Commissioner’s cynical comment

Among the key findings of a European Commission ‘Eurobarometer’ survey on ‘Attitudes towards vocational education and training’ are:
• Vocational education and training - in which nearly half of all Europeans choose to enrol after their compulsory education - has a generally positive image among most age groups.
• This is principally because it is seen as comprising high quality training and offers strong job prospects to those who do it.

However, only 27% of young people aged between 15 and 24 say they would recommend vocational education and training to their peers.

According to the report, 47% of EU citizens were, or are currently, enrolled in vocational education and training. There are, however, large differences between countries. As many as 76% (in the Netherlands), 70% (Slovakia) and 66% (the Czech Republic) have experienced vocational education and training - but this is the case for only 24% in Portugal and Spain and 27% in Malta.

When asked about the image of vocational education and training in their country, 71% said it was positive and 23% viewed it as negative. The highest degrees of positive responses were recorded in Malta (92%), Finland (90%) and Austria (88%), with the least being in Slovenia and the Netherlands (both 50%), Hungary and Belgium (both 59%).

The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews with 27, 000 people across all EU Member States.

Androulla Vassiliou, the European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, said: “Investing in vocational education and training is one of the best ways of combating youth unemployment. By creating high quality training, we enable young people to boost their personal development and acquire the kind of specific and transferable skills which employers need. But, despite its advantages, vocational education and training is failing to attract enough young people."

Comment: The Commissioner’s comments seem rather confused. Either vocational education and training is a good way of combatting youth unemployment – by excluding them from the unemployment statistics as much as fitting them for jobs when the training course is completed - or it develops the skills which employers need.

In today’s currently fast-paced world of work where some skills are becoming redundant as the speed of technology gathers pace, while new skills are emerging where there are very few qualified trainers to develop them, the problem is that training establishments are not flexible enough to offer the sort of vocational training in the quantities and quality that employers want.

So, in reality, the Commissioner’s first – and much more cynical – comment holds more truth. Vocational education and training’s function is, primarily, to keep people off the unemployment statistics and so make politicians in government at any level ‘look good’.

St Albans Abbey’s Lady Chapel in launch double

The Lady Chapel in St Albans Abbey is the venue for two major launches simultaneously from 7pm on Wednesday 2nd November. There’s the launch of the book, ‘The Map of Meaning – How to Sustain our Humanity in the World of Work’, by the New Zealand-based authors Dr Marjo Lips-Wiersma and Lani Morris, as well as the official launch of Ecumenical Partnership Initiatives Compassion in Change (EPICC), which is part of Workplace Matters, the St Albans-based ecumenical charity which takes Christian values into the workplace.

Sue Howard, one of EPICC’s consultants and author of the book, ‘The Spirit at Work Phenomenon’, is a student of Dr Lips-Wiersma’s Holistic Development Model. This Model is at the heart of ‘the Map of Meaning’ book and is also key to EPICC’s approach to bringing greater recognition and status to spirituality in the workplace. Sue, who is based in Wheathampstead, said: “EPICC’s emphasis is on human care within organisational strategy and culture. We can help to develop the intellectual, emotional and spiritual intelligence of leaders to support the emergence of caring economics and a sense of ‘thriving’ more than ‘surviving’.

“Our approach focuses on taking a systemic view around two aspects: growing and developing an organisation and its people together, as well as creating an environment that draws out underlying wisdom and releases energy.”

EPICC offers:
• Action Research – to explore how to change working life for the better
• Development – of projects to support organisational and individual transformation
• Mentoring Support – a reassuring ongoing relationship to help maintain progress

“Many people feel that their work isn’t valued and that work itself has lost its value,” commented EPICC consultant, Keith Williams.

“Indeed, there’s a growing tension between material dependency and an inner spiritual desire. With this has come a growing desire to find work where people can be themselves in body, mind and spirit.”

“Research – such as that by Gallup - shows that there’s a strong link between employee engagement, motivation and productivity,” added fellow EPICC consultant, John Kay. “It suggests that financial results will be better, customers will be delighted and staff will thrive where the organisation can find the right balance between two management paradigms: the dominant economic - finance based, short term, zero-sum, process, rational, controlling - and the emerging social paradigm based around relationships, ethics and inspiration.

“This is exactly where EPICC can make a positive difference to organisations in the private and public sectors,” he said.

