Similar but different

I for one welcome the Australian Government’s proposal to establish a National Skills Passport.

Tabled last year via the Working Future whitepaper, the idea is “to help people more easily demonstrate their skills to employers and reduce barriers to lifelong learning.”

Bravo. But of course the devil is in the detail, and so far there hasn’t been very much of that (perhaps by design).

Indeed, the Department of Education and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations have jointly released a consultation paper which advances the idea a smidgen more. For example, “Stakeholders have long called for the creation of a tool to help Australians demonstrate their qualifications to prospective employers. A skills passport could combine a person’s qualifications across VET and higher education to more effectively demonstrate their skills to employers.”

As per that extract, the document frequently uses the word “skills” in conjunction with the word “qualifications”, and I fear they’re being conflated.

You see, they’re similar, but different. I’ve previously expressed my view in the context of digital badges – see The past tense of open badges and More than just a pretty face – whereby a qualification is a promise that you can do something; whereas a badge is (or more to the point, should be) a symbol that you have done it.

There’s the rub. If the National Skills Passport is to be a collection of qualifications, then it will essentially be a promissory note. Granted, the interoperability of it across higher education and industry will be attractive, but it won’t ever evolve beyond Curriculum Vitae 2.0 because its premise will be flawed from the get-go.

In the corporate sector our strategies are increasingly skills-first, and I suggest the government’s proposed solution should be too. Rather than accumulating your qualifications, the passport should represent your skills.

Certainly a qualification can lend weight to your claim on a skill, but only to a certain level, because doing a course on data science doesn’t necessarily mean you are skilled at data science – P’s are degrees! In a similar vein, your employment history and other work experience could also lend weight, but occupying the role of Data Analyst for several years doesn’t necessarily mean you were a good one.

What I’m getting at is to be validated, a skill needs to be assessed. And because by definition a skill is practical, what is being assessed must be its practice. Now I realise this is challenging and potentially unwieldy to do, so much so that I’ve suggested that universities pivot their awards accordingly – see Higher Assessment – while some providers have spawned a new service offering – see DeakinCo and RMIT Online.

And I also realise that some courses are practically oriented, with their completion predicated on the production of a dashboard or the presentation of a project, for example. That’s a shift in the right direction, as the assessment of practice is integrated into the learning experience.

However, if the National Skills Passport is to be a National Skills Passport, then it needs to be founded upon… skills. Evidence such as qualifications and employment history contribute to your record of a specific skill at a particular level (aligned to a standardised rubric) but only through an independent assessment of practice can you reach the terminal level.

That way, if I’m looking for a SQL programmer who can speak Japanese, I can find someone at the click of a button without wondering how capable they really are.

The definition of insanity

Way back in the pre-pandemic era, I proposed a solution to fix our senseless compliance training – or to be more accurate, its management – yet it remains broken.

The central premise of my argument was that it’s inefficient to repeat the same mandatory training when you change jobs within the same regulatory framework, so a centralised system to recognise your prior learning could save your new employer and the broader economy some serious coin.

My proposed solution was based on open badges, and these days I’d imagine that blockchain could power it.

At the time, I pitched my solution to a number of Australia’s financial regulators… but in vain. Either I received no reply, or they countered by saying that it’s not the role of the regulator to train a company’s employees.

Sigh. I had taken pains to clarify that that’s not the idea. Instead, the regulator would accredit the training to authorise the issuing of their badge.

Nevermind. Perhaps the private sector can fill the void of governmental inaction. From the get-go I should have ignored the regulatory route in favour of a corporate alliance model along the lines of Oneworld in the airline industry.

Under this paradigm, I see an opportunity for a group of like-minded companies – such as banks – to formally agree among themselves to recognise each other’s training on particular topics. If an employee completes such training at Alliance Member A, it will be recognised by Alliance Member B; thus he or she won’t need to repeat it under the employ of Alliance Member B until the usual expiration date.

Of course there will be peculiarities relating to Alliance Member B that the new recruit will need to be made aware of, but the point is the bulk of the content has already been covered.

I also see an opportunity for a trusted third party – perhaps a top-tier consulting firm, university or professional association – to independently accredit the training and manage the digital infrastructure on behalf of the alliance members.

