like communication so if if you just say the skill is communication oh my goodness that could be interpreted as literally thousands of different skills depending upon what job we're talking about what um area we're talking about what nation we're in you know it's just um it it's a starting point let me put it that way but it's nowhere near what we're going to need to take the friction out of the ability for the individual to acquire the skills they need have those skills validated have them express them to the labor market and have the labor market do a good job of being able to verify that that individual actually has the skills that they're looking for dan so to be able to do that you need you need a common language as i touched on uh that common language each of the skills needs to be able to be tagged against a unique identifier so that we can start using technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence and big data to be able to do a good job in individuals being able to express the skills that they've got in more nuanced ways and for employers to be able to find them and quite frankly for we as education providers to do a better job of telegraphing what skills are actually being taught in the programs that that we're offering um dan so so think of it as the glue that really knits everything together or the grease that takes all the grit out of the cogs you can look at it either way but that's why they're important by the way it works when and for me as a as a dual american australian citizen maybe i i do speak both languages but uh yeah american english and australian english but but actually going through that process has been incredibly enlightening both for us but hopefully for the for the open skills network team as well and recognizing that one australia has done as decades of experience with skills and the classification categorization of skills but also that that imperative to recognize that it's a big world and there are different standards different taxonomies that are very very much adopted in different areas so so we need to be able to support those but again build build that glue to uh to bring everything together and dan i think you'd agree with me that if people want to sort of play a little bit in this space hats off to the work that mz skills have done over the last few years as well in terms of trying to bring some open skills taxonomies to bear so so there's a number of different initiatives going on here i think what we all want at the end of the day though are these really um rich libraries of skill descriptors that we can draw on and build and modify and deposit back into for others to be able to use as well absolutely and yeah great you flag them we we connect in with with mz skills database and having having more than thirty thousand skip you know defined skills at your fingertips um job data tied to that as well so really really insightful and again for all the stakeholders involved for the learners critically um but for the institutions to think about their curriculum and very importantly from uh employer perspective to to get a sense of what what is communication communication in a in a medical sense or in a technical sense or in retail it it differs in so many so many different contexts let's let's pivot a little and talk talk a bit about flexible learning pathways i'd love to get your your perspective on those that was one of the reports longer term directions uh and with with a goal towards moving toward uh a more integrated tertiary education sector um we're fortunate here in australia to have dual sector universities such as rmit um that are already serving serving a broader need and cohort of learners what's your what's your take on the sector more more widely are they ready and and how do we make that happen yeah i think that the sector is um absolutely ready dan for us to start breaking down some of these unhelpful disconnects between the various elements of the post-secondary education system um many think of it as sort of the you know the tafe system to the left the university or higher education provider system to the right which is actually very unhelpful so this notion of being able to connect the dots in the system to be able to build much more free-flowing pathways between vocational education and higher education where we can signal to the individual what those various pathways might look like but also make sure they don't hit any dead ends we don't sell them a hollow promise that if they go and exceed and do very well in one area that they the door will be shut to them as they try to bring that prior learning to another part of the the system as you mentioned dan rmit is a dual sector university so we have a very vibrant tafe or vocational education environment as well as the higher education environment and and we've for years sort of had those connected pathways between vocational and higher education and the other thing that i think we we need to be open-minded to is that right now the system sort of walks you up a ladder where you start in vocational education and you walk up into higher education but if you turn around and you want to go back down there's no funding available to you which just really isn't a very it's not a fair system so many of our engineering graduates at rmit turned around and did the vocational refrigeration certificate because that's what got them their first job done now they later go on and use all that they've learned for their engineering degree but the ticket into the first job was actually the certificate because the labor market immediately recognized that and needed that dan so so i think that the system is ready and the the actors to a large degree are ready but there still are some structural impediments which is why we recommended the noonan review around the aqf get immediately adopted you know we've talked at length to government about the need to harmonize the funding but also these alternative pathways dan the funding that was put in place by minister tian around short courses when we did the consultation for universities it was fascinating to me how many of the universities used these short courses and micro credentials as alternative on-ramps into higher education dan so they used it for people to sort of be able to test the waters or find a way in without going through traditional atar or mature age sort of admission practices so i think it's a good example of where people are willing but we've just got it we've still got some work to do just to connect all of the pieces of the puzzle dan yeah yeah one and you've referenced alternative credentials micro credentials um and did yeah digital badges so so that certainly seems to be a key aspect of it and and the usage has certainly exploded across across the industry yeah what any any further insights there yeah so just so let's talk a little bit about digital badges that are are typically that the currency that are used once somebody has studied an alternative credential or is increasingly becoming that case the fascinating thing for me dan is how overly