CyberPath Occupations Framework Out for Consultation

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has issued a "Call For Feedback: Occupations Framework". The aim is to create a structure for describing cyber work in Australia. 

ACS Digital Pulse 2023

Greetings from the National Press club in Canberra, where the ACS Digital Pulse 2023 report was just launched by Mr Jerome Laxale MP, Member for Bennelong.  The report confirms a looming tech skills crisis, with 1.3 million additional skilled workers being needed. This is also bad news with women's share of the tech workforce going backwards in the last year. The ACS and the report by Deloitte call for training in AI, data analytics and robotics. These might sound like matters effecting only a small select section of the community. But I have spent the week talking to the media about the Optus network outage, with operations at Australian hospitals delayed, then a cyber attack at Australian ports stopping goods. The report also calls for more flexible credentialing with recognition of micro-credentials, and industry certifications.

Education Jobs Anywhere

Yesterday one of the well known online job platforms sent me a list of openings: four were in Canberra (three government jobs, one government contractor),plus one in Perth, and one in China. The four Canberra jobs were labelled "On-site", the Perth and China ones "Remote". The two remote jobs were in education: one was for a well known Australian Learning Management System : "This role can be based anywhere in Western Australia, the Asia Pacific region, UK or Europe! Just let us know where you are when you apply.". The China job was for a professor at a university. This has implications for Australian universities, who now have to compete for staff anywhere in the world. It also has security implications, where staff may apply for jobs in other countries, and reveal details of the sensitive projects they are working on.

Employability and Teaching

Employability has always been an important part of university education. The idea that students enrolled to explore the miseries of the universe and to think deep thoughts is a myth. Universities were established to provide trained professionals for industry and government. Those teaching the students therefore need to be trained in how to teach and test real-world skills. 

One way to make students more employable is to have them undertake internships and group projects. In ANU Techlauncher, computing students with group projects for a real clients. Their last assessment task is to write a job application. 

Providing the resources for Work Integrated Learning (WIL), is a challenge. The classes I help have 200 to 300 students. This could scale to any size, using group work tools from the IT industry. The limiting factor is the availability of suitable tutors.

WIL provides the opportunity to build partnerships with industry. The best partnerships are driven by student involvement which brings staff together. Innovation centers, such as Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) are also a useful. Just having some sort of committee doesn't really help. Adjunct and honorary staff with industry backgrounds also helps.

Hackerthons can help as a quick lightweight supplement to WIL. Student involvement in innovation centers is also useful. An example of a good story is an ANU student start-up on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. 

However, it takes training, as well as real world experience, for teaching staff to provide WIL. Australian universities tend to showcase teaching, but neglect basic teacher training for staff. School and TAFE teachers are required to have formal AQF qualifications, whereas university teachers are not. Unfortunately the priority at universities is research. One way to get researchers to take teacher training more seriously would be to emphasize how this will reduce work for them, so they can spend more time on research. This training can be done without making staff sit in classroom, but by Dogfooding: give the staff the learning experience we want them to provide their students.

AQF aligned micro-credentials provide the opportunity to rethink how teacher training is provided at universities. These could act as a minimum qualification which tutors are expected to have to teach. This would replace classroom based training courses with documenting experience, and peer support. Tutors could be offered free training, but then get credit for a qualification, by paying the usual course fees. Microcredentials could be nested into certificate/graduate certificates, diploma, degrees/masters of education. Staff could have the option of completing certifications for professional bodies as a byproduct.

Students training for the professions could be offered the same teaching courses as university staff, as teaching/supervision is part of being a professional. As an example, the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), is used for accrediting computing degrees in Australia. SFIA includes skills definitions for learning management, learning design, learning delivery, competency assessment, certification scheme operation, teaching, and subject formation.

Australian universites should maintain membership of national and international education bodies (such as ASCILITE, ACEN, and EDUCAUSE), and host events under their auspices. This will help guide staff, and lift the level of knowledge of education. This will help with emerging fields, such as co-design with students,  which require specialist skills currently not part of teacher training.

