Aligning Education & Employment: Skills, Competencies, and Assessment Strategies

Jenny Gordon:

So without any further ado, let’s begin our conversation. I’m very excited to do that. And I want to start by asking all of you today at the current state of skills and competencies. I mean for all of you, can you each tell me what you see as two of the top challenges that are currently contributing to the skills gap that exist around the world? Could I start with you, Tim?

Timothy Harding:

Sure, and thanks. It’s nice to be here with you all and in this conversation. I’m really excited about it today. From my perspective, I think two of the major challenges have to do with just the accelerated pace of change in the workplace and how it’s outpacing what traditional educational institutions are able to do, and education’s lacking behind and adapting curriculum and experiential learning and skills development really for the emerging workplace. If you think about the fields of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, data science, all of those require highly specialized skills and educational institutions are going to have to ramp up not only those specialized skills, but really the core skills for success, what some call the soft skills. I choose not to use that language. I think it diminishes their importance and I think they’re highly important. So I think that’s one of the challenges. And then the other thing is just the cost of education is prohibitive for some and a barrier, and it can be a deterrence for people who want to career, who want to elevate their skillset, or even those who are just emerging in a traditional institution. It can be a real barrier. Those are the two big challenges that I see.

Jenny Gordon:

Thank you. Sandra, would you agree with those?

Sandra Metzger:

Yes, definitely. I had the pace of change or the speed of change as one of those two things for sure. The other thing though that I was like, oh, how do you pick just two things? But really I think that there’s a challenge with how we’re defining skills and because we don’t necessarily have common definitions or classifications of those skills, and it’s like we can’t wrap our work around them and there’s so many competing needs. And so without that, it limits how you prioritize. So I think just the work that it takes to define and classify for, use a data term and then prioritize. And of course then that’s even harder with the pace of change.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, I completely agree. I’ll come back to your point on the definition of skills because working within this organization just minimal, and as I was talking to you about just before around the teacher retention crisis, the way that this audience here today are talking about skills is very different to the way that a different either trade or vocation or even higher education conferences is classifying or even just talking about skills. And I do think we all were talking about skills but not necessarily talking to each other. So it’s definitely a valid point. Kelvin, what about you?

Kelvin Bentley:

No, I mean I think what is already been shared are really, I think the top challenges we have, I would say too is that we still, I think between education and higher ed, I mean I think there’s a tower of Babel going on, right? We in higher ed for example, we speak about learning objectives and then HR directors are maybe talking about job responsibilities, maybe talking about skills competencies. And so we need to kind of bridge that gap similar to I think what Sandra just brought up, which is definitions. I think in higher ed to Tim’s point, we do higher ed tends to move very slowly, but I think there are courses where faculty are probably teaching certain types of skills that employers want, whether they be the durable skills, maybe some technical skills as well. And so I think within higher ed, we need to get beyond just defining courses by learning objectives and really peeling apart our courses across programs to show that there are certain competencies and skills that are already being introduced, reinforced to the learner that are maybe not, it is not clear that they are.

So we need to almost have a better transparency layer over our courses so that students can hopefully walk away at the end not remembering anything about learning objectives, but learning what were the skills, what were the competencies that they learned, hopefully that they can then use in the world of work when they apply for jobs, because then hopefully they’ll be able to tell a better story about what they know and what they can do, but they won’t get there until we help them tell that story based on the courses and academic programs they’re enrolled in.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. And that leads me on to my next question for you, Kelvin, as well as around that you’ve worked extensively on micro-credentialing initiatives and technical skills programs. And what have you seen as the most significant challenges in aligning education with the workplace skills? Is it what we’re talking about here around those definitions and the differences between the outcomes and the skills you gain from them or more of the challenges around the technical and trade fields and how those niche programs address skills differently?