focused people are on the image file of a digital badge instead of actually where the magic really happens which is the structured json data that sits inside the image file the only reason why we chose image files was because they're so readily transportable around the internet and readily depositable in different areas of the internet but the real value of a digital badge is that structured data that sits inside the badge and the ability if somebody expresses that badge to the world to an employer to their linkedin profile to their facebook page people can click on it and come back to the source of where that badge was issued from dan and that's pretty powerful because if the badge has been designed well you can see who the issuing organization was you can see a description of the badge itself and you can see how it was earned and what was required to be able to earn the badge if if there's attachments to the badge you can go out and you can see other documents that actually are proof or evidence of what the individual learned to acquire the badge and and that's all really important because the currency of old was our testimony which hangs on our wall i've still got mine my grandma loves looking at them and they're still really really important but it's just a static piece of parchment right whereas as i curate my digital portfolio by leveraging things like my equals and the future of the national credential platform and my micro and alternative credentials i unlock then a much richer set of resources for would-be employers or universities from an admissions standpoint etc to be able to get a real sense of the skills that i've developed and the evidence to go along with it um dan and that that's really what gets me excited about digital badging not the image file or the sticker as pretty as that can be it's really about the ability for me to express to the world a richer portfolio of who i am and what skills i've acquired perfect now definitely definitely kindred spirits on that and and for us that that the import importance of evidence the imperative of personalized and meaningful evidence to to help bring that credential um to life and and full context is is so essential um well i want to build on build on that and actually weave together a couple other threads and comments that that you you made at the beginning you said you know that we're on this journey together and i recently took a journey to back to america for the first time in two years which was a wonderful experience a bit surreal to to be traveling internationally again but i was fortunate enough to attend the ims global digital credentials summit in atlanta and uh there are fascinating research and studies and initiatives that are that are coming out of that and a number of them flagged a challenge and you touched on it already around the challenge of getting that first job out of out of university out of out of tafe community college and and they flagged that the challenge is that so many companies are looking for two plus years of experience and that's that's something that's certainly true for us at edelex that we were recently searching for a a software developer and we put just like everyone else two plus years of experience so we want to ensure that they had that real world experience that they you know would be able to ramp up to speed quickly and and jump right in so so how do we help learners get across that that chasm target that that employability challenges that that they have um so yeah interested in your thoughts on that and boot camps higher train deploy models lots of lots of different innovative models that are that are coming out yeah look um in peters and my review that we've referenced a couple of times that came out in december we talked quite a lot around a concept in higher education that will be familiar to everybody listening around work integrated learning and we actually turned that a little bit on its head and talk about learning integrated work in the report a little bit as well we talk about cadetships we talk about you know the ability to bring the voice and experience of industry right inside the programs themselves i think if you really cut to the chase stand it's about education providers needing to do a much much better job of bringing the real world of work into their programs or structuring the programs in a way where people can actually develop the experience that they need and to have the university be able to assess that and credential that and write that into the transcript so that employers can can actually verify it and be comfortable that that individual did actually have the experience to go along with the formal learning um or the classroom or digital learning that they did then it sounds really simple in actual fact for many higher education providers it's a it's a particularly scaled ones it's an incredibly complex set of challenges to do it but it's got to be done if you really think about the most employable graduate then there will be somebody that has studied something that is you know really valuable in the labor market that has been well designed and well put together coupled with the ability whilst doing the study for that program to develop human or enduring or often gets described as soft skills and have those verified by the university and and have micro credentials issued against those and then to be able to with confidence demonstrate that they've had some experience in the real world of work that that from an industry perspective suddenly makes the graduates coming out of our tafes and our universities and our higher education providers much more valuable as they leave they leave day one and they're not feeling that way dan and it might be a harsh critique and for those of us on the education provision side we don't like hearing it but the employers that we spoke through through the consultation and the work that i do with the bean center now i increasingly hear that employers just don't feel that the graduates that they're getting from our universities particularly fitting their needs day one as they head into the workforce and it's arguable they never did but i am worried dan that i'm hearing that more and more right no look look i agreed and again just coming from that anecdotal of my own anecdotal experience i i um received one cv from someone who was a was a recent graduate but had also done a boot camp attached to that university australian university in this case and i got really excited to say there's that blend of of the the university education plus this very practical hands-on you know boot type type experience so boot camp type experience so do you see do you see these alternate models as as threats or opportunities or or both i think they're clearly opportunities and again you know we need to be careful in sort of looking below the headline of a bootcamp provider like just you know sort of caveat emptor let the buyer be aware not all boot camp providers necessarily do a good job of creating that real world experience either dan but most do so again universities are increasingly