As the Lords met this week to debate adult education and lifelong learning, two reports were published indicating the urgent need for more and better adult learning opportunities and the reversal of cuts which have left the sector an emaciated shadow of what it was just a few years ago, punching at a weight far below that necessary to turn around the UK’s ailing productivity. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a review of adult skills in England which reported that nine million adults of working age in England have low basic skills, more than a quarter of all those aged between 16 and 65. These adults, the report says, ‘struggle with basic quantitative reasoning’, such as estimating how much petrol is in a tank from looking at the gauge, or ‘have difficulty with simple written information’, such as the instructions on a bottle of medicine. There is a further worry, the OECD adds, in that young adults in England perform no better than older ones in skills tests, struggling particularly in numeracy. England has three times more low-skilled young people than high-performing countries such as Finland, Japan and the Netherlands. The OECD’s recommendations included calls to improve transitions from school to work, including through good-quality apprenticeships, to prioritise early interventions in addressing basic skills problems and, more controversially, to divert young people with poor basic skills from university to shorter professional programmes in further education to ‘help to rebalance the English education system towards one which would be both more efficient in the use of public resources and fairer to all’. The report also had some important messages regarding adult education. Research evidence should be used to develop teaching methods and guide interventions, it said, recognising that ‘successful adult learning programmes need to motivate learners’ (helping children with their homework one possible motivation suggested). Attention should also be given to the development of a high-quality teaching workforce which uses evidence-based teaching methods, including greater use of e-learning and a ‘contextualised’ approach to basic skills. And better use should be made of relevant learning environments, such as occupational and family contexts. The report, again, notes the double benefit of family literacy and numeracy programmes which not only support parents as learners but can also have a transformative influence on their children. On the same day as the OECD report was published, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) published its employer skills survey for 2015, examining the experience and practice of over 90,000 UK employers. The report highlighted a 130 per cent increase in the number of job vacancies unfilled because of skills shortages over the past four years. ‘Skills shortage vacancies’ now make up nearly a quarter of all job openings, rising from 91,000 in 2011 to 309,000 in 2015, the report said. In addition, two million workers across the UK have skills and experience which are not being utilised in their current job. Lesley Giles, deputy director of UKCES, said that the UK needed urgently to boost its productivity, which continues to lag behind that of its competitor nations. This, she said, not only demanded a supply of worker with the right skills, but an economy that created ‘good jobs that produce high-quality, bespoke goods and services’. Douglas McCormick, a commissioner at UKCES, noted that the ‘exceptionally strong job creation’ of the past few years has been accompanied by ‘stalling productivity levels. This is unsurprising since, as the OECD report authors argue, weak skills ‘reduce productivity and employability, damage citizenship and are therefore profoundly implicated in challenges of equity and social exclusion’. Both reports agree that improving the skills of the existing workforce is crucial to the UK closing the productivity gap. The scale of this challenge was highlighted in what was, nevertheless, in general, a very positive debate in the Lords. Lib Dem peer Baroness Sharp, who moved the debate, began by noting both the demographic challenges of an ageing society in which a high proportion of future job vacancies will have to be filled by members of the current workforce and the ‘chronic shortage in vital technical and professional skills which are key to raising productivity’. Evidently, current workers will need to retrain and update their skills regularly if they are to remain economically useful and productive in the face of rapid technological change. Despite this picture of clear and heightening need, the current trends in terms of adult skills and education are not good, she said. Part-time HE student numbers have fallen by 58 per cent since the introduction of full-cost 9,000 tuition fees, the Baroness observed, with the Open University and Birkbeck hit hard and part-time courses closing as they become unviable. At the same time, she continued, the FE adult skills budget had fallen by 35 per cent since 2009, with adult learners in FE colleges increasingly something of an endangered species. ‘Fifteen years ago, 50 per cent of students at further education colleges were adult students,’ she said. ‘Today it is only 15 per cent’. In the past five years alone, the number of people participating in adult education - including apprenticeships, work-based learning and community learning - had dropped by 1.3 million, she said. There had been a significant and welcome increase in the number of adults on apprenticeships, but too many were of poor quality and at a relatively low level, often going to people already in employment. Efforts to increase the number of apprentices, including the levy on large employers, were welcome, she added, but did not, by themselves, constitute the comprehensive skills strategy we need. Baroness’s Sharp’s themes were picked up with notable warmth by other speakers. ‘We cannot ignore the vast potential of those who want to continue learning, and we need to enable easy access to opportunities for adult education and skills, whatever one’s age or stage in life,’ urged Baroness Redfern (Conservative), who also stressed the importance of local relationships and new technologies. Baroness Bakewell (Labour) emphasised the need for lifelong education to ‘sustain the skills and expertise that support our jobs and our economy’ and ‘to nourish the sense of who we are, giving depth and insight to our sense of identity and enlarging our common humanity’. Baroness Greenfield (cross-bench) likewise stressed the wider value of adult education, highlighting the ‘impact of adult learning on well-being and hence its clear societal benefits’. Lord Rees (cross-bench) identified ‘a growing national need for flexible part-time education for young people seeking to qualify for gainful employment, for those in later life wishing to update their skills and for those in the third age simply wishing to follow intellectual interests’. Baroness Stedman-Scott (Conservative) echoed the sentiments of many in the chamber in saying that ‘ongoing training, skills development and education for everyone are critical to our economy. However, to have that, we need capacity and as flexible an approach as is practical, if we are to maximise the potential and ensure that we have the highly skilled and motivated workforce that employers need.’ Not everyone, however, was as sanguine about the prospects for the sector following the cash-terms protection granted the adult skills budget in the spending review. The much-vaunted ‘protection’ follows cuts on an historically unprecedented scale, including a 28 per cent reduction in the last year alone. These cuts, described by Alison Wolf as ‘catastrophic’, have narrowed the learning offer and put in doubt the viability of dozens of institutions which now face the further turmoil of the government’s partial and ill-conceived programme of area reviews. Baroness Kennedy (Labour), who cited her still remarkably relevant 1997 report, Learning Works, warned: I fear for further education because it is still being neglected - it is poorly funded and never given the esteem it deserves - and yet it is so fundamental to the wellbeing of this nation and the opportunities it provides for so many. Indeed, it could provide so much more in the future. It is a source of regret to me that we are not doing enough with their precious part of our educational world. Further education, she said, was, traditionally, the place where women returning after having children and people who became disenchanted with school or whose families said education was not for them, can get a second chance. Education, she concluded, had to be ‘at the heart of any inspired project for regeneration’, providing a springboard not only for economic regeneration but also for greater equity and justice in society, helping close ‘the growing gulf between those who have and those who have not’. By contrast, Baroness Evans, responding for the government, showed little understanding either of the scale of the challenges faced by adult education and skills or of its wider role in addressing inequality and promoting social cohesion. Acknowledging the role of adult education and skills in improving productivity, she said that the government was ‘committed to major improvements in adult education to meet the needs of the economy’. This commitment took the form of the government maintaining the adult education budget in cash terms following year-on-year cuts (what would have happened had the government not been committed to improving adult education doesn’t bear thinking about). The responsibility for funding had to be shared by government, employers and individuals, she said, though, to date, the government has shown much more enthusiasm for cutting funding from the first source than it has for the more difficult task of encouraging and incentivising funding from the other sources. There is the apprenticeship levy, of course, which Baroness Evans cited, but, as Baroness Sharp argued, this does not amount to anything like the comprehensive strategy for skills and education we require. Her understanding of lifelong learning was also depressingly narrow, focused only on how it can contribute to economic growth and employability. She concluded by noting that area reviews were making sure FE was ‘more efficient, financially resilient and locally responsive’. The reality on the ground, however, is likely to be fewer colleges and less choice for learners, with opportunity increasingly subject to a postcode lottery. The review process is a rushed and short-term response to swingeing cuts that have left many institutions in danger of