Future
ISSUE #1 — Winter 2018
of
Learning
Table of Contents
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FROM THE EDITOR
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THE FUTURE OF WORK; IT’S ALREADY HERE
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CONTENT CURATION: CREATE, COLLECT, CURATE
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FORESIGHT
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REVOLUTIONIZING REALITY
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BYOD
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MICROLEARNING
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GRAPHIC DESIGN IN DEVELOPMENT
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NUDGES: THE DESIGN OF YOUR CHOICE
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MOOCS, THE MAGIC MASS FORMULA
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GAMIFICATION AT THE ILO TRAINING CENTRE
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THE RETURN OF THE MENTOR
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LIFELONG LEARNING
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ON THE STREETS OF 2040 ...
FROM THE EDITOR The Future of Learning is here and now. Reflecting on the Future of Learning belongs to the core tasks of a training centre. It’s our unique selling proposition and it makes us fundamentally different. When thinking about the future we do not need to dive into crystal ball gazing about far futures. We can tap into the actual collective learning experiences from our colleagues with interesting, good, and best practices that are going on at this very moment. In 2008 we did a similar consultation exercise which resulted into the well-known Turin Learning Approach, consisting of 13 ingredients that reflect the importance of relevance, quality and impact in our overall learning approach at the Centre. A decade later it is not that easy to summarize what the essential learning ingredients are. The context of learning is contaminated with the well-known VUCA principle; “Volatility”, “Uncertainty”, “Complexity” and “Ambiguity”. In this environment it is challenging to create a linear recipe of what the future of learning is about. What is certain is the fact that the Future of Learning is closely connected with the Future of Work and that the only way to engage with the Future is to create a future we all want. This magazine is a first attempt to stimulate conversations at the intersection of learning, technology and innovation. It highlights innovative learning tracks from our participants and colleagues and it hopes to inspire you with new ideas, tools and methodologies for Learning Innovation in your own training programmes. Pick what you need to put on your LearnList for 2018.
— Tom Wambeke It is only real when there is an ad about it 15’
Imagine a typical product, service, policy/government advertisement that you would see on the streets in 2040 and that would show you straight away that things have changed in this future. Think about all the elements a typical ad has: great imagery, a simple key message, a logo/brand + baseline, where to find more info, stuff-in-small-letters-that-no-one-reads-but-tells-a-lot etc.
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THE FUTURE OF WORK; IT’S ALREADY HERE
The Future of Work initiative is well on its way towards the Centenary celebrations which will take place next year. Our Training Centre is decidedly aligning with this and is currently building a capacity building supporting initiative that contributes to the larger Future of Work umbrella. All training units will be involved as the Future of Work is directly connected to the Future of Learning. In this article we want to explore the different pillars of this supporting initiative.
Thematic dialogues from Silicon Valley towards the Nile Valley The Centre is the ideal setting to explore the different perspectives regarding important and pertinent Future of Work themes. The Global Symposium on Work on Society, which was held in September 2017, is a good example of this. The use of participatory methodologies to enrich the current dialogues is a vital and important value-added ingredient. https://futureofwork.itcilo.org/
Capacity building support for the Future of Work To increase the outreach of the Future of Work dialogues, a set of targeted training interventions have been scheduled for 2018. Reporting on the Future of Work is an interesting collaboration with ILO Geneva where, in close collaboration with journalists, we are discussing the ILO’s Future of Work message as a part of the global conversation which is taking place.
Learning innovation, our comparative advantage Exploring new conversations, ideas and innovations through participatory learning methodologies and technologies are the value-added features that the Centre can bring to the on-going progress in the Future of Work field. The launch of the supporting platform http://futureofwork. itcilo.org will be our institutional aggregation point where dialogue, training and useful knowledge resources will all be collected together.
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Q: What’s curation about?
