Category: Education & Employability
May 31st, 2014 by matthias
After starting my PGCert recently, I’ve thrown myself into learning how to learn. I know it sounds a bit out there, but it seems like the Open University requires a particular mindset, and that’s something I’ve never learned.
Let me explain: I have a good understanding about how I think and process information. I am one of the annoying kids who always needs to switch between tasks and revisits half-formulated thoughts as I go along. In the end, the results seem to satisfy – at least my employers and before that my university tutors. However, I struggled in school – and I think that had to do with being pushed to learn in a particular way – to predetermined outcomes. I rebelled against that – so much that I almost didn’t finish school at one point. University gave me the freedom to structure my own learning experience, and I enjoyed that as much as I had hated school.
Since then (post Bologna) and with moving to the UK, the world has changed, and university has become a lot more like school. Defined learning outcomes – especially on Master’s level – give me the creeps, but at least I understand where the problem lies for me. Any reader of my blog will know my views on outcomes based learning. Now here’s the thing – I consciously signed up for a course that follows this type of rulebook. It may seem masochistic to subject myself to what I struggled with so much in my youth, but as you may recall I’m doing it for professional reasons … and because I wanted to take that challenge.
I’m not a thrill-seeker (given the topic of my course, I guess that was clear), but I always had an impulse to improve on things that I’m not good at. I find that challenging and entertaining, but it makes many pursuits in life more of a marathon than a sprint (the latter of which has always come easy to me). That may be a recipe for being so-so at many things rather than excelling a few – and never really ‘winning’ anything – I’m basically all about delayed gratification. This is no different – and my work rhythm on the PGCert has been one of one hour or so per day, working towards incremental improvements. I’ve even got a plan with tick boxes.
To be fair, that’s what the Open University seems to expect from me – I’ve gone through their tutorials and have focused on such interesting topics as critical thinking, personal development planning, and essay writing strategies. It’s all the stuff we expect our students to do – and I want to make sure that I understand what they’re up against. Someone said that only a minority of our institutional leaders in higher education have engaged with a post-1992 university environment – I’m doing it now, and I find it hard work. I am starting to apply a number of techniques to improve my professional skills, as usual using technological solutions – e.g., running pretty much every piece of writing through Grammarly helps me sharpen my writing skills; retaining and annotating every piece of reading with Evernote and Skitch makes me look at texts in completely different way. This is currently exciting – and I hope it lasts.
But I certainly am learning a lot recently.
Posted in Education & Employability, Uncategorized, Work life
May 23rd, 2014 by matthias
Last week I had the privilege to spend a whole day learning about MOOCs. Proversity had invited a number of heavyweights in the field – and little old moi – to discuss their proposition of using MOOC style delivery to support corporate onboarding (and recruitment) processes. They had secured the lively and quirky Google Campus, and set up a day of presentations and breakout sessions. Here’s the stuff I picked up (broken up in bite-sized chunks):
Laura Overton (@towardsmaturity) started with a great overview on her research of MOOC usage in the corporate learning world. The general usage of technology by learning & development providers is often failing many learners – and what sets the successful organisations apart is not the technology itself, but their attitude towards learning in their businesses. Corporate learners react well to that by changing behaviours more quickly and more consistently. Overton postulated that a new learning agenda is needed, that allows corporates to react faster – driven by learners and their learning styles rather than an organisational agenda.
MOOCs in the meantime are transforming higher education [take note, HE sector!] – not necessarily a sector known for reacting quickly to student learning styles … or anything for that matter, really. Low completion rates (c.10%) are the norm for MOOCs – I would personally think that this is just a matter of time until someone finds a way to increase that enough for the model to become more stable; at which point universities will their industry-wide interruptive moment on their hands. Again – what do learners say (the question for HE in my view)? 88% want to learn at their own pace – not something that finds its way into academic calendars. However Overton thinks that the academic world can really support the corporate world through MOOCs. Let’s hope we collectively wake up in time.
Her final point was that there is an overlap of good MOOC design with corporate learning. Most MOOC learners are engaging from the workplace, and thus the curriculum needs to reflect the demands of the workplace. Overton’s key lessons included:
- Create a framework: 75% learners are happy to engage online, but 1/3 don’t find what they need – good design needs a good flow with clear instructions [take note, VLE designers]
- Design great learning: 45% of learners complain about uninspiring content – so the recommendation is to use multiple media, not just the lecturer. Also, the length of the programme is often a problem; shorter programmes have higher completion rates [do you see where this is going?].