Kelvin Bentley:

Yeah, I mean, I think your question is a really good one. I would say probably all the above. And I think Tim, given his background, can definitely highlight more about some of those challenges I would say within the University of Texas system. I mean, what we’re trying to do is bridge that gap by finding ways to integrate access to technical skills so that there’s not this veil between traditional higher ed majors and CTE courses and pathways. So we’re trying to find a way to help, let’s say a psych major who wants to acquire cybersecurity skills or data analytics skills or UI UX skills by completing industry credentials. And for us, those credentials are available on the Coursera platform. And so our hope is that we can basically transcend this traditional notion of majors and minors to really put the learner more at the center of his, her or their learning so that yes, they could pick a major or minor, but then they can also add into IT access to learning experiences like a MICROCREDENTIAL or a micro internship such that that will hopefully help them be what we like to call more broadly educated, specifically skilled.

But we need to provide that flexibility so that learners realize that they have the power to kind of shape their learning in ways that will make them stand out in the world of work without subscribing to a CTE program or a traditional academic program, if that makes sense.

Jenny Gordon:

It’s absolutely true, and I think that that leads me into my question with Tim around how we address preparedness for the workforce within our students, and not just relating it to credentials, but how we see higher education institutions currently addressing or failing to address that preparedness for the workforce of our students.

Timothy Harding:

Yeah, I think Kelvin just got to the heart of the matter, and it’s about a student, whether traditional age or non-traditional age, really taking charge of their career preparedness and thinking about the skills that are required and needed for that regardless of major. And we see employers, two thirds latest, national Association of Colleges, an employers study on how employers are using skills-based hiring now found that two thirds of them are using skills-based hiring. So the old traditional mindset of what is your educational pedigree, what was your GPA is becoming less important. The good news is this, there is a movement now, at least in the United States, and I think it’s not restricted to our boundaries here, of thinking about the whole collegiate experience as an opportunity for developing competencies that will definitely bring a student career readiness and preparation, but also contributes to their academic success, and it also contributes to their life preparedness.

I mean, they’re learning these transferable skills that do all of those things. So in colleges now, there is a movement where we have identified what we call the NASSA eight competencies, which are core competencies. They are not intended to be exclusive. They are the evergreen competencies that a student needs regardless of career field they’re going into or industry. We know that they are critical for their success, and we start with that core and then we can build on the specialized knowledge and competencies that students need. But the idea is that it’s an institutional cultural change where the entire experience that a student has as a college student contributes to that development. And so when you’re thinking about a class, and Kelvin was talking about this earlier on, I think it’s important the content that they learn in a class, but it’s also important to think about how you are learning that content, how you are accomplishing the work in that class, because those are the transferable skills that can contribute to your career readiness and your preparation.

And the problem is, and this is the role of educators, we can’t rely on students, especially traditional age college students who 17, 18, 19 whose brains aren’t completely developed. We can’t rely on them to make that connection of how they’re learning something, the meaning of learning, which is so critical here. So whether it’s a curricular experience class that they have or it’s a co-curricular experience, even a student activity being in student government, being a leader on campus offers an opportunity for skills development. But we have to create means for them to connect that meaning to learning and then map that learning to the competencies. And the good news is there are a lot of institutions that are doing this now, and it continues to be elevated. The challenge is how do you scale it so that you impact every student and make certain that we’re achieving that skills development that we want as they graduate? So it is really about moving away from checking a box to make certain that you are going to get that piece of paper, that degree when you walk across the stage, and you actually have achieved transformational learning and skills development in a very intentional way.

Jenny Gordon:

Well, I agree. You mentioned the word scale. There a word that I think we talk, I probably say that word about a thousand times a day. And I do think that technology and particularly AI can lend itself very well when we’re talking about scale. And Sandra, with your experience spanning diverse educational settings and a focus on AI in education, how do you see AI specifically influencing the skills gap positively or negatively? And are there particular areas where it has accelerated or widened the gap?

Sandra Metzger:

Yeah, though I’m going to answer that, but really quickly, I’d just like to say something to follow up on what Kelvin and Tim both referenced skills matter so much, but I really appreciate that both of you, Kelvin and Tim aren’t saying this replaces what we have been trying to do in higher ed. I just sent my youngest off to college, so I have two that have successfully gotten through and the last one’s there, and I really value that, but not so much because of the content, the static content that’s there. I think more than ever, our range of knowledge is so important that we have the things in literature and history, the things that we’re pushed to do in higher ed, even in two year colleges, you have a better understanding of the world. And because of that, then we have the ability to make connections and do, and I don’t mean personal connections, I mean connections between concepts and ideas and we get out of our little channel. So I really think sometimes when people talk about skills, they think it’s anti higher ed. And so just that’s not what we’re talking about today.