CONTENT CURATION: CREATE, COLLECT, CURATE
INTERVIEW WITH DR. WENDY SCHULTZ (INFINITE FUTURES) & VICTORIA WARD (SPARKNOW )
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Victoria: Curation is a way to collect extensively and document each phase of your projects and meetings to create a body of materials and assets for future use. It helps to weave red threads, and helps projects “travel” beyond the limitations of single encounters. It is considered as one of the critical new skills is developing one’s own subject matter domain and structuring and organizing content. As an organizer, it’s natural to focus upon “getting things done”, on delivering particular events or programmes. Both for the animation of workshops and as a personal facilitation practice, curation is often neglected. This often impoverishes the potential richness of a collaborative working session. Wendy: To complete Victoria’s great answer here, in academia, we see curation as a fundamental competency necessitated by new information generation. Today’s world is moving too fast for the academic community to keep up; in this era of infomania, or information overload if you will, the content is available, it is just a matter of organizing and structuring it to answer a target’s needs. Q: How to curate content? Wendy: There are many different formats that you can use to curate content: photographs, screengrabs of Google Docs in use, email exchanges, field notes, audio recordings, video recordings, scans of completed worksheets, lists of people, locations or ideas. This reflects a growing trend towards ‘social reporting’ of events. It can help to spice up formal records, or mission reports, as well as provide the material for you to develop engagement campaigns with your stakeholder groups.
Whichever format you are using, these kinds of techniques can often trigger surprise, and can be used creatively to reinforce or to challenge a participant’s sense memory of a particular event or project. From a practical point of view, also consider the standards/quality of what you are collecting. We’d always recommend taking photographs, scans and recordings at a high resolution to ensure you have options for future use. Q: How to develop curation practices? Wendy: It is important to develop curation and awareness around its practices. During workshops/meetings, it is important to actively work with participants to explore linkages and connections between different phases of a project, or even different parts of the same meeting. Maintaining active participation in the room will spark new ideas and help generate information that could be priceless. Victoria: As an individual, I always push people I am collaborating with to cultivate that habit of self-reflection; logging and examining how you yourself respond to different situations and contexts. I personally keep a field note diary, reflect upon how I responded during a particular encounter, and then return to this note some time later to see what it might teach me. Another good practice to develop would be to conscientiously work on curating a collection of raw materials generated throughout projects and then re-use them later to bring the ideas, voices and content from different encounters into contact with one another.
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“At a time of global economic turmoil and uncertainty, investment in social protection is necessary, feasible and effective. The recommendations of the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group point the way towards a fairer world of decent jobs and opportunities for all.” — Ban Ki-moon
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FORESIGHT
Organizations and institutions adapt, innovate and renew themselves in an environment of continuously unfolding change. The unexpected, novel or intractable challenges that such an environment inevitably produces cannot therefore be addressed by solutions that are only based on an understanding of what may have worked in the past. Since 2015, the ILO and ITCILO have been helping ILO staff and constituents to become familiar with wellestablished futures, foresight and horizon scanning tools and methods, to create ways forward. Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the future to inform decision making today. Purpose-specific futures, foresight and horizon scanning
methods have been helping ILO staff and constituents to consider issues more deeply and to better inform a wide range of work, from policy and programming, project formulation and implementation, to communications and advocacy. Back in 2017, the Centre embarked on a journey of developing its foresight capacity around four ILO topics; social and solidarity economy, social protection, green jobs and labour migration. For this particular journey, the DELTA team worked on piloting foresight exercises for the different topics and designing a tailor-made training package for each thematic topic, with the support of foresight experts. These are their stories.
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The Future of Social and Solidarity Economy “In a context in which significant economic, technological and demographic changes threaten to reduce decent work opportunities at a time when the demand for employment is increasing and economic inequalities are higher than ever, the social and solidarity economy has emerged as a viable option to help address these challenges. While the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) is a diverse and heterogeneous universe of organizational models and approaches, the main actors that comprise it share common features that make them ideally suited to take on some of the key challenges related to the future of work. As stakeholder- (rather than shareholder-)oriented enterprises, they tend to cater more to the needs of their workers and other constituents; as enterprises rooted in their local communities, they are less likely to move in search of cheaper labour and are more likely to identify emerging needs at the local level to which address their activities; as not-forprofit enterprises, they can leverage fiduciary relations, volunteer work and donations that enable them to operate in low-profit sectors.�
In the light of the above, foresight turned out to be an effective scanning and decision-making methodology and was re-integrated in all the SSE training events to help civil society and policy makers taking the right measures towards a more sustainable future of work.