- Support peer cooperation: staff willing to use technology like sharing what they are learning online – good MOOC design requires sharing tools, albeit this is often not encouraged enough in corporate learning and development.
- Assess effectively: staff want recognition for their online learning – only one in five L&D departments consider this.
- Scale up: MOOCs remove barriers, using cloud learning management systems.
Overton closed with the comment that the MOOC is not a new hype – its concepts and names may change, but good learning practice will prevail. Read up on her work at www.towardsmaturity.org/in-focus/MOOC2014
End of part one
Posted in Education & Employability, Work life Tagged with: digital literacy, employers, higher education, management, MOOC, skills
April 28th, 2014 by matthias
This week, I am adding a new permutation to the patch-work of identities that make up my post-modern personality (yeah, that’s a long story for a different time). So, a bit less vague: I’m a student again. I’ve often missed a true intellectual challenge at work since breaking off my PhD 12 years ago. Not that work isn’t challenging, but having spent all my twenties being trained for an academic role that never materialised, I’ve missed the rigour and cognitive challenge of academia. Not that I envy my academic colleagues – the way higher education is now structured, I get away with doing a lot less administrative work than they do. It sounds crazy, but that’s where we are.
So why become a student now? Over the last few years, it has become clear to me that
a) I’m stuck in middle-management in my institution until I widen my portfolio and move away from just being cornered as the careers/employability guy;
b) practical experience gained in a range of HE management functions counts for little in HE when trying to make a case for a wider managerial remit than just the one you’ve been cornered into (see above);
c) I lack formal knowledge in some of these areas, even though I may have gained a lot of practical experience;
d) Like many of our institutional leaders in the sector, I’ve never studied in the post 92 UK system, and my pre-Bologna (and partically pre-WWW) German academic training won’t help me in the modern HE environment. It also gives me a chance to experience what our students experience.
As part of my last performance review I discussed with my manager what I would need to do to unblock my career – and brought forward the option of formal qualification. Having studied on PhD level years ago and in a completely different system didn’t equip me for the brave new word of defined learning outcomes, assessment strategies and master’s level indicators. So the key lesson was that I have to re-learn how to study. So it’s not only that the rules of academic study have changed a bit, it’s really a completely different environment.
So I’ve now signed up for an AUA Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice validated by the Open University, and delivered by the Association of Academic Administrators. I secured 75% funding from my employer, so it’s also payable. This arrangement leaves me to complete this mostly as work based learning, alongside my day job. It enables me to learn in my own time (and I’ve marked those two daily hours on the train), and gives me a chance to slowly engage with this new world of learning.
And here is where my curiousity really sparked: I constantly write about how technology changes the world of work, and I enjoy how it affects my personal life. I was aware of the way it affects and enables the modern learner, but I never engaged with it in that way. I know a bit of learning technology but not really very much about it. And this is what I’m almost most curious about, and the question I’m asking myself now the most is: how will my learning experience (as opposed to my student experience – that’s going to be something else) be different from the first time I gained my degree? There’s only one way to find out – and I’ll keep you updated.
Posted in Education & Employability, Work life
February 26th, 2014 by matthias
Rebecca Ratcliffe (@rebeccarat) writes in the @guardian about how living abroad as a teenager made her want to teach languages, and I couldn’t agree more.
Well, it’s not that I’m teaching languages, but I’m a strong proponent of language learning, both as a career relevant skill, as well as a way for enriching ones horizons. The first one is easy: language graduates fairly consistently high in Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education statistics. In short, they get more jobs more quickly than many other graduates. At the bottom are by the way IT graduates, but that’s I guess one for another day. Employers recognise language skills and intercultural experience. However, the UK is struggling with language provision in schools, and consequently international engagement in university. Which gives graduates from other European countries a rightfully deserved edge when competing for employment. It’s a free market, and employers can choose. And so they do.
The other is the point of personal growth. When my family was transplanted into the UK as part of a scientific exchange in the mid 70s, my parents could not send me to the German school my parents sent my older siblings to. So they decided upon a predictably successful, but radical approach: they put me – who had never been to school, as German schools start later – into my local elementary school. And lo and behold, after six weeks of constant crying, I had picked up enough English to follow classes and play with my fellow inmates. In the spirit of the times, ‘playing’ still required me to regularly act out the German soldier on the school playground – who inevitably gets shot (often repeatedly, as there were only a few of us Germans around) – but hey, you’ve got to soak up the culture as you go along.