in public-private partnerships embedding boot camp type programs be they summer programs or semester break programs or actually formally part of the credit bearing programs to really bring the outside in to be able to bring in those skills and competencies to append to what they've traditionally taught which is often brilliant to create that more employable graduate it gets described sometimes down as the t-shaped graduate you know where they've got more of the the general education but then they've gone very deep in one or two areas that are the skills that are immediately recognizable in the labor market that allow them to get that first job to then unlock the power of the more horizontal skills and capabilities that they've that they've developed and um so yeah i think we're going to see more of that um and some universities will develop that from within others will partner for it as i often say to the universities that i work with all around the world the only option that really isn't an option is doing nothing and those universities that are doing nothing to respond to not the future of work but the reality of work right now dan i think are going to um history is not going to judge them very kindly i agree great great insights martin um just a couple more questions uh yeah really appreciate all your time um i'm really interested in your perspective on australia's positioning in terms of the shift to the knowledge economy and really ensuring that we're we're in that sweet spot yeah no it's i'm very proud dan so when i talk to my american colleagues and my british colleagues and in europe and and asia australia and new zealand i must say we're way out ahead with initiatives like the national skills commission the national careers institute the national credentials platform the national micro credentials marketplace the aqf enshrining micro credentials and connected systems all fantastic in terms of where we are from an enabling environment perspective dan i think the challenge for australia now which has probably always been the case is let's not reinvent the wheel so my life is spent now making sure that i find where the great innovation is going on in the world that we touched on one you know with the open skills network or we touched on another which built on the back of the macarthur foundation and the mozilla foundation the work of concentric sky and badger and what they're doing and ims right alongside them you know all of those that the smart play for australia now that we've got out ahead from an enabling environment perspective is to sweep up all of the other wonderful open innovation that's going on around the world and bring that to bear rather than spending our time and our effort and our resources reinventing the wheel dance we've got ourselves into a great position what we need to do though is to to just bury them up just to really keep at the forefront of our brains open standards interoperability global i think if we keep thinking that way we'll continue to be in a fantastic position on a relative basis fantastic martin very very inspiring and very insightful um and i think i have a feeling you've already touched on this in a number of the different points you've made but but can you tell us more about the bean center um well thank you dan aspirations and some of the initiatives you're involved in now yeah i realized when i was sort of coming to the end of my time as a as a vice chancellor you know you get very reflective and i looked back on my career and i realized there were probably three core narratives that were the red threads that ran through my working life dan one you touched on which is i've always been at the intersection of education and technology i mean my degree is in adult ed but i immediately started getting involved in how technology back to the first pc days really could be used as part of education the second dan is that my whole career i've been actively involved at all levels of government and industry in skills because i came from the technology industry there is always a skills deficit in technology it's just the nature of the fact that we just can never provide enough people with the skills we need to keep up with where the innovation is going so skills has been a a red thread but then the third area that i realized dan was being a global traveler in my life having worked all over the world for my whole career i was in this sort of really unique position to be able to unlock my network in the innovation space to be able to create what i describe as a collaboration hub to be able to bring like-minded people to bear so that others can learn from them rapidly so the center that i've started is really about just perpetuating that work down it's making sure that i'm doing all that i can at a policy level uh an industry level and sector level to promote alternative credentials in the future of work i'm doing all that i can for australia and new zealand to bring the innovation that i find happening all around the world back to us so that we can leverage it wherever we can and then of course um i i just am thrilled to be able to give advice to open-minded people as as i learn about more about that on a daily basis to be able to help um solve those challenges and what's fun dan is that's increasingly in secondary schools in tafe systems in government in universities in corporate universities which is the area that's just on fire right now so so that's where my center is positioned and i call it the performance stage of my life damn i only work on stuff that i prefer to work on which is a lovely chapter of my life nice that's that's exciting i heard you use that that expression which i never heard before uh just just last week actually and i thought what what a fantastic fantastic expression and and how fortunate we are that uh that that you are focused on that performance stage and i know you know personally and professionally i have i've gained so much from your insights along the way over the past months so um really appreciate everything that you've done for me and our company italics and and more much more importantly on that global scale and the impact that you're having on so many organizations which ultimately will translate down to individual learners which is why we're all in this industry what a nice place to wrap up too because that's certainly why i've always been in it dan and it's why as you know you are as well but of a father of young awesome young women i want them to have the same career chances and opportunities in their lives um ideally living close to home in australia rather than scattering all around the world and will only do that if we make sure australia stays at the forefront of these future of work initiatives so thanks for the opportunity today dan and thanks for all of your collegiality friendship and support it's a real pleasure working with you likewise couldn't have said it better so thanks again for your time welcome we'll wrap up here thanks again bye now [Music]

2022-04-12 04:06

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