A modest proposal: I suggest an "Indo-Pacific Education Innovation Institute" to the new federal government, with $100M funding over ten years. This would train students from the region, alongside Australians, in advanced digital teaching techniques. 

Developing a Learning and Teaching Strategy

Along with many university staff, I have been invited to be part of developing a Learning and Teaching Strategy. This is an issue exercising the minds of people at many universities at present (or should be), as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. I have spent some of the last ten years studying, researching and presenting on these issues, so note that these are my views, not necessarily those of any particular institution.

An Approach

The approach I suggest is that universities design for a student who is remote, part time, and focused on practical vocational outcomes. Then add optional on-campus, and more academic activities. In terms of teacher development, require formal qualifications, but with training based on workplace experience.

It is much easier to start with a course designed for remote students, and add on-campus activities, than the reverse. Also, when another emergency forces some, or all, students online, this can be accomplished with no change in course design or delivery, the on campus components can be simply cancelled, leaving the remote component to continue. This approach was found to be effective in response to COVID-19 (Narayan, et al., p. 168, 2021).

Some issues:

1. Learning

Use of digital learning environments, on-campus learning, blended, flipped and flexible. As a result of the need to switch to online learning during the Pandemic, universities have well developed technical support for modern teaching approaches. The students are expecting these. The problem, up until 2020, was in convincing staff to do more than give the usual lectures. COVID-19 forced a crash program of online delivery. The problem is now how to make this more than just recorded lectures.

In part, the problem with learning is one of the self image of academics. When I joined the staff of a university decades ago, I assumed I would be researching, and teaching by giving an occasional lecture. As a computer professional, who had an award for helping getting the nation on the Internet, I assumed I could easily translate classroom teaching online. It took about ten years to realise I needed to swallow my pride and learn how to teach online without lectures. This is a process we need to take academic staff through, using dogfooding: teach them to teach by having them a student.

2 . Assessment

Also as a result of the pandemic, universities have technical support for flexible and advanced authentic forms of assessment (even if they don't use these). The ideal form of assessment is where the student does what they will need to do after graduation, in the workplace, and how they do it is checked. This can be in a real workplace, with an internship, or other Work Integrated Learning (WIL), or some form of simulation. Ideally the assessment is progressive, throughout the students courses, and accompanied by timely relevant feedback, so they pay attention. However, good assessment is much harder than end of semester examinations (which are bad assessment). This requires academics to be trained in how to assess, and time to set up. Once set up using the digital tools, the assessment takes more work. But academics will require the training and support to get to this point. 

As a student of assessment I did not believe much of what I was being told, until I had to experience it first hand (more dogfooding). As an example, I did not believe students did not read detailed feedback on assignments, until I got back my assignment on assessment and did not read the feedback. Only after this did I set about delivering feedback in smaller, more frequent chunks. Only after having to do group-work online, and reflective portfolio,  did I understand what these were about.

3. Teaching

How to ensure quality teaching is a dilemma for all university, but especially for research intensive ones. Whatever the marketing slogans might say, research is the priority, and researchers generally do not make good teachers. While vocationally focused, and not an elite researcher, I still did not volunteer to undertake teacher training, and had to be forced to do it. 

Universities will need to require staff to undergo teacher training, making recruitment and promotion conditional on achieving the required standard. I suggest this be done with formal courses, and AQF aligned qualifications. Voluntary schemes and ad hoc training courses are not sufficient. Universities have the opportunity to set up nested programs which can be a showcase for future offerings across the institution. As an example, micro-credentials which nest into a graduate certificate, diploma, and masters degree in university education, with WIL, & recognition of prior learning (RPL). Components of these programs can be offered to students, who are plan to be trainers in their discipline, as well as to staff. 