Was I bitter about this experience? At the time, it seemed cruel to me – however, in hindsight it became clear to me that I found school in general probably the greater annoyance than having to learn the language to participate. And culturally, being transplanted later into the Bavarian school system was the much bigger culture shock. The intercultural experience though (and there were many relevant critical incidents) impacted my whole family. It can be traced back to this experience that my siblings and I have all spent considerable times living in a variety of countries, and all of us speak three languages other than our own.
I often say to my non-native speaker graduate clients here in the UK, that they won’t get their first job based on their English language knowledge, but on their native or additional languages. And I do enjoy working for an organisation that it widening language learning rather than cutting down on it. I have also no time for the myopic view of protecting ones labour market in the face of immigration – but I have written about this before.
To summarise: being forced to learn languages from a young age has not only given me the opportunity to experience things I’d never thought I would, but has also shaped my career. As I often say at public forums, if you want to improve the life chances of the generation you are responsible for raising or educating, instilling language learning is the greatest gift you can give.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability
January 28th, 2014 by matthias
A shout out to our new students – and some info for those who always wanted to know what I do for a living.
Posted in Education & Employability
December 30th, 2013 by matthias
This blog started out as ‘What I’ve learnt recently … in one short paragraph’. What I tried to achieve was finding my voice on a number of issues that interest me: (higher) education (policy), the impact of technology on (work) life, work ethics and my personal opinions on these topics – but always from the perspective of what I had learnt from the experience, and not with too much effort. Call it an exercise in reflection, or an oversharing of my thoughts, 2013 was really the year I got into blogging a lot more. This is not my only blog – I run one on my personal life as a German in a small town in the UK (yeah, I’m one of those pesky EU citizens who came here taking your jobs…), and one about my decades long commitment to sci-fi role playing games (yeah, so I’m a nerd).
The themes and respective blog posts that came up this year repeatedly were indeed my experience being a foreigner – oh wait, a committed European citizen living and contributing to the UK society and economy. The recent media rhetoric about (the wrong kind of) EU citizens on this rankled with me on a number fronts – and I summed this up in my blog post about the gift of migration. What I learnt though was a bitter lesson – that in the current climate an anti-immigration argument will always win over an economic benefit in public opinion, and the benefits that international students bring to the country are no exception.
The other sad lesson I learnt this year is that there seems to be an endless well of pessimism towards ‘young people’ in general in the UK. This manifested itself in multiple forms, wherever I turned: I learnt about this when I volunteered at a local careers fair, when I commented on articles about careers advice in schools, and when I gathered the response to the OECD skills study published this year.
I know all this sounds rather pessimistic – however in the deepest time of sadness came a glimmer of hope: I was about to embark on my biggest and most painful personal lesson this year, when I was on my way to say goodbye for the last time to one of my oldest friends – it was one of those young people who showed me that this generation is not lost; they are just in need of the occasional help and advice, but they are perfectly able to find their way – which requires them to have professional careers advice. And this lead me to re-confirm my professional commitment to doing just that: helping others fulfil their potential, which I think lies at the heart of any careers and employability related work. And that’s not necessarily always about raising standards, expectations, or competitiveness – it’s often more about a realistic self-assessment and going for what young people want, not what they should want.
And I have seen many examples of good practice, both observing and speaking at a number of events, ranging from life science careers, the Gradcore 2013 conference, to the PlaceNet 13 conference.
What will 2014 bring? For me (and pretty much the rest of our economy), it will be all about learning to interpret and understand data. That’s my prediction – and I’m looking forward to seeing whether I will look back on my pursuit of this agenda in a year’s time.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability, Work life Tagged with: employability, higher education, professionalism, skills, young people
December 19th, 2013 by matthias
I’m on fire – another really interesting (albeit slightly infuriating) discussion about careers advice – and I’ve posted a comment on that as well:
Hm, as for an editorial line, this is interesting – we’re confronted with very varied perspectives in the last two days: on how to advise his son about ‘serious subjects’ [NB: the link actually says ‘proper’], Rhiannon, whose writing I normally like, delivers an opinion piece right out of Michael Gove’s (!) toolbox, about how rubbish such advice is – at least as long is out of the mouths of trained professionals.