Comment: There are a number of initiatives currently being pursued to make the workplace a ’happier’ place to be but the idea behind EPICC is both intriguing and ‘different’. EPICC certainly aims to bring a different perspective to the ‘being valued at work’ issue. As such, it should be congratulated.

Still investing to innovate: a tribute to the few

eXact learning solutions, global vendor of online and mobile learning content management and digital repository solutions, has released the latest version - version 8 - of its flagship product eXact LCMS. This new version will be officially presented at the DevLearn event, being held in Las Vegas from 2nd to 4th November.

As a virtual premiere of the official release of the new platform, eXact learning solutions is organising an online webinar. The webinar takes place on 25th October, and is managed by eXact learning solutions North America. The webinar, which is free to attend, will take place at noon Eastern Time, 11am Central Time, 9am Pacific Time, 5pm BST and 6pm Central European Time on 25th October. To register for the webinar, visit: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/728952646

Installed in more than 100 corporate and industry clients worldwide, eXact LCMS version 8 increases the user interfaces and functionality for the core modules of the learn eXact Suite, now enabling:
• More open and extensible content templating and authoring options,
• More flexible content production lifecycle and workflow options,
• Extended industry standards support, now available for the new DITA (Darwinian Information Type) Learning & Training specialisation standard from OASIS (Advancing Open Standards for the Information Society) (http://www.oasis-open.org/)
• Improved multi-channel delivery, now extended with the new set of Android, Blackberry and iPad apps available in the mobile learning component of the learn eXact Suite
• Enhanced usability of the workflow and production management, editorial and language localisation components of the platform
• Improved integration and interoperability with any third party LMS, CMS and DR

The webinar will showcase the LCMS’s integration with Moodle 2, the new release of the popular open source LMS. This new integration ability extends Moodle 2’s rich media and mobile content production ability and delivery options to create an overall improved learning experience.

To receive further details about this webinar and how to register, contact: a.artuffo@exactls.com or info@exactls.com

Comment: There’s more to this ‘new product release’ than meets the eye. Over the years, the learning technologies sector has become blasé about new technologies and advances in various software applications. These things have taken the industry from thinking that putting learning materials on a CD was pretty neat (in the early 1990s) to using the cloud to store a variety of learning materials – even incorporating video - and make them available, on demand, in a variety of delivery modes, including any form of mobile device.

With the advance of the current economic downturn – becoming progressively more ‘serious’ since 2007 – the pace of this change has slowed, as has the general take-up of the very latest learning technologies. In turn, this has dissuaded some producers from innovating. Instead, they’ve tried to find more buyers for their existing technologies/ approaches to learning.

Few producers have continued to have the confidence in the market and in their abilities to innovate. Those that have had this confidence have continued to devote a high proportion of their turnover to research and development. The launch of eXact LCMS version 8 demonstrates that eXact learning solutions is one of these very few.

The learning technologies sector should be grateful to these companies which are still ‘keeping faith’ with their customers and helping the learning technologies industry to progress.

Towards understanding

Learning technologies sector benchmarking specialist Towards Maturity is set to reveal the findings of its latest – fifth annual – research into the sector’s trends. Sources close to the organisation are suggesting that the preliminary results of the 2011 Benchmark Study have revealed:
• 72% of organisations believe that learning technologies help them respond faster to changing business conditions. That’s 11% more than believed so last year.
• This ability to adapt and respond quickly is linked to a continued need to deliver greater efficiencies in these organisations’ learning and development functions. Once more, key drivers are increased access to learning; increased flexibility; increased quality and consistency in the learning experience, and reducing the cost of training.
• Live, online learning (notably virtual meetings, virtual classrooms and videoconferencing) is now an established part of the blend as organisations seek to reduce travel costs and increase engagement with staff.
• Mobile learning is growing steadily (now being used in 39% of organisations – up from 36% in 2010).
• 41% of organisations are now experimenting with third party social networking sites in learning (which is nowhere near the 72% which Towards Maturity predicted would be doing this by 2012).
• Organisations are reporting more barriers to adopting ‘learning technologies’ than in 2010 but the top barrier remains the same: the skills, knowledge and confidence to adopt new ways of learning.