4. Job Ready Graduates

Internships, WIL, and career skills, as typically provided in computing, engineering and other closely vocationally linked disciplines, can be expanded to other fields. As an example, the ANU Computing School offers internships to individual students, and group projects for real clients (Awasthy, Flint, & Sankaranarayana, 2017). ANU Careers guides the group project students through the process of documenting the skills gained, considering careers, and applying for a job. Rather than this being extra-curricular, it is integrated into a course, with assessment (Worthington, 2019). Further digital support for these resource intensive programs can be developed. As with other forms of education and assessment, it would be valuable for teaching staff to have undergone such a program as a student.

References

Awasthy, R., Flint, S., & Sankaranarayana, R. (2017, April). Lifting the constraints—closing the skills gap with authentic student projects. In 2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 955-960). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7942964

Narayan, V., Cochrane, T., Aiello, S., Birt, J. R., Alizadeh, M., Cowie, N., Goldacre, P., Sinfield, D., Stretton, T., Worthington, T., Deneen, C., & Cowling, M. A. (2021). Mobile learning and socially constructed blended learning through the lens of Activity Theory. In S. Gregory, S. Warburton, & M. Schier (Eds.), Back to the Future – ASCILITE ‘21. Proceedings of the 38th International Conference of Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education (pp. 166-171). Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education. https://2021conference.ascilite.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ASCILITE-2021-Proceedings-Narayan-Cochrane-Cowie-Goldacre-Birt-Sinfield-Mehrasa-Worthington-Aiello.pdf

Worthington, T. (2019, December). Blend and flip for teaching communication skills to final year international computer science students. In 2019 IEEE International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/TALE48000.2019.9225921

Providing Students With More Job-Ready Skills

Lynlea Small, 
University of the Sunshine Coast

Lynlea Small, Amie Shaw and Ruth McPhail asked "1 in 4 unemployed Australians has a degree. How did we get to this point?". They rightly point out that Australian government policy aimed to increase number of Australians with university degrees. That has been a success, however, not all degrees provide vocational skills and a degree is not necessarily the best way to get a job. I suggest students can be encouraged to select shorter more vocationally relevant university programs and those in the VET sector (vocational education & training). A certificate, rather than a degree, from a university or a TAFE can provide quicker, cheaper result for a student looking for a job.

I teach computing and engineering students, where the degree programs are accredited by professional bodies. Major employers came to the campus last week, to recruit the students I teach. These students undertake project based work, internships, group projects for real clients and other forms of work integrated learning. The last assessment task I take students through is to write an application for a currently advertised job, explaining how the skills and knowledge they have gained can be used in the workplace. This makes the students more employable.  However, not all degrees are so vocationally focused and a degree may not be the best path to a career.

Rather than calling on graduates to be "resilient, determined and adaptable", as Small, Shaw and McPhail do, I suggest we need to change the policy. The Australian government has made an attempt to do that, by making degrees which lead to jobs cheaper and also introducing six month undergraduate certificates for high demand job areas. However, I suggest also encouraging more school leavers to take up a VET program. These VET graduates can then contemplate further study, perhaps at university, after they have employment.

Academics can also play a part in making graduates more employable. They can do this by building practical skills into the curriculum, which help students demonstrate they are "resilient, determined and adaptable". It is not enough to encourage students to undertake extracurricular activities and hope somehow this will make up for the deficiencies in their degree program. It requires teaching staff to learn new teaching skills, so they can provide a less theoretical, more practical form of education, where students learn to solve real problems for real people, by solving real problems for real people. 

It is not easy to teach or to assess real world skills. But it does help if you have received that form of training yourself recently and have been trained to teach it. It also helps if you have real world experience, and team up with those who have for teaching. I found training in both the VET and university sectors in new ways to teach very useful. Also useful was being able to relate my experience working in the computer industry, designing systems, working in teams and reviewing failed projects. It also helps to have experience of being an international online student, so I can better understand what my students are experiencing.