financial collapse and not the sort of thoughtful, wide-ranging review of how to deliver the skills and capabilities we as a society actually need that would have real and lasting value. Baroness Sharp’s call for a comprehensive approach to adult education and skills grounded in much closer collaboration between colleges, universities and training providers, local authorities and other public sector organisations warrants serious consideration. We also need more partnership and coherence across government, as well as relief from the near constant churn in policy and policymakers, which has afflicted the FE sector, in particular, for decades. Increased resource will be essential too both in supporting breadth of provision and fair opportunity for all and in ensuring the recruitment and retention of a high-quality teaching workforce to deliver the step change we need. Colleges are already reporting difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff, with the significant added pressure of equipping young people with the English and maths qualifications they didn’t get at school making retention still more difficult. I regularly hear stories of FE teachers leaving post, with no job to go to, because of the pressures they face at work. I hear a lot of positive things too but it seems clear that, in places, teacher morale is becoming a serious issue. This needs to change if the sector is to attract and retain the high-calibre workforce the OECD says we need. Crucially too, as Baroness Sharp also argues, these arrangements must attend not only to skills but to adult education more broadly as well (a dimension Baroness Evans conspicuously failed to acknowledge). This is critically important. We need a broader, more expansive curriculum that not only develops occupational skills but the skills of adaptation, resilience, creativity, citizenship, critical thinking and lifelong learning other speakers talked about. Part of our problem is the narrowness of our thinking about skills, our tendency to think of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, ‘cognitive’ and ‘non-cognitive’ skills as somehow separate and unrelated when in fact they occupy the same complex and interconnected ecology. Ultimately, the ongoing narrowing of adult education’s mission to focus almost exclusively on skills directly do with employment has failed to achieve even the limited aim of improving the UK’s productivity. It should not surprise us that the skills that make an economy successful are also those that help make us more thoughtful, creative, happy, cooperative and passionate about learning new things. To echo cross-bench peer Lord Hennessey’s quotation of RH Tawney during the Lords debate, adult education should be concerned ‘not merely with the machinery of existence, but with the things that make it worthwhile to live’.    

[Post by Greg Gammie, Implementations Manager at GeoMetrix Data Systems Inc.] After 22 years, The Excellence Awards Program is not only the most prestigious awards program in the performance improvement industry, but also gives you the opportunity to be internationally recognized for the leading practices that have impacted your organization’s business objectives and performance. Categories include: Learning & Development Talent Management Sales Performance Workforce Management Leadership Development Talent Acquisition By entering you have the opportunity to join the ranks of prestigious organizations that received awards last year, including Accenture, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Shell, Canadian Tire, Genpact, KFC/Yum Brands, Boeing, Cisco, Dell, General Motors, Intel, MasterCard, MetLife, PwC, Verizon, and many other global and iconic organizations. Winners receive a variety of benefits including recognition in the awards ceremony, opportunities to present and share insights about your award-winning programs, and discounts at the HCM Excellence Conference. Submission for spring can be made until April 15, 2016 For more information visit: HCM Excellence Awards

What is the secret to great metrics? What is the secret to efficient learning? And a great ROI story? The answer is much closer than you think. It is a simple matter of applying science, and ensuring that the science behind L&D is just the same as in any other discipline where science is applied. It’s all about science. Original photo: aboutmodafinil.com Beware But let me start by saying what this post is not about. It is not about neuroscience, or perhaps more accurately "cognitive neuroscience". Cognitive neuroscience tries to explain how mental activities are executed in the brain. Because studying a functioning brain is so difficult and the conditions under which it can be done are so limited, cognitive neuroscience hasn’t been able to contribute much yet to the corporate learning field. This is because what can be observed so far in limited, confined contexts can be hardly generalized to more complex conditions such as learning in the enterprise. Back to basics Rather than neuroscience, let’s talk about plain science. And by that I mean the scientific method. The scientific method is an ongoing process that observes measurable evidence and formulates hypotheses. A hypothesis is simply a statement that needs to be tested. If all this seems too detached from L&D, it’s because we lack an example, so let’s go back to the workplace. Your business contact is telling you that the software developers in his team need a course in Advanced SQL Indexing because the product’s performance is slow due to sluggish SQL database code. The hypothesis here is that training in Advanced SQL Indexing will improve the ability of developers to write better SQL database code. And here’s the science The L&D professional will at this point get to work with providers and SMEs to source the best possible learning solution. But then, shockingly, it stops there. 