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The Future of Social Protection For a long time, social protection systems have been designed based on the assumed standard forms of the employment relationship. Looking back at the demographic, social and economic challenges the world was facing in the late 2010s, a rising need for effective and socially sustainable social protection systems, which can cope with the challenge of ageing societies and address the need for increasing number of jobs in the care economy, drastically rose. Since then, foresight analysis has been contributing to a better understanding of the trajectory of the above challenges and exploring their implication in terms of future work in the field of social protection.
The Future of Green Jobs Back in 2017, ILO CO-Lusaka in Zambia requested the Centre to implement a regional learning forum for Africa on “Private Sector Inclusive Green Growth and Job Creation”. The Africa Forum aimed to open the floor for the different stakeholders to share knowledge and inform future policies and strategies on inclusive green growth and the creation of decent green jobs. Foresight analysis added value as a tool to facilitate the dialogue among stakeholders on how the Just Transition policy framework could take shape at country level. Two foresight analysis exercises took place at the regional learning forum event in support of the elaboration of policy recommendations for private sector involvement in the transition to greener economies. Ultimately, the foresight product designed for the Sustainable Development
Programme was added to the training activities proposed to strategic partners, such as the Partnership for Action on Green Economy. It was also applied in the occasion of national workshops, seminars and academies.
The Future of Labour Migration Since 2012, IMI Oxford has collaborated with ITCILO within the Labour Migration Academy (LMA) in the field of future scenarios of migration. Designing a joint training package gave the Centre the opportunity to formalize the partnership with Oxford and together develop a tailormade product answering ILO priorities on labour migration and mobility and the future of work. As the foresight training tool offers a wide set of training options for different audiences, settings and purposes, it helped facilitate foresight initiatives targeting specific audiences such as government of origin or destination and national coordination structure in charge of developing migration policy, which could help in supporting the elaboration of policy recommendations. The tool also helped developing a specific set of foresight activities adapted to employers’ and workers’ representatives, local and regional authorities, migrant associations, who are increasingly involved in the development of labour migration policies and participating in global dialogue on migration such as global compact, GFMD. Finally, the training kit helped develop the portfolio of labour migration training activities as more and more UN agencies, like IOM, UNDP, UNHCR and UN Women and other international and regional organizations dealing with migration, were interested in future thinking.
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“Talking about virtual reality is like dancing about architecture.” — Chris Milk, creator of the first UN film Clouds over Sidra using VR to show life inside a Syrian refugee camp
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REVOLUTIONIZING REALITY
HOW VIRTUAL AND AUGMENTED REALITY ENHANCE LEARNING
There is quite a bit of confusion about the difference between augmented and virtual reality. Both seem to change the way we perceive our natural environments, but in different ways. From there on, it is not always clear-cut how they can enhance learning. Online learning has changed the face of training and closed the gap between the natural and the virtual world. Where online learning made it possible to learn without having to step foot in a classroom, virtual created a virtual environment presented to our senses in such a way that we experience it as if we were really there. Not so much for augmented reality which makes us see the physical classroom we are in, but adds virtual layers to it, combining both realities. Still sounds a little confusing? That might be the case since talking about virtual and augmented reality is a bit like
dancing about architecture. Let’s switch to a different approach and discover some real world applications of VR in the context of learning and development.
Building empathy and capturing lost heritage UNESCO could definitely be delighted about the possibility virtual reality offers to capture moments and locations in history, before deterioration or vandalism can erase them. Like for example historical religious statues in the Middle East that were recently blown up. If captured in VR, those locations could still be visited. VR also helps to build empathy if used as a perspective taking tool. By creating immersive conditions, one could put on
18 VR glasses and experience realistically what it is to be homeless, to suffer from autism or to work in dangerous conditions. In a recent UNHCR film, Clouds over Sidra, policy makers at Davos were taken on a virtual trip into a Syrian refugee camp, enhancing their understanding of the realities displaced people are dealing with. The ILO Training Centre on its turn is actively exploring the added value of using VR in educational contexts. We tested out how basic and affordable VR devices, such as Google cardboards, could be used particularly for training labour inspectors and more generally within the broader field of occupational safety and health. We even moved to the next stage by participating in the development of a real VR experience. The Maritime Virtual Tour is the virtualization of a ship to guide labour inspectors on a maritime deck. Participants put on VR glasses for an immersive learning experience not only simulating real life situations on the ship but even adding all kind of default situations an inspector could encounter.
