International

This new report presents the preliminary findings from our FutureFit programme - a major training and research project upskilling 1,000 workers at risk of job displacement. The findings draw from the training programmes delivered in Sweden, Denmark and Finland where the training has finished or is soon to be completed.  The pandemic has exposed digital divides, with 42% of the EU population now at risk of digital exclusion. At the same time, recent data shows that the response to the pandemic has brought digital adoption forward by five years. This is a crucial time to equip people with digital skills and harness new forms of learning to prevent social exclusion. This is the fifth publication from the FutureFit programme, a major training and research project led by Nesta and supported by Google.org, focused on creating an effective adult learning system to help tackle inequality and social exclusion. This report follows four previous publications - Going Green: Preparing the UK workforce for the transition to a net-zero economy, Make it FutureFit: Four ways to design better adult learning experiences, Becoming FutureFit: What we know about adult learning across Europe and Education for All: Making the case for a fairer adult learning system.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed vulnerabilities; it has also surfaced extraordinary human resourcefulness and potential. Decisions made today will have long-term consequences for the futures of education. Choices must be based on a humanistic vision of education and development, and human rights. The International Commission on the Futures of Education’s new report Education in a post-COVID world: Nine ideas for public action presents ideas for concrete actions today that will advance education tomorrow. “COVID-19 has the potential to radically reshape our world, but we must not passively sit back and observe what plays out,” said Ethiopian President H.E. Ms Sahle-Work Zewde, Chair of the International Commission on the Futures of Education. “Now is the time for public deliberation and democratic accountability. Now is the time for intelligent collective action.”

Please visit the link above for a summary article and the full report.

Data analytics, artificial intelligence and smart robotics are changing the tasks we perform and the skills we need. Digitalisation and smart automation are fundamentally transforming the way we work and creating jobs for people who can apply technology to current tasks, people who can design, monitor, maintain and fix technology, and people who can optimise human-technology interaction. Many of the current tasks and jobs as we know them will change as we increasingly use new technologies to optimise the way we work.

A bright outlook? In many ways, yes. At the same time, it is very likely that many of these jobs will be occupied by male workers. Digitalisation and smart automation will create new jobs in industries that are related to technology and engineering. A disproportionately large percentage of workers in these industries are men. Of the 39.3 million women in the EU with a degree, only 1.4 million work in tech.1 As productivity, wages and returns are higher in these jobs, part of the gender pay gap can be explained by thegender tech gap.

Canada fait face à une crise silencieuse. Au cours de la prochaine décennie, la moitié des emplois seront touchés par la technologie et l’automatisation. Certains subiront une transformation. D’autres, appelés à disparaître, seront remplacés par des emplois qui n’existent pas encore.

Nous traversons une ère marquée par de profonds changements, alors que les récentes percées en matière d’intelligence artificielle et d’automatisation transforment les méthodes de travail, même dans les domaines où on ne s’y attendait pas comme le droit et le service à la clientèle.

Comment allons-nous préparer les jeunes Canadiens au marché du travail de l’avenir ?

Au cours de la dernière année, RBC a mené une importante étude sur le marché du travail canadien. Nous avons parcouru le pays pour discuter avec des étudiants, des travailleurs, des éducateurs et des employeurs de tous les secteurs. Nous nous sommes penchés sur l’évolution des perspectives d’emploi et de l’automatisation et avons analysé une quantité énorme de données pour comprendre les changements qui s’opèrent au pays et déterminer comment nous y préparer.

Our world is full of complex causality; causal loops and spirals, events with multiple contributing causes, chaotic oscillations in the weather, the stock market, the ecology. Understanding complex causal systems is fundamental to navigating the contemporary world, yet complex causality gets no more than an occasional nod under the label of systems thinking ...