Jenny Gordon:

But I do think it’s a good point because I think there’s a tendency to sort of hang a blame somewhere. But I think that there’s just this convergence of change, technical changes, jobs that we don’t know what they’ll be yet or who we’re training for them, policy changes as we were discussing earlier. So I think it’s a good thing to call out for sure.

Sandra Metzger:

Yeah. Well, as I mentioned back to your question, so you were talking about the skills gap, and so I just thinking about how are we defining that? I’m not going to come up with a definition necessarily, but when we talk about a skills gap, I was like, all right, really there’s kind of four areas. There’s the skills that employers need and employees don’t have them. And so that there’s a gap there. And then there’s the skills that students are learning in school, whether that’s K 12 or higher ed or technical colleges or training programs. They need skills and they don’t have the skills they need to be successful in those educational settings. And then there’s what they don’t have in the workplace. And I say that this is not the same as the first one. You get out of school, you don’t have the skills that you need for the workplace, but there are people who have been in the workplace for 30 years and they don’t have the skills that they need in the workplace, and that’s not their school’s fault.

So those are three areas. But then, and I felt this as a classroom teacher a long time ago, but students often don’t have the skills they need to engage in the learning right now. And what’s frustrating is you’re not really given time to teach them the skills that they need to learn the things that you’re supposed to have done today. So there’s this felt on a daily basis. So I think again, that skills gap, we really can start saying, which gap are you talking about? Then we can start looking at, well, what problems lead to that gap? There is no one solution, there is no one specific problem, there is no one specific gap. So really being able to start talking about, well, which gaps are we talking about in a specific conversation?

So then well, what can we do? And it’s so overwhelming, and I look at where are the skills that overlap all of those gaps, what are those skills? And it’s not really too hard to figure out, and I’ll just say a list, it’s not highly researched or anything, but your basic reading proficiency, that’s across the board there. That’s a gap. Computational thinking, writing skills, scientific thinking. Then you have the digital skills, just online safety. Everyone has a device and no one knows how to use a Word document, not no one, but that’s a significant basic computer technology skill that is really lacking. And then what some people reference is soft skills or power skills or durable skills. You have the time management organization and collaboration and communication, but you can make a list that’s like 10 things really of what everyone needs no matter what, which I think would help us prioritize because it is really overwhelming.

So the second part of that is, okay, so what about ai? AI is absolutely making the gaps feel wider. By the way, and I am going to say this upfront, I have never been more hopeful about what we can do in education than I am now with ai. But I also think AI is helping us shine a really bright light on things that are a problem or that we haven’t been able to solve yet. So where I think ai, and I’ll close out and my response with this, but where I think AI is making the gap feel wider is that now it’s not just the employees, I’m sorry, not just the employees. Yes, it’s the employers who don’t have the skills they need. It’s not just the students, it’s the teachers who don’t have the skills they need, and those of us who provide services or are making products we need to upskill in order to understand how to solve. So that’s where I think AI is really widening the gap. If we can get over that hurdle, then I think we close it so much faster.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. I think I’ve seen some amazing today an example of how AI was being used to support teachers to basically help them scale so that they could focus on the development of other skills and competencies either of themselves or of their learners. And I just think that is the crux of what we’re trying to get to. We’re trying do so much like you say, it can feel overwhelming, but when you see those tangible differences that something can make, then all of a sudden it’s a good news story. And then how do we scale that rhetoric?

Sandra Metzger:

I 100% agree, and I think that’s a really great place to start. But I work with teachers who will say like, nah, I don’t want to get into it with my students. I just want to make my life easier. And I’m like, okay. But they have to have AI skills and how many of them are going to need to learn how to use the AI teacher tools that you’re using? You have to learn how to use AI, and you have to build your general AI literacy so that you can help them build their general AI literacy. If you just learn to use teacher tools, great, you’ll help the ones that want to be a teacher someday, but is there’s always an easier path to take. We always have an easier path choice, and it’s okay to start down that road, but I think we have to challenge ourselves to go beyond just what makes our jobs easier and really upskill to what we need to know in order to teach it to those we we’re responsible for.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, well said. When we think about strategies for skills-based learning, I’d like to think about some sort of real examples that you’re willing to share with us. And Tim, I guess there’s three parts of this question. Firstly, how can educators embed career ready competencies into existing curriculum in ways that go beyond traditional academic instruction? So it’s kind of an extension to what we were talking about earlier, and then if you have any examples of that that you can share, and also how your students have responded to those strategies as well.