87% of Irish organizations do not measure return on investment, according to a survey conducted by the University of Maynooth on behalf of IITD. And that’s where L&D lacks science. Every hypothesis must be tested. First, L&D must challenge the hypothesis given by the business, because it may be flawed. If both the business and L&D agree with the hypothesis, then the only way to validate it is to measure the evidence. The evidence is not successful delivery of training: the evidence is how that training is helping the team deliver a more efficient product. Time to change The recent hype about neuroscience -soon it will be something else- doesn’t help. It keeps L&D happy with some new buzzwords and generalizations we can somehow incorporate into our practice (and claim that we are applying them) and avoid taking a more scientific approach to what we deal with on a daily basis: hypotheses. It’s time to move outside of the cozy confines of the LMS, where surveys are easily conducted, and into the more challenging world of metrics: counters, long conversations with IT to implement telemetry; statistics, distribution curves, longitudinal studies, assessment, A/B testing, agile iterative approaches and, in short, running L&D like the businesses it supports. Let’s do that, and then, maybe, we can start looking at the advances of cognitive neuroscience and how they can help our practice. But let’s be scientific first. The post The science behind L&D appeared first on A Learning Blog.

Graduating class of the Lady Stanley Institute for Trained Nurses in Ottawa, OntarioI hopped on to #satchat this morning. The chat was lively and focused on assessment practices. One of the participants made this comment:A5: Technologies in the classroom are only as effective as the teacher using it. Realistically, most are not fully trainedindicating that most teachers are not fully trained to use technology in assessment. That comment stuck out to me. What does it mean to be fully trained?The term fully implies a finality, that there is such a time when we are done learning and can then go out and perform. As a teacher educator, I fight this notion all the time. Most hiring officials want fully trained teachers. We work hard to prepare capable teachers, but most evidence shows that they have much to learn and the good ones will keep on learning for many more years. Professionals are always working on improving their craft learning of innovations and reflecting on their practice.  The other fallacy is the idea that there is a set of practices and tools that sum up the profession. If you master this set you will be fully trained. The problem with this notion, of course, is that we do not have a set. Instead, we have an ever evolving set of practices (hopefully supported with evidence) and technology tools. There is no way to be fully trained because the what we train for keeps changing. In fact, the changes in technology do not just change the tool but the affordance in a way that can change the nature of the task and as a result the nature of what and how we teach. So what can we do?  1. We can provide teachers with ways of thinking and problems solving. Having productive strategies to think through Problems of Practice is a key element in our work. This is what we do in our student's Capstone Projects.2. We can provide an environment that supports professional learning for all. Teachers have different problems of practice and thus different professional learning needs. To be ready to tackle the ever-changing challenges of teaching we must help teachers define their learning needs and seek out the right supports. These can be as far ranging as informal edchats on twitter or formal as graduate degrees in education.3. Change our expectations. We should not expect fully trained. We should expect innovative teachers who keep trying new ideas. Sometimes we will fall on our faces, but with the help of a supportive group of educators we can get up dust ourselves off and learn. We should keep trying because there is an important lesson for our students in seeing us try, fail and try again until we all succeed together, students and educators. This is especially true of our attitudes toward new technologies.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of January 18-30, 2016 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). We have four trends that we discuss. The first is continued news virtual reality. The primary focus was been on the push for content for virtual reality devices. The second trend […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!Copyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 56 Trends for January 18-30 Need for VR Content, For Profit Online Education, Social Media in Higher Education, and MinecraftEdu], All Right Reserved. 2016.

