Athabasca University launches online workplace skills courses

Brian Stewart
Deputy CIO,
University of Alberta
Leading the Crafting a
Digital Strategy Course

Athabasca University (Canada) has launched "PowerED"™, a set of online self paced short courses for workplace skills. Brian Stewart, Deputy CIO of the University of Alberta, is leading the Crafting a Digital Strategy course (and former student in my ICT Sustainability course). The announcement is well timed, with reports such as Deloitte Access Economic's "Premium Skills" pointing out the value of soft and digital skills. However, like other "microlearning modules", offered by universities, it is not clear how this education fits with current offerings: Does this count towards a degree? Is it recognized by industry?

The Digital Transformation Leadership Certificate in Cloud (shortening the name to save time), consists of five courses: Decoding Disruptive Technologies, Crafting a Digital Strategy, AWS Cloud Foundations, Leading Transformational Change, and Implementing a Digital Future. Each of these requires a minimum of 16 hours work, over two weeks. So the certificate would require 80 hours work, over 10 weeks. That is a little shorter than an Australian university semester-long course. This is much larger than the Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) recognized micro-credentials which start at about 40 hours study. But it is shorter than proposed in the European MOOC Consortium (EMC)  a Common Microcredential Framework (CMF), which envisages 100 to 150 hours study.

The first five of certificates offered by AU are:

1. Leader Development Program Certificate;  
2. Essential Skills for Leaders Certificate;  
3. Digital Transformation Leadership in Cloud Certificate;  
4. Digital Transformation Leadership in Machine Learning Certificate; and  
5. Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification™ Training  

Developing Australia’s the Digital Workforce

Greetings from the Press Club in Canberra, where the Australian Computer Society (ACS) has just launched the report "Australia’s Digital Pulse: Developing the digital workforce to drive growth in the future" commissioned from Deloitte Access Economics (DAE). The report speculates about technologies which may effect manufacturing, construction and mining, but fails to address the effect ICT is already having on education.


The 108 page report predicts that Australia’s digital economy is will "grow significantly over the coming years". Technologies expected to expand are "cloud services, social media and mobile devices". These seem a safe prediction, but others are "3D printing in manufacturing, drones in the construction industry and driverless vehicles on mining sites". I doubt that any of these will be significant for Australia.

Australia already has driver-less trucks on mining sites and driver-less trains for ore transport. However, these provide only minor increases in productivity for declining industries.  "drones" (that is pilot-less miniature aircraft) may have a minor role in the construction industry. 3D printing will have a role in manufacturing and might provide a minor revival for Australia's declining manufacturing industry.

What is curiously lacking in the Deloitte report is mention of education as an industry. The report mentions education, but only in the role of providing ICT education. The report does not discuss the revolution taking place in all levels of education, through the application of ICT. In particular the report does not mention education as a twenty billion dollar a year export industry for Australia. ICT provides opportunities to expand Australia's education exports into new international markets. However, ICT also opens about half a million Australian education jobs up to overseas competition and could see much of the $80B education budget being sent overseas.

One interesting innovation in how the report as prepared is the use of LinkedIn to gauge demand for ICT personnel.

Contents

Executive summary 3

1. Digital economy snapshot 8

1.1 Future waves of digital disruption  10
1.2 Australia’s digital economy 13
1.3 Australia’s ICT workforce 16
1.4 ICT business activity 22
1.5 Migration of ICT workers 24
1.6 ICT education in Australia 27

2. Occupational analysis 30

2.1 Future demand for ICT workers  32
2.2 What ICT jobs are available?  38
2.3 Broader workforce ICT skills requirements 46

3. Workforce planning and development

3.1 The case for ICT workforce and skills development
3.2 Assessing gaps in the workforce
3.3 ICT professional development opportunities
3.4 Overseas examples of ICT workforce development initiatives 63

4. Future directions 66

References 70

Appendix: Statistical compendium 74
At a glance – Australia 76
At a glance – States and Territories 77
ICT employment 78
ICT migration 85
ICT higher and vocational education 87
Women in ICT 88
Older ICT workers 89
ICT research and development 89
Trade in ICT services 90
Detailed state figures 90
International comparisons 97

From: Australia’s Digital Pulse: Developing the digital workforce to drive growth in the future,  Deloitte Access Economics, March 2016

Economic Impact of Canberra's Universities

The report "Higher learning:Economic and social impact of the major universities in the ACT" (Deloitte Access Economics, July 2014), provides a detailed, if flawed, analysis of Canberra's students and the benefits they bring to the city. The report was commissioned by the ANU and University of Canberra and so concentrates on their students, but nevertheless brings together very useful information about the students.

According to the report, Education and Training makes up $2.3B, or 7.7%, of Canberra's GDP. This is the fourth biggest area of the local economy, after Public Administration and Safety (34%), Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (11%) and Construction (11%).

An interesting chart on page 14 of the report shows employment rates and wages for those with different qualifications (Sourced from the Productivity Commission). Not surprisingly, those with higher education qualifications have a higher chance of being employed and get paid more. But surprisingly, there is little difference between a VET Certificate and a university degree.

Table 5.2 on page 45 shows Education (Tertiary, Preschool and School Education) is the third highest category of employment for ANU graduates (10% domestic students and 15% International). However, Table A.3 (Page 53), shows that only 1% of ANU students are studying Education, compared to 10.9% at University of Canberra. This suggests ANU could expand its Education program and acquire about another 2,000 students as a result.


The report discusses possible future expansion of university's contribution to the Canberra economy. However, the report fails to mention the changes taking place in the way universities teach students. Teaching is moving from lecture based, to on-line and blended modes. I could not find the word "Internet" in the report at all. The only mention of "online" was for tools for treating mental disorders. The report points out "online programs are scalable and can be used en masse", but does not make the link between this and education generally, just for mental health treatment.

Education is changing so that students will not need to be on-campus for most of their studies. As a result, students will not need to be in the same city (or country) as their institution, most of the time. While this may sound far fetched, the newspaper and retail industries have been radically altered by the Internet. That change is now occurring in education. Canberra's universities could choose not to offer an on-line education option, in an attempt to keep the students on campus, but this is likely to instead result in students choosing a more flexible institution in another city (or country). Canberra needs to provide something for the students to do, such as a job, or working on a start-up company, to keep them in Canberra, while they are studying.