Dan McFadyen, Managing Director at Edalex speaks with Ryan O’Hare, CEO and Founder of Keypath Education (Australia and Asia-Pacific) where they discuss how to get ahead in Higher Education by challenging assumptions, focusing on digital strategies, embracing skills-based learning, catering to lifelong learners (the new majority) and being learner-centric.
Personal evidence and the skills they recognise are game changers for learners to earners and those seeking to progress their careers. But the greatest benefit by far, is that they provide a fuller picture to educators, learners and employers, in a way that is transparent, contextualised and relevant. Let’s look at why personal evidence is on the rise and its impacts on the stakeholders of the skills ecosystem.
Skills-based learning has developed beyond a conversation and has become the focus of many learning institutions from higher education to community colleges, career-specific educators, internal company training, and more. Why?
When we talk about education, we often describe it as a tool for economic mobility. We tell high school kids to go to college, get a degree, and that is the path to a good career. For adult learners, we advocate that they go back to school, finish that degree, get a master’s or a doctorate – easy ways to “get ahead” and enhance their ability to move forward in their careers.
Four-year degrees have seen a marked drop in enrolment and completion rates in recent years. Learners are critically weighing the value of full degrees against typically shorter, less expensive skills-based learning, to quickly develop high-demand workplace skills. The investment in time and money – with no guarantee of work at the end – and the rise of skills-based hiring among employers are some of the key factors contributing to the decline in the perceived value of traditional degrees. In this information-rich Credentialate Guide, we ask – How much has the education landscape changed? What are the factors impacting enrolments? Where are learners going instead? And how can educators bolster the perceived value of degrees by connecting them more directly to work?
In a recent article titled “College Ed Must Adapt or Die”, Jason Wingard, the President of Temple University in Pennsylvania stated simply, “Consider this my burning platform memo for higher ed.” What was he referring to? There is a crisis happening in higher education right now, and if it were any other type of business, there would be widespread panic.
Edalex, the EdTech company that unleashes the power of skills data, digital assets, and personal credentials, partnered with the Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a non-profit developer of assessments that measure students’ academic and career readiness, earlier this month to host a webinar on the importance of essential skills in preparing students for career success, and the use of micro-credentials to demonstrate proficiency in these areas.
What are the steps that lead to an organisation’s ability to produce personal evidence? How can organisations capture, aggregate and manage their skills data in an automated way? How can they bring to light underutilised dark data’ hiding in their existing systems? And how can they align learner performance data to industry recognised definitions and frameworks? This whitepaper details the what, how and why education providers of all types can participate fully in the burgeoning Skills Economy and prepare their learners for the future world of work.
In this conversation style interview, Dan McFadyen and Martin Bean, Founder and CEO of the Bean Centre, explore a how education, industry, society and technology are converging to embrace and empower alternative credentials.
In this conversation style interview, Dan McFadyen and Mark Keough, Chief Operating Officer of Intrinsic Learning, explore a fresh take on ethical and machine learning imperatives to create truly learner-centric micro-credentials.
