Supporting apprentices' workplace learning

 Over the last year or so, Th NZ government has committed to supporting apprenticeship training. There are subsidies for employers and 'free fees' for a range of courses. These have led to an increase in apprenticeship sign ups. 

However, there is always a need to support workplace based training and education as the workplaces' focus is on production, not necessarily in training.

Although now 10 years since the project was completed, the findings and resources from tne 'first year apprentices' experiences' project are still relevant. The poster produced to support the project call for a 'whole community' approach to support apprentices as they settle into workplace routines and challenges.

The follow up project ' learning a trade' also has resources relevant to the NZ context. There is a short video  to explain the concepts of feedback and its importance in learning and a supporting poster. 

There are also many other resources available internationally. Of relevance are the ones archived in the UK amazingapprenticeships site. Including this one which lists 50 activities to support apprenticeship.

Mayer's multimedia use for learning

Professor Richard Mayer is well-known in elearning circles for his research on the design of multimedia to be used to support learning and teaching. He has been a productive researcher, publishing many books and hundreds of research articles. 

Much of his work is summarised in the book "multimedia learning" the third edition published in 2020. Therefore there is lots of reading to get to the nub of his work.

Here is a link, via LinkedIn posts to 'How to use Mayer's 12 principles of multimedia' which provides a succinct and clear overview of the main premises of his work. 

In short, when designing and developing multimedia to support learning and teaching, the principles are:

-coherence - ensure only the important part is included.

- signalling - use cues to highlight essential learning

- redundancy - use graphics and narration rather than graphics, narration and text

- spatial continguity - connect similar themes 

- temporal continguity - ensure similar themes are presented together

- segmenting - use chunks which make sense to the learner

- pre-training - introduce key vocabulary before concepts

- modality - use graphics and narration rather than graphics and text

- multimedia - words and pictures together work better

- personalisation - use conversational style of communication

- voice - use human voices instead of machine generated

- image - not necessary to have speaker's image added to the screen.

All the 12 principles require critical evaluation as they are applied to multimedia resources. As always, it is the detail and execution of the resource which requires time. The final arbiter of the effectiveness of the resource, will be the learners. Did they learn the principle/concept by working through the resource? 

Skills framework - summary of Singapore Skills Framework by UK NESTA

 This interesting article on the learnings of NESTA (the UK agency for 'social good) on Singapore's Skills Framework developed by their Skills Future organisation - via Soon Gog Joo's post on LinkedIn. 

The article summarises well, the challenges posed by rapid shifts in how work is constituted, requiring workers to respond to these changes in the job market. The article rationalises the need for skills framworks; defines what skills frameworks as "description of skills, knowledge and competencies required in different jobs"; and most importantly, lays out the application of skills frameworks to:

- support career transitions

- find gaps in career ladders

- measure skill transferability

There are good graphics in the article to help explain the concepts introduced and discussed.

In short, it provides a opportunity for workers, beyond just the normal descriptions of what is required to do work in an occupation (e.g. the information on Careers NZ) towards helping workers to work out how to shift between occupations. What are the common skills and synergies between occupations and where are the gaps to be plugged to enable a shift / change in career path or to move up the career ladder. 

The right drivers for whole system success - Michael Fullan

 Michael Fullan is well known, especially in the compulsory/forma school sector, for his work on "Deep Learning". His work is especially relevant given the challenges posed by the rapid changes in society due to the 'fourth industrial revolution'. This has brought about shifts in how work is constituted across many occupations and although the percieved wisdom at the moment is for many occupations to have changes in job tasks, many occupations may remain. However, there are occupations that will cease to exist and the future workforce has to be ready to adjust to these disruptions rapidly as jobs wax and wane.

Fullan's latest report discusses the 'right drivers for shifting the monolithic educational systems across many countries. The drivers are capacity building, group quality, pedagogy and systemic. Opposed to these 'right' drivers are processes with impede accountability, promote only the individual, focus only on the technology and fragmented changes/processes.

He stresses the need for all four 'right' drivers to be put into motion and each, on their own, will not create the great shift required to move educational systems. To achieve the right drivers requires focusing also on well-being and learning, social intelligence, equality investment and 'systemness'. Opposed to these are processes requiring challenging and change. These include obsession with academics (content) and measurement (standards), reliance on machine intelligence, austerity measures and fragmentation of decisions.

The paper makes for thought provoking reading and sets a high bar on the need and urgency for change. The complexities required to shift educational systems is not under-estimated. However, delaying change will only lead to dire consequences for the current cohort of students. Political leadership is required to bring about the integrated and holistic changes called for. Some countries have already started to take some steps, albeit perhaps not in the consolidated way proposed by Fullan. Forecasting for future needs will always be problemmatic but the various indicators so show that the future of work, and in turn, preparation of the workforce, requires important attention by all governments.