Spotlight Talk
The Looming Reskilling Challenge: Endless Opportunity, Even More Complexity
Date Thursday, Nov 24 Time – RoomPavillon
Here's the good news: With automation and AI expected to replace millions of jobs and reshape millions more, the demand for training is expected to grow. But here's the challenge: six-month coding courses and similar quickie, broadly focused approaches are not likely to provide the preparation workers need.
This Spotlight Talk explores why and suggests strategies that training professionals can adopt to help workers and their employers avoid unnecessary career and skills anxiety.
The digital transformation is changing both our assumptions about skills and our systems for upskilling and reskilling workers. This talk addresses that, while:
- Explaining that the digital transformation provides opportunities to up- and re-skill workers but training as usual won’t work.
- Defining key terms: digital transformation, upskilling, reskilling, education, and training.
- Exploring why traditional employer-provided training is not a silver bullet for addressing the skills challenges brought by the digital transformation (and exacerbated by the pandemic).
- Noting that skills are the new currency of the workplace: (a) why skills plus experience matter most to employers and (b) how new technologies across HR and L&D systems to identify skills within organizations, not just from tracking learning but also from tracking work.
- Describing how the system for acquiring skills has changed, including changes in employer-provided training as well as the emergence of an eco-system of providers and opportunities to fill the voide.
- Identifying government policies in many countries that support workers in ongoing re-skilling and upskilling efforts.
- Answering your questions about the situation
Overview
- Recognise the bifurcated nature of emerging employment, with the largest opportunities at either the lower-skilled or highly skilled ranges of the spectrum.
- Characterise skills gaps between current and emerging jobs.
- Recognise the impact of working conditions in emerging areas of employment.
- Identify policies and programs that could address these challenges.
Saul Carliner
Professor, Concordia University, Canada
Saul Carliner is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, where his research focuses on the design of instructional and informational materials for the workplace, the management of groups that produce them, and related issues of policy.
Also an industry consultant, Carliner has provided strategic advice, and conducted workshops and evaluations for organisations like Alltel Wireless, Boston Scientific, PwC, ST Microelectronics, and several government agencies. He is the author of the best-selling Training Design Basics, award-winning Informal Learning Basics, and co-author of Career Anxiety: Guidance Through Tough Times, The e-Learning Handbook, and An Overview of Training and Development.
He is past President of the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education, a Fellow of the Institute for Performance and Learning, past editor of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and a Fellow and past international president of the Society for Technical Communication.
Links
Moderator
Ildiko Mazar
Sector Consulting Manager, NTT Data, Spain
Ildiko has over 25 years of professional experience in the field of open education and e-learning, and she is particularly passionate about informed and transparent knowledge, skill and competence recognition. In the past 5 years Ildiko has been focusing mostly on supporting the development and uptake of innovative solutions in the fields of competence development and digital (micro-)credentialing, more specifically the European Learning Model and European Digital Credentials for Learning. She is member of the CTDL Advisory Board, and one of the 3 Co-Chairs of the W3C Credentials Community Group's VC-EDU task force.