Timothy Harding:

Sure. And our whole discussion around scalability is so important and related to this question you’re asking, I think it’s important to recognize that our students have multiple touch points when they come to an institution of higher education, and there’s not any one person that’s going to touch every single person. So in order to this, it has to be done university wide and broadly across the curriculum and the co-curriculum as well. And it’s important I think, to help people have some frame of reference about what we’re talking about, not just identify the competencies as important as that is, and I don’t diminish that in any way, shape or form, but helping people understand what we’re trying to achieve with this. I think a lot of people, when we began to think about competency development and skills based to education and learning, it was about how did we just make them aware of these competencies?

We have to go beyond that point, and in my opinion, we need to look at, yes, raise awareness about the competencies and what you’re developing, the skills that you’re developing and transferability of those, but also to think about how do you strategically develop them, not just that it’s going to happen through osmosis of going through your classes and your college experience, but you bring intentionality to that learning in a strategic way and then thinking about how you help students to articulate those competencies. So I think you have to build a framework around it so that people can begin to think in those terms when it comes to the work that they’re doing as far as the curriculum is concerned, one of the things that I was most concerned about as we began to launch our competency development initiative at the University of Tampa was that our faculty were already overwhelmed with the work that they already had.

They weren’t looking for anything more to do. And what helps is having conversations with faculty, and I’m a liberal arts graduate, so I embraced the whole concept of traditional liberal arts education and that it’s not based on careerism and vocational preparation and so forth, but I do recognize and they recognize that even while teaching content that is liberal arts based, the skills that students are using are what’s important. And so doing simple things like creating icons that help identify the competencies that students are developing through particular assignments that they’re doing and asking faculty, could you add an additional, and this is the addition part, but it’s a very small addition. Could you add some reflection around not just what you’re doing but how you did it, the thoughts around teamwork, the thoughts around leadership, if you’re in a group, a group discussion, critical thinking abilities that you use and have the students do thinking around those.

So we have a finance faculty member, for example, who teaching financial principles very cut and dried, but she’s added in elements of competency development, reflection into her coursework through the assignments that they’re doing. They do a class presentation. She has them reflect on communication skills and critical thinking and preparation for that. They’re doing time management around, you only have so much time that you can present. So she begins to relate the skills development with the students’ assignments that they’re doing in the class. We had a biology faculty member who, he was in a lab at his students. He had put them in groups and they were supposed to be problem solving together in their groups, but they kept coming up to him and asking him clarifying questions and trying to get him to answer questions that they were having that he really wanted them to wrestle with in their group.

He stopped his lab, he put up our competencies on a screen, and he talked to the students for a moment about, look, the assignment is about the lab assignment. Yes, but you are supposed to be using these competencies and skills to help solve the problem that you’ve been given to accomplish during this lab assignment. Little things like that are tremendous. The impact on students, I hear students anecdotally, but also through a lot of the reflections that we built in around assessments that we do, saying, I get it. I understand that yes, the content is important, but I am learning the ability to analyze this in a different way that I can take that and put it in different places. And we have to be very intentional too about building it into things like if you have awards programs where you recognize people, build in reflections that students need to do if they’re nominated for an award where you’re having them reflect on the competencies that you’ve identified as core or certain ones that are related to that award so that they’re actually having to think about context, their development and how they articulate that,

Jenny Gordon:

That’s making learners aware of what it takes to achieve something I think is very undervalued. I think one of my kids does a lot with horses and the way that she’s assessed in some of the things she does, we get the breakdown of how she goes from fair to good to very good or whatever the breakdown is, and we go through that. Which bits do you have to demonstrate to move from there to there? And if she can’t see that or there’s been no explanation of that, then it’s unfair to expect our learners to just know what that progression is Absolutely back. And making that available I think is key. And that’s a strategy that’s quite simple, but something that we sort of overlook.