Supply of technology workers in Australia

The Australian Computer Society, released the ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2019 report yesterday. This is an overview of the digital economy, workforce and current policy environment, by Deloitte Access Economics. Of particular interest to educators is the section on Supply of technology workers in Australia (p. 10). The report concludes "The highest policy priority for the digital economy is skills development." and suggests "... we need more people to consider moving from other occupations to take one of the additional 100,000 jobs that will be created in technology by 2024...". This is good news for those of us involved in IT education.

One way to retrain is by applying vocational and online educational techniques, flipped, blended, and peer assessed.

University of Canberra Reviewing Contingent-Continuing Academic Employment

The University of Canberra (UC) has announced an independent review of "Contingent-Continuing" academic employment, to be chaired by Professor Kevin Hall, from University of Newcastle.

Unfortunately the UC media release announcing the review (appended), doesn't explain what "Contingent-Continuing" employment is. Andrews, Bare, Bentley, Goedegebuure , Pugsley and Rance (p 15, 2016) offer a description of contingent continuing employment as "continuing employment but with easier termination arrangements":

"Fixed-term employment is almost invariably used for academic staff funded by research grants, although larger research-based universities have recognised the negative impact of contingent employment on researchers, and have introduced a “contingent continuing” employment category that provides continuing employment but with easier termination arrangements in the event that the researcher misses out on being engaged under a subsequent grant. The severance payments for this form of employment are also lower than the standard academic redundancy payment entitlements"

From: Andrews, Bare, Bentley, Goedegebuure , Pugsley and Rance (p 15, 2016)

Putting it more crudely, this is a form of indefinite temporary employment. While the uncertainty over research grants to fund employees has been the primary rationale for not employing academics permanently, the uncertainty around the need for teaching staff may also be a factor. Australian universities have experienced a boom in enrollments, due to government funding for domestic students, and demand from international students.  However, neither of these sources of income are certain to continue into the future. Also the use of new teaching techniques and educational technology, are changing the number of teaching staff required, and their skills. Most academics currently at Australian universities are not trained or qualified to teach in this new environment.

Dr Inger Mewburn (ANU), has proposed a study into  the nature and extent of academic work. Such a study would be useful for informing the UC review, as well as likely future government inquires into the Australian university system.

'University of Canberra

Media Release 

28 March 2019 

VICE-CHANCELLOR ANNOUNCES INDEPENDENT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR PROGRAM REVIEW

The University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Deep Saini, has today announced an independent review of Contingent-Continuing academic employment—commonly referred to as the Assistant Professor program—to evaluate and improve the program.

Assistant professors comprise approximately 22.5 per cent of the academic staff at the University of Canberra through a unique program in Australia. The scheme allows assistant professors to fast track to promotion to associate professor within seven years via two performance reviews.

The independent review will aim to ensure that participants are valued, supported, professionally developed and well managed to continue to be successful.

 “Whilst the basis of the contract is sound and has delivered success for many of our academic staff in fast-tracking their careers, we endeavour to deliver the best possible experience and results in this Australia-first program—both for the assistant professors and the students they teach,” said Professor Saini.

“I have personally consulted with many assistant professors in the program to hear their suggestions on how the implementation and experience of the program can be improved.”

 “We have used input from the assistant professors, staff and the National Tertiary Education Union to develop the scope of the review.”

The Review Panel consists of four members, including three external independent members and one internal member.

Professor of Chemistry and Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor and Vice President at University of Newcastle, Kevin Hall, will act as chair with Professor of Psychology and Education Director at University of Sydney, Marie Carroll, as member, and Workplace Relations and Employment Law specialist, Dr Graham Smith, as an external consultant to the panel.

Professor of Biomedicine at University of Canberra Reena Ghildyal will be an internal consultant, having personal experience of the Assistant Professor program at the University of Canberra. The scope of the review includes, but is not limited to:

• Examining new policy and procedures, terms and conditions and compliance with legislation;
• Attracting the right talent for successful outcomes;
• Frameworks for review and promotion;
• Supervision and mentoring, including appropriate training for supervisors and managers;
• Assessing if workload and performance-based remuneration encourages work/life balance;
• Examine the success of the scheme from talent attraction, development and retention;
• Ensure diversity, equity, access and inclusion;
• Highlight the positive outcomes and identify the areas for improvement. 

