Future of Jobs - World Economic forum

From the World Economic Forum, comes another summary of the future of jobs - with an emphasis on employment skills and workforce strategy.The report looks at demographic and socio-economic drivers of change and their impact on future jobs. As an outcome of the approaching Fourth Industrial revolution brought about by advances in technology – artificial intelligence, genetics, robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, 3D printing, big data etc

An similar article on the website provides 9 ways education could meet the challenges. The recommendations are from the Global Agenda Council on Education. The recommendations are very general and they include: providing a compelling vision of the future; set ambitious goals that force innovation; create choice and competition; pick many winners; benchmark and track progress; evaluate and share performance of new innovations; pair great accountability with autonomy; invest in and empower agents of change; and reward successes and productive failure. Which reads to me, support the early adopters, record findings, learn from successes and failures and follow-through to ramp up to the next stage.

One of the references was interesting, on amplifying human potential from Infosys.The report focused on what young people's views were on the future. In general, there was great optimism. Summary of points are:
young people are an optimistic and pragmatic generation in the face of adversity;

emerging countries are optimistic and confident in their readiness for the future;

emerging markets and technological skill underpin the confidence;

future appetite for technology is concentrated among the already highly-skilled;

advanced markets show most significant gender gap in technological skills;

education is failing to prepare young people for working life;

right brain (softer cognitive skills) need nurturing – time management, people management, coordinating of others, tech skills related to study/ skills, actively learning, complex problem solving; training and teaching others, verbal communication, active listening, creativity, persuasion;

employers fall short on employees’ training expectations;

industry views on the future of skills and work are closely aligned with those of young people;

liquid skills will be pre-requisite for the future;

stable careers are most desirable; and

high awareness of radical changes on the horizon.

Much still needs to be done within the educations sector to ramp up responsiveness to change. It has been over a decade since many of the above themes were introduced - e.g. mlearn conference 2008 yet still very slow change in education to meet the needs of a rapidly changing world :( MOOCs were pushed as one game changer but the promise of MOOCs has since been ramped back with the tsunami now more of a ripple. For vocational education, MOOCs were not going to fit in with learner profiles and the types of skills required to be learnt. So, still no quick fix on the horizon, it is still going to be change through sound planning at the learning design stage and building of staff capability to bring about innovative practice.