Timothy Harding:

That’s right.

Jenny Gordon:

Vin, what about you? Can you share any strategies or initiatives from your work that higher ed leaders can adopt to help students build and demonstrate work ready skills?

Kelvin Bentley:

Yeah, I mean, I think again, Tim provided a great overview of things that we can do. I liked Tim what you said too about more intentional planning, restructuring some of our approaches to offering our courses. I mean, what I would say again is that we need to find a way maybe by leveraging things like learner employment records, which are seen as more of a 21st century version of a transcript, where you can really provide more detailed information about a learning experience. So instead of course, listing a bunch of courses with grades, can we actually provide a list of all the different durable and technical skills people are learning in those courses? So making that information much more transparent. And then also by using an LER and maybe a digital credential wallet, you then allow a student to more likely be in a position to tell their skill acquisition and usage story right across time.

So if we can do more of that work, I think that will also help. And then just providing the learner with opportunities to acquire the skills that are needed in the workforce. So in our case, within the University of Texas, we’re trying to do that through the completion of industry credentials, integrating them not just in the courses, but then also providing co-curricular access to learners as well, because we recognize not every faculty member is going to want to take, let’s say a Google cert and data analytics and then add it as an optional or a required component of a course. So we still need a co-curricular access. And then also maybe working with students much more intentionally around maybe leveraging these technical skills and durable skills that they’re requiring in not just a traditional internship, but more micro internships. So what are kind of shorter engagements that hopefully can still come with some type of payment at the end? Because again, Strada has done research showing that we need to do a much better job of providing internship experiences with payment attached, but can we provide more internships, smaller types of experiential learning that really help students demonstrate these skills that they’re acquiring?

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, absolutely. I think very much back to my, I had a placement year when I was at universities at a four year degree, and one of those years was in industry. And I don’t think I realize until now how valuable that was as part of my whole engagement process. And I’m forever thankful for it really to get that hands-on experience paid as well, which I was very lucky to get Sandra to you. What about, are there any other innovative approaches, we’ve heard loads already, but any others relating to integrating real world competencies into academic programs are then any of the key considerations that you think educators should keep in mind when implementing AI driven solutions for skill-based learning as well?

Sandra Metzger:

Well, part two of that question indicates you knew I was going to answer with AI stuff or part one, which is great. But yes. So these are things that I’ve been trying to implement in my own teaching practice and then as in my different roles throughout as an instructional designer and instructional coach and different things. And so really the self-directed learning, that’s huge that I think it’s the most important thing that we need to teach ourselves and our students because then they have the power to learn anything. So I completely agree with what Calvin and Tim both have said about that. And so putting them into real world scenarios is really how we build some real world competencies. So whether it’s internships, but you can do that with AI and scale it. So it is a hard lift to get everyone signed up for an internship, but you can create AI chatbots that walk them through scenarios.

We’ve done things with creating a CEO, creating an audience, working with a class. These things all used to take a ton of time. You had to invest so much time and money into gamification or things like that. And now with just a few prompts and a little bit of testing, you create these really engaging, meaningful experiences for students. I think too, with helping them learn to be self-directed, this is something that can really empower students. So just like you all were saying before, learn to learn about learning. What am I learning? How is this working?

How am I applying critical thinking in this particular scenario when they begin to understand that they can then create those scenarios for themselves and test themselves. So for me, I’ve been trying to do these things, but with AI literacy as well. So having students build chatbots to solve real world problems. There’s a local school is a private school that just said, Hey, take all the juniors and seniors and do whatever you want. It’s quite lovely, but they’re going to work with the local government to try to solve real world problems. So there are tons of opportunities, but I really think if we’re talking about real world competencies, we need real world experiences, and I think that AI can really help us scale that.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. I’m really conscious of time. I told you we’d go fast. Oh

Sandra Metzger:

Yeah, it has.

Jenny Gordon:

We do have a couple of questions, but I do want to ask another question around real practical approaches to skill assessment. So how we consider the most effective methods that you’ve seen working maybe within your own institutions and organizations, maybe outside when it comes to evaluating and assessing skill readiness in students. And that might or might not include technology including ai, but are there anything you can think around, any examples you can think about when it comes to that assessment of skills in students? Kelvin?