... Awakening learners to these more complex patterns is half the battle. The other half concerns how easily we can overlook what’s going on. Drawn to salient events, we may, for instance, never ask what keeps systems constant, miss problematic patterns that play out only now and again, and neglect possible causal influences far away in time and space.” (Perkins 2014)

This article describes a cognitive approach, in the tradition of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. It links to GUTS (Growing Up Thinking Scientifically: www. projectguts.org) an outreach that is exploring how to do this in practice.

The following concepts are central to knowledge of the characteristics of complex systems and how they behave:

• The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

• The greater the diversity (heterogeneity) of the different parts in a system, the more resilient it is likely to be.

• Systems evolve dynamically over time, self-organise and their global properties are said to be emergent.

• Change is non-linear and properties are emergent, so small consequences can have large effects that might not have been anticipated or predicted.

• There are constant interactions between any system and its surrounding environment so the boundaries of a system are typically ‘fuzzy’ – it is said to be open.

• Understanding the dynamics of networks and their topologies becomes essential for many social and natural sciences.

• Uncertainty: some things are knowable, but others are irreducibly uncertain. Embracing uncertainty and dealing with ambiguity become essential skills.

Like many EU Memberstates, Canada too is facing a quiet crisis with 'people without jobs and jobs without people'.In the coming decade, half of all jobs will be disrupted by technology and automation. Some will change dramatically. Others will disappear completely, replaced by jobs that are yet to be invented. We are living through an era of radical change, with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence and automation transforming the way we work, even in unexpected fields such as law and customer service. How will we prepare youth for the workplace of the future?

Over the past year, RBC conducted a major study of the Canadian workforce. We crisscrossed the country, talked to students, workers, educators and employers in every sector. We studied job openings and automation trends and dug into mountains of data to figure out how the country is changing and what we can do to prepare.

We discovered that the four million Canadian youth entering the workforce over the next decade are going to need a foundation of skills that sets them up for many different jobs and roles rather than a single career path. They will need a portfolio of human skills such as critical thinking, social perceptiveness, and complex problem solving to remain competitive and resilient in the labour market.

We found that Canada is shifting from a jobs economy to a skills economy, and yet employers, educators and policy makers are not prepared. Here are four things you need to know about the coming skills revolution and the future of work.

1 - Disruption is Accellerating

2 - Flexibility is the Future

3 - Digital Literacy is Essential

4 - We need to prepare for the future of work.

For more details see the link for the Programme website, and the Humans Wanted report pdf in the additional Tag below.

On May 24, the European Business Summit hosted a debate on the topic 'Fake News & why it's threatening your business'. The recent Facebook/Cambridge Analytica revelations show how, in an increasingly digitised world, data can be exploited and reminds companies of the importance to ensure transparency when it comes to the use of consumer information. The impact of Fake News – and the resulting loss of trust – in the wider economic fabric cannot be overlooked. Moreover, with the entering into force of the GDPR, all actors are called to play their role in tackling the disinformation challenge.

This report highlights innovative technology-supported pedagogic models in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, explores what to expect from collaboration in a designed network, and, thereafter, sketches lessons for promoting educational innovation through collaboration.

How can technology-supported learning help to move beyond content delivery and truly enhance STEM education so that students develop a broad mix of skills? How can collaboration be encouraged and used to help develop, spread, accelerate and sustain innovation in education? The HP Catalyst Initiative – an education grant programme by the Hewlett Packard (HP) Sustainability and Social Innovation team – is used as a case study to answer these questions.

First, five technology-supported pedagogic models emerging from the Initiative are highlighted: gaming, virtual laboratories, international collaborative projects, real-time formative assessment and skills-based assessment. These models have the potential to improve students’ learning outcomes, including development of higher-order thinking skills, and to expand the range of learning opportunities made available to students.

Second, the report explores the value of collaboration and support for innovation and outlines lessons for policy-makers and other stakeholders promoting educational innovation through collaboration. It shows that collaboration, especially international collaboration, can be an effective means to foster knowledge flows, new ideas and peer learning.

The results presented in the report are based on a mix of quantitative monitoring and qualitative case study methodology.