The Review will be provided to the Vice-Chancellor within 12 weeks of the panel commencing. '

From: Media and Communication, University of Canberra, 28 March 2019

Reference

Andrews, S., Bare, L., Bentley, P., Goedegebuure, L., Pugsley, C., & Rance, B. (2016). Contingent academic employment in Australian universities. LH Martin Institute. URL https://melbourne-cshe.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/2564262/2016-contingent-academic-employment-in-australian-universities-updatedapr16.pdf

 

Australian Employers Are Satified With Graduates

The "2018 Employer Satisfaction Survey" (QILT, 10 January 2019), indicates employers are very happy with the graduates they get. The Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) team, was funded by the Australia Government. An analysis of 5,300 survey results from graduate supervisors showed 84.8% were satisfied with their graduates. The least satisfied were in creative arts. It may be that the more vocationally aligned STEM degrees are a closer match to jobs.

The Group of Eight "Leading Universities" did not do so well, with only half of them scoring above average for employer satisfaction. There is no clear relationship between university size, focus or location, and employer satisfaction. Perhaps it is just that Australia has high standards, and we don't have any "bad" universities. This is good news for employers, but does it indicate Australia is over investing in university education?

ps: Bond University topped the 2018 Employer Satisfaction Survey, so it should be worth listening to their Professor Keitha Dunstan, Deputy Vice- Chancellor (Academic), 26th February, 2019. The event is in Canberra, although Blackboard's web page confusingly says "Sydney".

Tomorrow’s Digitally Enabled Workforce:

Greetings from the Sydney Opera House where Senator Michaelia Cash, Minister for Employment, is launching the report "Tomorrow’s Digitally Enabled Workforce" (Hajkowicz, Reeson, Rudd, Bratanova, Hodgers, Mason and Boughen, 2016). The report does not contain any new insights on the future of work, but is a useful compilation of conventional wisdom: IT will take over many jobs and the workforce needs to be trained for more high-tech and also human focused roles, with continual learning.

The area where the report is weak is in policy implications. After outlining what is going to happen, the report does not really say what we, as a nation, should do about it. As an educator, to me the implications are clear: we need to train people with tech and social skills, but most importantly, people who know about how to learn.

CONTENTS
Foreword 1
Executive summary 7
1    Introduction 17
2     A snapshot of Australia’s labour market today 23
2 1     Employment rates and spare capacity of labour 24
2 2     Youth unemployment 24
2 3    Earnings 25
2 4     Skilled labour – Australia’s competitive advantage 25
2 5     Climate change and employment 25
3     Strategic foresight 26
3 1     Strategic foresight method 26
3 2     Expert interview outcomes 28
4     The megatrends 31
4 1     The second half of the chessboard 31
4 2     Porous boundaries 36
4 3     The era of the entrepreneur 40
4 4     Divergent demographics 44
4 5     The rising bar 49
4 6     Tangible intangibles 53
5     The scenarios 57
5 1     Horizontal axis – extent of institutional change 58
5 2     Vertical axis – extent of task automation 60
5 3     Scenario 1 – Lakes 62
5 4     Scenario 2 – Harbours 63
5 5     Scenario 3 – Rivers 65
5 6     Scenario 4 – Oceans 68
6     Technology and employment 71
6 1    Globalisation 71
6 2    Automation 71
6 3    Augmentation 72
6 4     Distributional impacts 74
6 5     Technology and the firm 75
6 6     Market structure 76
6 7     Jobs of the future 76
7   Policy implications 85
7 1     Digital inclusion 85
7 2     Empowering and informing labour market re-activation 85
7 3     New workforce statistics 86
7 4    Education 87
7 5     Workplace relations 88
7 6     The need for choices 89
8    Conclusion 91
References  94

One problem with the report is that it has been released with a restrictive copyright notice, contrary to Australian Government policy. 