The shift from a market-dominated society to a networked society is well on its way. The TIMN [Tribes + Institutions + Markets + Networks] model shows how civilization grew from a collection of tribes, added institutions, and later developed markets, as the dominant form of organization. These aligned with revolutions in communications: from oral, to written, to print. The network era began with the advent of electric communications, though it is by no means completely established. As with previous shifts of this magnitude, there is a tendency in parts of society to retreat to the old ways. "Tribalism has strong appeal in periods of rapid, tumultuous change, as what the political philosopher Karl Popper called the "the strain of civilization" exerts its pressures on society. The issue of immigration is a particularly potent one: the mythical tribe suddenly under attack by invading hordes from afar. And its impact can be seen everywhere today. A wall must be built against Mexico. The United Kingdom must restore control of its borders. Germany must slam shut its doors. Society must close, and quickly -the barbarians are coming." - The Angy Quarter We are missing appealing alternative models to our existing tribes, institutions, and markets. The critical work in all disciplines - economics, politics, education, business - is to change the worldview. The easy alternative is to revert to the old ways. We have gone through these shifts before and they can be painful, such as in England during the sixteenth century, as tenants were kicked off the land they worked. ‘Now the masses were at the mercy of a job market to obtain the means to reproduce themselves socially. Now the process of production was systematically subordinated to market imperatives: "competition, accumulation, and profit-maximization, and hence a constant systemic need to develop the productive forces."’ - Jesse Myerson: Markets in the Next System Myerson goes on to propose two alternatives to current market capitalism: cooperatives to de-market capital, and enabling labour to exit the market via the welfare state. Both of these strategies provide ways for people to avoid the effects of careening markets. As our markets become dominated by intangible goods and services, we will see ever increasing volatility. We have a choice. We can accept the inevitability of a society dominated by markets or we can create alternatives that understand networks. The electric network era can extend our humanity while obsolescing many of our current institutions and markets. We need to create alternatives, based on a new understanding of global kinship, so that society does not reverse back to tribalism. network society tetrad

The gomo team is excited to announce that its parent company Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG) is acquiring Rustici Software. Rustici is a highly respected innovator of SCORM and the co-creator of the xAPI standard (also known as Tin Can API or Experience API) and has been assisting clients in using e-learning standards to connect systems since 2002. LTG’s acquisition of Rustici Software brings additional expertise and insight to the gomo learning suite, which outputs both SCORM and xAPI learning content. It also enables the gomo team to collaborate with Rustici’s experts to transform and advance the capability of the award-winning gomo learning suite. The acquisition expands LTG’s North American presence and technical expertise, allowing the Group to deliver increasingly innovative systems and products to clients. Gavin Beddow, Director of Product Development at gomo commented: "We are really looking forward to working with the team at Rustici to explore the synergies and opportunities between our products.  Rustici have built their business through delivering best-in-class products which is a perfect fit within gomo’s vision." Alongside gomo, Rustici joins Governance, Risk and Compliance experts Eukleia, transformational learning experts LEO and Games with Purpose pioneers Preloaded as part of the LTG portfolio. Rustici will be joining gomo on the LTG stand at B21 of Learning Technologies 2016, which takes place on February 3-4th at London Olympia. Future announcements on how Rustici and gomo will collaborate to enhance the gomo learning suite will be made via the gomo learning website.   The post xAPI innovators Rustici Software join gomo as part of LTG appeared first on gomo Learning.