According to Towards Maturity, the top ten learning technologies currently in use are:
1. Electronic based content (78%, down from 89% in 2010)
2. Surveys and questionnaires (77%, down from 91%)
3. Learning management systems (71%, down from 75%)
4. Online assessment (68%, down from 81%)
5. Virtual meetings (64%, down from 69%)
6. Video content (61%, up from 33%)
7. SharePoint (54%, up from 52%)
8. Open education resources (new entry - at 54%)
9. Learning portals (new entry - at 47%)
10. Virtual classroom (46%, up from 45 %)

The top five barriers to successful adoption of learning technologies in 2011 are:
1. Lack of knowledge use and implementation
2. Lack of skills among employees to manage own learning (as perceived by the survey participants)
3. Lack of skills by training staff to implement e-learning
4. Reluctance by line managers
5. Unreliable ICT

What can this mean? At best, it suggests that learning technologies are continuing to establish themselves as a normal – even key – part of the corporate training/learning mix. The pace at which that is happening may have slowed – probably because few industrial sectors are expanding rapidly in the current economic climate – but that it is progressing at all is a source of encouragement to all connected with the learning technologies sector.

Video based learning materials are gaining in popularity – as was predicted years ago by people who longed for the (now achieved) increase in bandwidth. Similarly, ‘traditional e-learning’ is being overtaken by learning on the move (the growth in mobile learning) and these learning materials being seen more as performance support rather than ‘pure learning’ materials.

At worst, it confirms traditionalists’ views that the days of the professional instructional design expert/ consultant producing custom-built e-learning programmes for clients are seriously numbered – especially if ‘live online learning’ (or ‘learning by virtual meeting) is growing in use. The popularity of ‘open education resources’ is also worrying for learning technologies professionals because it suggests that buyers/ users are looking for cost-effective and preferably ‘no cost’ learning solutions – thus re-emphasising the popularity of learning technologies as a learning approach to reduce costs regardless of the learning materials’ effectiveness.

In any case – like all such reports on industry trends – the Towards Maturity research makes interesting reading and should fuel quite a bit of debate among those who care.

The value of training

Quasar's Michael Shane has outlined his view that merely concentrating on compliance/ regulatory training in these challenging economic times is a false economy. Shane, whose company has developed the Quasar ‘Anytime’ range of online video learning materials providing practical, on-going advice and guidance for those using Microsoft Office 2007 and 2010, explained: “When you talk to businesses about ‘training’ these days, they often say that, because economic times are hard, they’re only budgeting for mandatory training.

“Yet, if they don’t train their staff to be more productive and reduce inefficiencies – and they continue to employ those people – their work-based inefficiencies will proliferate! And, in the current economic climate especially, inefficient businesses are the ones that are most likely to go under.”

In Shane’s opinion, the Quasar Anytime online learning videos enable organisations – especially small businesses and budding entrepreneurs - to maintain these so called ‘non-essential’ training programmes, keep their skills current and buck the economic trend. He said: “Using Anytime, you can get more information from your business by getting the best out of your standard Microsoft Office software, for example, via exploiting the numerous functions and options in Excel. If you’re not sure what tools exist in the Office suite of products that enable you to get the business information you need, you can go to the Anytime library of online videos and browse the titles available.

“In these harsh economic times, individuals and businesses need to do whatever it takes to survive and you’ll be surprised just how much products like Excel and the Microsoft Office suite can help,” he continued. “The thing is that people think they know how to use this software – but they don’t - and they regard this type of training as non-essential. This means that, while most, if not all businesses, have these tools available, they remain unexploited.”

According to Government figures, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) account for some 99.9 per cent of all UK enterprises; some 59.1 per cent of private sector employment and 48.6 per cent of private sector turnover. Shane said: “These businesses are the backbone of the UK’s economy and, increasingly, the people working in these businesses need computer literacy skills in order to survive in today’s world. Anytime offers access to a learning method which is designed to help people develop and hone these skills and improve their work efficiency.”

Comment: Of course, any business help is worthwhile and it’s a bonus if that help is inexpensive – as Anytime promises to be. However, the key points from these comments by Michael Shane are that:
• cutting back on training is a false economy because inefficient workers who are less knowledgeable and skilled than they should be will ensure that an organisation is uncompetitive, regardless of the prevailing economic conditions
• there’s a great deal of important business information already extant but overlooked because those who could make good use of that information don’t have the skills to find and analyse it in the (Excel) software they’re studying

Both of these points ably illustrate the value of training.