Let’s get this straight – many ‘professionals’ suck at their jobs, and don’t make good role models. We see examples of bad practice pretty much where ever we turn. So who will guarantee that those industry representatives who are supposed to go into schools give advice to young people that is impartial, well informed and confidential? And – who makes the judgement call who is an appropriate (professional) role model in the first place?
Just like teachers, professional careers advisors are there to help young people understand the world around them, and how to navigate a job market that is so complex and fast-changing that the parent generation has normally no clue what is happening ‘out there’ – at least not if it’s not directly within their own sector. [NB: I work in the field, but I am not a careers advisor]
There’s plenty of space for industry speakers, professional mentors and informal advice from parents – but pulling the direct one-to-one advice (and the funding for it), and then replacing it by online and phone ‘support’, takes away the opportunity for young people to engage with their potential in a safe and unbiased environment. It strikes me more as a cost-cutting measure than an attempt at improving young people’s chances – funnily enough, for especially vulnerable groups personal advice is still available; can’t be that bad then.
And that’s exactly what the CBI is saying on this topic: what was there as a support structure has pretty much been broken by recent policy. So even the employers that are supposed to go in and do a ‘better job’ than qualified careers advisors are asking for careers advice to be strengthened and enabled again.
As someone running a careers service in higher education, I worry about the consequences of these policies, and how they will affect the students coming our way in the next few years – and what repair job we may have to do in order with all those young people who never learnt the basics of career decision making in school. And for that job (not just checking CVs and doing silly online assessments), there are professional careers advisors.
I respect personal opinion and experience (and working in the field, my own experience has been indeed varied) – however I question what the Guardian will do to balance this opinion piece with something that is more informed and balanced.
I am however not really holding my breath, as I normally don’t see much of a rational discussion on education, young people and careers advice.
Posted in Commentary, Education & Employability Tagged with: employability, employers, higher education, Learning to work, professionalism, responsibility, young people
December 18th, 2013 by matthias
There’s an interesting article (and discussion) in the Guardian by Gavan Nadan, titled Should I persuade my son to study a serious subject at university?
To which I say Yikes! Probably double Yikes! Why? See my answer below – I’ve just posted this on the comments underneath the article:
The best piece of careers advice I ever got was ‘study what interests you, not what you (or your parents) think will give you a job a number of years later’.
Firstly, you will never be good at something you don’t care about. And if just you’re good at something when you’re 16, that doesn’t mean you’ll satisfied with it for the long time you’ll be in your professional life. I’ve seen this in my professional practice, with graduates coming back crying – thinking they were failures, after having aced all exams and gotten into the ‘right’ industry (mostly finance), but breaking down after a year out when confronted with the realities of having to do something for long hours every day that they were just not ‘built’ for.
Secondly, employment markets change really fast – and what is seen as ‘hot’ when signing up for a course, may be a disaster zone just three years later. This is precipitated by changes in technology, which enables companies to outsource and offshore first, and automate later. Yes, this affects even classic identifyable professions like e.g. law.
But just going back to what counts as interesting, and then ignoring the world around us isn’t the alternative we should be speaking about. I studied something that was deemed to make me unemployable for the rest of my life – but I spent my time during university working fairly systematically on my general employability skills (just in order to deal with the spectre of unemployment at the end), and I worked, worked and worked in a huge variety of sectors and roles to gain as much experience as I could. These skills helped me get my first ‘real’ job (while trying to help my friends who studied a ‘real’ subject and were unemployed for long stretches), while the knowledge I gained during my studies gives me the edge now when trying to understand the complex world of work around me.
In short – every subject in university can become serious, if you make it so.
PS: Needless to say, I’ve blogged about this topic before.
And I close with another Yikes! Just because this really hit a nerve with me.
Posted in Education & Employability Tagged with: employability, employers, graduates, higher education, skills, work, young people
November 28th, 2013 by matthias
Yesterday my team received a coaching masterclass by the master himself – John Lees. I can’t really pack into one blog post – or paragraph – the many useful things we’ve learnt; it was incredibly informative and full of useful – and most important for me, practical – Read more of this article »
Posted in Education & Employability
November 4th, 2013 by matthias
Posting (from my holiday) in support of my colleagues from the Business Relations Team @regentsuni, who organised this interesting event.
Posted in Education & Employability