Kelvin Bentley:

Yeah, that’s a good question. I think anytime in which we could leverage existing assessments. For example, there are certain certifications from organizations like PMI. So if you’re wanting to be a program manager, you can go on to actually, maybe you started with a Google cert to get a career certification in program management or project management. But actually going on to get that certification from the PMI group could also be helpful. I’ve been also hearing certain institutions are exploring the use of VR based assessments, simulations. There are companies that, or organizations that offer jobs sims to the learner. And so that could also be something for schools to try out in order to help the learner especially assess their strengths and areas of growth around certain skills.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, Tim?

Timothy Harding:

Yeah, I think you have to think about the most challenging thing is assessing competencies. Truly, how do we consistently assess them? Most of the time, I think what we’re talking about is observe behaviors. That’s the best way to measure, but you have to have a common standard that you apply to that certainly self-reflection is an important part of assessing one’s own competencies. As we understand the experiences and apply it to a particular experience, NACE has created a set of rubrics that have been rigorously field tested that really focus on the eight that they have, but they could be replicated for other types of competencies, and they are intended to be used by someone observing student in a particular setting or activity or some assignment that they have done. And for a student to self-assess, and the rubrics have a lot of adaptability and flexibility to be placed in different kinds of modes for people to use.

There are some service providers that are embedding these into their products so that people can use those through those products. They can be uploaded into an LMS at any institution. You can take it uploaded in and use it across your curriculum. So there is an example of where there is a common language and understanding of different levels of competence and measurement to assess where a student is growing in their various competencies. So by the way, those tools are available at the NACE website, NACE web.org. I need to do a disclaimer here. I’m the chair of the board of nace. I do not get any kind of kickback for this, but I do firmly believe in the tools that have been created by nace and they are reliable and valid according to research statistics and rigor.

Jenny Gordon:

Tim, while I’m asking Sandra that same question, would you put that URL into the chat there? Thank you.

Timothy Harding:

It would be my pleasure.

Jenny Gordon:

Thank you.

Sandra Metzger:

Yeah. So Jenny, I am going to sound really techie, but really I was a Spanish teacher. I did not anticipate getting into software and understanding all the things that I’ve been trying to learn about ai. But listen, the things that we’re talking about, again without AI are really challenging to scale. And so again, this is why I am really hopeful. All the things that we currently have are what would be called structured data, which is phenomenal. We have rubrics, we have lists, we have all of these things. And what the power of these models now is that it can handle a ton of unstructured data. You can train it on all that structured data, all the things that we’re sure about, and it can observe your workplace via video or your engagement with somebody and analyze it quickly, give you feedback, help you walk through those competencies, coach you on things, help you document that.

And that’s where I think we are at the edge of something really cool because the barriers before we can just wipe out, not to mention all the data afterward, the insights that we can get about ourselves and what we need instantly, instantly. And you don’t have to be a data analyst, you just have to know how to ask really good questions and have a discussion. So that’s where I think we really, those of us who have been working in competencies and skills and all of that, bring our data together and get these models to do the hard and lift for us.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. And again, another anecdote from this conference, because it’s current and it’s live and meeting people saying, I’ve got an AI assistant giving feedback to my learners before I do. So I’m not replacing me, I’m not reducing my responsibility, but I’m giving my learners extra rounds of feedback, giving them extra confidence, giving them more time to develop their skill and competency, which is allowing me to be more critical and better. And I just think that is exactly where we want to be aiming for at scale for sure. We’re racing towards 10 to the hour. We’ve got a couple of questions. We haven’t finished all of the areas that we wanted to cover. I think we should have another conversation. This has just been fascinating, and thank you again for joining us. A couple of quick questions that have come out, and I would like to say we’ve shared a lot of references to different sites and different kind of resources and things like that. And we will do our best to pull all of that out, all the transcript from this call, and we’ll ask our colleagues just to confirm anything and share those out with anybody that would like them as well. There was an acronym, I think it was Tim used an acronym for the core competency area sort of earlier at the beginning. Can you remind us what that was, Tim? It might’ve been Kelvin.