And finally, while compliance sparked my initial idea, it needn’t be restricted to mandatory training. Any universal subject matter could be included in the agreement.

Semantics, semantics

I dislike grammar jokes, pedants, and Oxford commas.

That’s my jovial way to end a year that will be remembered as a tough one for a long time to come.

I found blogging a welcome distraction, so much so that in addition to my annual list of e-learning conferences in Australia (which took a beating!) I churned out no fewer than ten thought pieces.

My joke at the start of this summary is a nod to the theme of semantics, which I maintain are important in the L&D profession. Because it is with shared meaning that we do our best work.

I invite you to share your own views on each piece, so feel free to drop me a like and contribute a comment or two…

• In 6 more examples of Augmented Reality I share half a dozen real-world instances of an emerging technology.
   
• In Unhappy sheets I reframe Level 1 evaluation.
   
• In The next normal several of my peers and I anticipate the long-term nature of Learning & Development.
   
• In Yellow submarine I round down the prevailing notion of human-centered design.
   
• In The leader’s new clothes I distinguish between management training and leadership training.
   
• In Transformers I redefine training for a remote workforce.
   
• In More than just a pretty face I maintain a difference between certification badges and practitioner badges.
   
• In Academic deflation I spot a trend in higher education.
   
• In Roses are red I propose definitions for oft-used yet ambiguous terms such as “competency” and “capability”.
   
• In Scaling up I offer a simplified scale of measurement to support proficiency across an organisation.

I hope you find my articulations helpful.

In the meantime, I wish that for you and your family the Christmas season will be a time of healing, rest and renewal.

More than just a pretty face

I’ve blogged in favour of digital badges in the past, not because they’re colourful motivators – which arguably they are, at least for some people – but because they represent an achievement.

While the robustness of the criteria for earning a badge may be challenged, as may be the assessment of meeting said criteria, the concept holds true: a badge must be earned by demonstrating that you have done something.

What that something is is a variable to be defined. Some badges such as the ones that are popular among IT geeks are earned by completing a training program or by passing an exam. I call these “certification badges”.

However I maintain a stronger implementation of the idea emerges when we earn the badge by successfully executing a task (or a suite of tasks). I call these “practitioner badges”.

For example, you might complete a 40-hour course and pass a massive multiple-choice quiz to earn an XYZ-issued “Project Management” badge. That’s quite an achievement.

But I’d be more impressed (and more confident as an employer) if you were to demonstrate how you’ve applied the XYZ-endorsed principles to a real project in the real world, thereby earning a “Project Manager” badge. To me, that’s a greater achievement because it shifts the focus of the exercise from the activity (learning) to its outcome (performance).

In an organisational context, I see opportunities to blend the tasks to enrich the experience. For example, one task may be to apply a principle to your current project, while the next task is to share your reflection of doing so on the enterprise social network; thereby facilitating not only metacognition and expert feedback, but also peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.

Celebrating the latest cohort of people who’ve earned badges in the same forum may also generate a bit of FOMO.

In any case, my point is a badge should be more than just a pretty face. I propose we distinguish between two types of badge – namely a certification badge and a practitioner badge – with the latter representing an achievement above and beyond the former.

Transformers

It seems like everyone’s spruiking the “new normal” of work.

The COVID-19 pandemic is keeping millions of previously office-bound employees at home, forcing L&D professionals to turn on a dime.

Under pressure to maintain business continuity, our profession has been widely congratulated for its herculean effort in adapting to change.

I’m not so generous.

Our typical response to the changing circumstances appears to have been to lift and shift our classroom sessions over to webinars.

In The next normal, which I published relatively early during lockdown, several of my peers and I recognised the knee-jerk nature of this response.

And that’s not really something that ought to be congratulated.

For starters, the virus exposed a shocking lack of risk management on our part. Digital technology is hardly novel, and our neglect in embracing it left us unprepared for when we suddenly needed it.

Look no further than the Higher Education sector for a prime example. They’re suffering a free-fall in income from international students, despite the consensus that people can access the Internet from other countries.

Beyond our misgivings with technology, moreover, the virus has also shone a light on our pedagogy. The broadcast approach that we deliver virtually today is largely a continuation of our practice pre-pandemic. It wasn’t quite right then, and it isn’t quite right now. In fact, isolation, digital distractions and Zoom fatigue probably make it worse.