I was part of a PD on asking deeper questioning this week. They did a great job modeling what they were teaching us. They would introduce a concept and have us practice with a "neighbor" or would ask a question and have us discuss at our tables. They kept these activities short, only giving us a minute or two to discuss which kept us on task and did not give time for side conversations. This was not a new process to me, but they did one extra step that I think was significant. While we were talking they went around to different groups and asked someone to share out their thinking in the large group conversation that followed. So after these small conversations when we discussed as a whole group the leaders did not have to ask who wants to share because these people were already chosen. I had never thought of wait time like this before. To me, when I think of wait time I usually think of pausing and not calling on the first student who raises their hand, but letting other students have a chance to process first. Their process, in my opinion, is a much better way to do wait time. Students have a warning that they will be sharing, but have time to mentally prepare what they will say and get feedback from their group. This is an opportunity for shy students to think through things and yet are given a voice without being put on the spot. Wait time doesn’t have to mean a student thinking silently. Wait time also means the opportunity to discuss your thoughts with a partner before taking the risk of sharing with the whole group. What techniques do you use to give your students wait time?

Today, I want to share a piece of news that’s really exciting for us. As of this morning, Rustici Software has been acquired by Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG), a publicly listed learning technologies agency made up of specialist digital learning businesses. As a part of LTG, we’ll have the opportunity to work with the other Group companies in creating the next generation of technically-focused learning solutions. LTG has a great deal of learning expertise and serves organizations worldwide. LTG’s portfolio includes LEO, a pioneering learning technologies firm, the multi-device authoring tool gomo learning, games with purpose company Preloaded, and Eukleia, an e-learning provider to the financial services sector. As part of LTG, we’ll continue offering exactly the same services we do today to an ever larger group — not only will we provide our world-class e-learning standards support to LTG companies and their customers but as part of the Group, we’ll also have the platform to reach new global audiences. For our Rustici Software customers, the story is simple. The very same people will be providing to you the very same services in the same way. Our ability to serve our customers in the way we always have is something we feel really strongly about. We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with the fine folks at LTG, and to continue to serve the e-learning industry in an even bigger way than before. We’re also excited because we’re spinning off Watershed at the very same time. Watershed will continue to push forward with their exploration of learning analytics and LRSs, and has also received a significant investment from LTG as part of Watershed’s Series A funding round. Mike and I, as CEO of Watershed and CEO of Rustici Software respectively, are both excited about where the two companies are headed. If you have any questions or need more specific information regarding the acquisition, please let us know. Any inquiries or requests for additional documentation should be sent to info@scorm.com. Tim   The post Big news from Rustici Software appeared first on SCORM - .

3-4 February Olympia, London We are exhibiting! Come visit us at stand O2 Wranx at Learning Technologies 2016 Learning Technologies is the perfect opportunity to showcase how we are helping global brands to implement great learning strategies. With users across 466 cities, it is has been a fantastic 12 months for Wranx! Our team will be on hand over the two days to provide live demonstrations of our learning technology and how the spaced repetition method works. We will also have an interactive giant itab so you will have the opportunity to try out Wranx for yourself! You’re welcome to pop by Stand O2 and say hello at any time, but if you have any questions for our team, you might want to book a meeting in advance, which you can do by emailing info@wranx.com We look forward to seeing you there! Seminar : Enterprise Scale Gamification   Phillip Price - Virtual Academy Operations for PSA Peugeot Citroen 10.15am -10.45am 4th February Theatre 8 Olympia London We are also excited to announce that Phillip Price will be hosting a seminar at the event on behalf of Wranx on enterprise scale gamification! The seminar will include real examples of gamification in action and demonstrate how it can engage and incentivise employees and students to learn more. Phillip Price Phillip is a proactive and committed Learning Development Manager, with over 20 years of experience implementing and overseeing professional development operations according to corporate mandate. He has a proven background in training management, implementing instructional programmes and assessing syllabus impact at organisational level. Share this post with your own audience