Timothy Harding:

Were you referring to the NACE competencies

Jenny Gordon:

A little bit earlier? I think? Was it CCA or something like that around core competency? Something? I don’t know. We can look at the transcript and get that back out. So we will answer that question. We had another great question from a colleague in Kenya who said that we have skills gaps among young people even after graduating from university is a pressing concern in Kenya. Many graduates field feel unskilled or underprepared for the job market despite having academic qualifications. So this is speaking to exactly what we’ve talked about today. Addressing this gap requires a multifaceted approach involving education systems, employers and governments, which I’d agree. The question is are there programs we can introduce to bridge this gap? And I think that these are programs that we’re considering that go on top of those academic qualifications, all of the different transferable durable skills we’ve talked about. The question is are there programs that we can introduce to bridge this gap? Are there any specifics? I mean, other than we’ve already mentioned that that could be considered in this case. Anybody who might have an answer to that, feel free to answer.

Kelvin Bentley:

Yeah, I mean, when we provided no cost access to the professional certificates on the Coursera platform, this is under the heading Career Academy. So think of this as like 40 to 50 professional certs from providers like Google, meta, IBM and others. But when we were thinking about providing this no class access, we thought about our current undergraduate students and graduate students, but then also our alumni as well. And so wouldn’t that be a great way for any college or university to give back to those alumni as a benefit where they are allowed to maybe complete these industry credentials as at least one part of their ongoing long life learning? There’s a consultant who used to work for Southern New Hampshire, the university Michelle Weiss, and she has a book about the long, long life learning. And so how can we actually set up our alums to really engage in that ongoing pursuit of knowledge and technical skills moving forward? And I think that’s one way to go about doing that. Other institutions, of course, are working with vendor partners to provide access to experiential learning opportunities like bootcamps and those types of things, but I think leveraging some of the Coursera content from different providers might be an interesting step forward.

Jenny Gordon:

Absolutely. I think there was a comment here from a colleague in the UK who said that we run an employability diploma in the uk. The students work on several projects each year with real employers. We assess using an evidence grid that the student completes, which are marked students end up with scores leading to bronze, silver, or gold awards. But it has to be proven in a Viva vice meeting with employers. And so that’s another example of a joining up the education employers and the workforce and looking at on the job training and developing as well. So it sounds like whether we’re in Kenya or London or anywhere in the US, that we’re all up against it when we’re trying to work out the best ways and approaches to ensure that the future learners are prepared as they can be for jobs that we don’t even know what they’ll be yet, but that we’re doing our best for them.

We’ve come to the end of our session already. I can’t believe it. I am so grateful to Sandra, Kelvin, and Tim for your contributions and for giving us so many great things to think about. Some examples of what you’re doing. Any questions that we haven’t had the chance to answer so far, we will endeavor to do so. Thanks again, everybody for joining. And a final thought as we wrap up with any takeaways or own the final impression as JD Schramm says can be. Yeah, sorry, I’ve got off script there. I’ve got a little question there about, sorry, let me just ask this question quickly before we go. This has just come in here. Are any of you involved in any startups within skill development that you would like to share with the colleagues that have joined us today? No. Are you

Sandra Metzger:

Asking

Jenny Gordon:

Us? Yeah, sorry. That’s a question that just,

Sandra Metzger:

I don’t have a startup. I mean, I do my own consulting business, but there are several and that I’ve been in conversations with, and I’m them do a few things. So there’s a huge opportunity for us to solve this problem. And I think the problem’s big enough that everybody can join in the solution.

Jenny Gordon:

Yeah, I would say that as well. And having been at this conference, I’ve seen lots of different organizations that are doing things that are very, very tech focused, looking at the technology to enable us to scale that we’ve talked about. And I’ll be happy to share some of those names, but also those that are looking at the instructional design side and how we support our educators in the change management approach of this as well. Because as to your point earlier, Sandra, this is overwhelming. There is so much to do, but what we can’t do is stop and not move forward. And so how do we all support each other in this community of educators and joining up with the workforce and our students themselves to ensure we keep moving forward? And with that, I think we’ll finish for today. Thank you all very much for joining once again, and I hope to see you all soon.