I feel this is important to point out because the genie is out of the bottle. Employee surveys reveal that the majority of us either don’t want to return to the office, or we’ll want to split our working week at home. That means while in-person classes can resume, remote learning will remain the staple.

So now is our moment of opportunity. In the midst of the crisis, we have the moral authority to mature our service offering. To innovate our way out of the underwhelming “new normal” and usher in the modern “next normal”.

In some cases that will mean pivoting away from training in favour of more progressive methodologies. While I advocate these, I also maintain that direct instruction is warranted under some circumstances. So instead of joining the rallying cry against training per se, I propose transforming it so that it becomes more efficient, engaging and effective in our brave new world.

Good things come in small packages

To begin, I suggest we go micro.

So-called “bite sized” pieces of content have the dual benefit of not only being easier to process from a cognitive load perspective, but also more responsive to the busy working week.

For example, if we were charged with upskilling our colleagues across the business in Design Thinking, we might kick off by sharing Chris Nodder’s 1.5-minute video clip in which he breaks the news that “you are not your users”.

This short but sweet piece of content piques the curiosity of the learner, while introducing the concept of Empathize in the d.school’s 5-stage model.

We’re all in this together

Next, I suggest we go social.

Posting the video clip to the enterprise social network seeds a discussion, by which anyone and everyone can share their experiences and insights, and thus learn from one another.

It’s important to note that facilitating the discussion demands a new skillset from the trainer, as they shift their role from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”.

It’s also important to note that the learning process shifts from synchronous to asynchronous – or perhaps more accurately, semi-synchronous – empowering the learner to consume the content at a time that is most convenient for them (rather than for the L&D department).

There is no try

Next, I suggest we go practical.

If the raison d’être of learning & development is to improve performance, then our newly acquired knowledge needs to be converted into action.

Follow-up posts on the social network shift from the “what” to the “how”, while a synchronous session in the virtual classroom enables the learner to practise the latter in a safe environment.

Returning to our Design Thinking example, we might post content such as sample questions to ask prospective users, active listening techniques, or an observation checklist. The point of the synchronous session then is to use these resources – to stumble and bumble, receive feedback, tweak and repeat; to push through the uncomfortable process we call “learning” towards mastery.

It’s important to recognise the class has been flipped. While time off the floor will indeed be required to attend it, it has become a shorter yet value-added activity focusing on the application of the knowledge rather than its transmission.

Again, it’s also important to note that facilitating the flipped class demands a new skillset from the trainer.

A journey of a thousand miles

Next, I suggest we go experiential.

Learning is redundant if it fails to transfer into the real world, so my suggestion is to set tasks or challenges for the learner to do back on the job.

Returning to our Design Thinking example, we might charge the learner with empathising with a certain number of end users in their current project, and report back their reflections via the social network.

In this way our return on investment begins immediately, prior to moving on to the next stage in the model.

Pics or it didn’t happen

Finally, I suggest we go evidential.

I have long argued in favour of informalising learning and formalising its assessment. Bums on seats misses the point of training which, let’s remind ourselves again, is to improve performance.

How you learned something is way less interesting to me than if you learned it – and the way to measure that is via assessment.

Returning to our Design Thinking example, we need a way to demonstrate the learner’s mastery of the methodology in a real-world context, and I maintain the past tense of open badges fits the bill.

In addition to the other benefits that badges offer corporates, the crux of the matter is that a badge must be earned.

I am cognisant of the fact that my proposal may be considered heretical in certain quarters.

The consumption of content on the social network, for example, may be difficult to track and report. But my reply is “so what” – we don’t really need to record activity so why hide it behind the walls of an LMS?

If the openness of the training means that our colleagues outside of the cohort learn something too, great! Besides, they’ll have their own stories to tell and insights to share, thereby enriching the learning experience for everyone.

Instead it is the outcome we need to focus on, and that’s formalised by the assessment. Measure what matters, and record that in the LMS.

In other words, the disruptive force of the COVID-19 pandemic is an impetus for us to reflect on our habits. The way it has always been done is no substitute for the way it can be done better.

Our moment has arrived to transform our way out of mode lock.