 Reference

Hajkowicz SA, Reeson A, Rudd L, Bratanova A,
Hodgers L, Mason C, Boughen N (2016)
Tomorrow’s Digitally Enabled Workforce:Megatrends and scenarios for jobs andemployment in Australia over the comingtwenty years. CSIRO, Brisbane.

Enhancing university graduate employability strategies

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where I am taking part in a workshop on Enhancing university graduate employability strategies, by Dr. Shelley Kinash of Bond University. Participants were handed an extensive set of papers, including "8 ways to enhance your students’ graduate employability". Also I found a paper "Enhancing graduate employability of the 21st century learner". The amount of material provided was a little overwhelming, but it is all clearly written and well designed (including use of graphics). There are also materials, with a creative commons license on the website http://graduateemployability.com/

One aspect of universities addressing "employability" of graduates is that universities have helped create the problem. Previously only a very small proportion of the population obtained a university degree. Employers could use this as a way to shortlist candidates, even where the degree was unrelated to the job. With many more graduates available, employers can no longer do this.

It seems to me that universities are relearning what the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector already know and implement. Trade training traditional includes work experience and apprenticeships. This applies to hi-tech jobs. As an example, with the Australian Government has an ICT Apprenticeship Programme,  the apprentices work four days a week in a government agency, while undertaking a VET Certificate or a Diploma. There is also a Australian Government ICT Cadetship Programme, for university students after their first year, working 2, or more, days per week in an agency.
 
The workshop also touched on employability of postgraduates, with surveys showing they are unhappy about the assistance they are offered. However, if the aim is employment, then I suggest the student should undertake a professional degree. Students undertaking a research degree cannot expect this to assist with general employment (and it may well make them less employable).

Google Wants Coders Who Can Communicate

Dr Will Uther, from Google Sydney, talked to the PHD students at the Australian National University this afternoon about "Some things a PhD student needs to know before applying at Google".  One point he made was that PHDs need to practice their coding skills for Google job interviews. Also he suggested trying some of the problems in Cracking the Coding Interview: 150 Programming Questions and Solutions (Gayle Laakmann McDowell, 2011), for practice.

What Google Wants in a Job Applicant

Yesterday, I speculated about what Google wants in an applicant for a job. But on 27 February 2015, at 3pm, Dr Will Uther, from Google Sydney, is visiting the Australian National University to tell us exactly what Google is looking for in staff.

Some things a PhD student needs to know before applying at Google

Dr Will Uther (Google Sydney)

CECS SEMINAR SERIES

DATE: 2015-02-27
TIME: 15:00:00 - 16:00:00 ...

ABSTRACT:
I interview a range of people applying for jobs at Google. There are some common mistakes that seem to be made by PhD students who are applying from Australian Universities (+ NICTA) for software engineering positions at Google. I'd like to try and point out some of what Google is looking for so that PhD students can do better in their interviews.
BIO:
Will finished his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University and then was hired back to NICTA/UNSW as a Researcher in the Machine Learning group in 2003. His research interests revolve around Artificial Intelligence: Reinforcement Learning and Robotics. He competed in the Legged League of the RoboCup robotic soccer competition - including world championships in 1998 (at CMU) and 2003 (at UNSW). He competed in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge self-driving vehicle competition. In 2013 he move to Google Australia where he currently works with the Google Maps APIs.

Digital Technologies Job Available Teaching Governance for Melanesia

Recently I was asked if there were any jobs available in higher education at ANU. So I looked at the Current Vacancies at The Australian National University web page. There are currently sixteen positions available: eleven Academic Vacancies and five General Vacancies. One which caught my attention is a Digital Technologies Research Fellow in the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Program (SSGM). This involves the use of social media and new technology for teaching.