A very useful tool in our everyday lives Unlike virtual reality, which requires you to inhabit an entirely virtual environment, augmented reality uses your existing natural environment and simply overlays virtual information on top of it. It ads elements from the virtual world, such as images, sound and touch feedback, to the real world. Doing so, AR enhances the things we see, feel and hear. It can become a built-in feature of glasses, headset or digital contact lenses. Picture yourself picking up a sushi box at the supermarket while your glasses project info on ingredients and nutritional
The Future of Learning
values on the packaging. Or imagine yourself strolling through a museum where paintings on the walls talk and interact with you. Rubens just came back to life. A less entertaining but potentially lifesaving use of augmented reality is in the field of healthcare. The projection of organs by holograms can help medical students to study anatomy or surgeons to prepare for complicated operations. It can also assist surgeons within the operating room, where precision is of prime importance. AR can project extremely realistic 3D images of tumors on the body, localize veins or project the patient’s vitals within the operating doctor’s field of view. The United Nations “Not a Target” campaign which targets millennials and pushes them to act for change, uses Facebook’s Camera Effects Studio tool. It allows civilians and humanitarian workers to record and share their on-the-ground stories adding filters and augmented reality features. It immerses the audience into their environment and as they speak, their words scroll down the screen. Augmented reality literally brings new dimensions to learning. It may entrap the attention of students as well as motivate them to study. AR can help you to learn how to play piano, by projecting the notes directly onto the right keys. Or it can project dangerous science experiments and the explosive combination of molecules in front of your eyes without risk. Augmented reality can render in 3D models anything that is hard to visualize, explain or imagine in students’ minds. But the most common example of augmented reality you probably know about are the filters you can add to pictures on Snapchat. Or Pokémon Go, just for the record. Would you like to learn more about virtual or augmented reality? Visit our website: http://virtualreality.itcilo.org
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BYOD
Bring Your Own Device, be it a laptop, tablet or smartphone, is going to be the new reality in future learning. The ITCILO has increasingly been providing tablets during its learning activities and after 3 years, it is safe to say the initiative has been quite a success. Even up to the point that it was decided to not give master students at the Turin School of Development a tablet for their learning activities, since they – just like many ITCILO participants – are already bringing their own laptops and tablets these days. This is a clear trend that indicates a shift is going to happen in the future of learning. Is our Centre ready?
The Benefits of Learning with Devices Learning experiences have become more interactive and engaging through technology. For example, VoxVote can let
150 participants express their opinion simultaneously. The questions drafted beforehand are displayed through the app on participants’ tablets. When everyone has answered, the online software collects all data and visualizes the outcome in a graph that can be projected. It is great for speakers and trainers to get insights on what kind of audience they have in front of them. The audience, on the other hand, will have a greater sense of contribution. Another example is the Green Learning Game, which is played in pairs using a tablet or smartphone. It requires users to collaborate whilst exploring the location and networking with others. Social learning, knowledge sharing and content creation increase through the use of mobile devices, which enable easy access to social media and other tools that allow the sharing of opinions and newly gained knowledge. Participants can tweet about an interesting statement, share a picture of new data they were exposed to,
20 or make a Facebook Live video of their favourite speaker and share it on their networks. Digitally active participants will enter the social network of the Centre, but also bring their own professional and personal networks in touch with the Centre’s. It’s a win-win. At the same time, the ecological footprint of the Centre is being reduced as resources and training materials become available online rather than on paper. However, do not mistake the eCampus for an online repository of PowerPoints and PDFs. If designed properly, courses on the Centre’s learning platform can be highly interactive, engaging and impactful. And there is more news on the horizon concerning the eCampus.
Let’s go mobile! From February 2018, online learning will be shifted into a higher gear with the mobile eCampus app coming out for both Android and IOS. This means that the ITCILO’s online learning platform will not only be accessible from computers, laptops or tablets, but also smartphones. ICTS Team Leader Gaël Lams explains: “Together with an update of the eCampus, we will be launching the eCampus mobile app, allowing more mobile learning such as video-based learning and micro-learning courses. With this initiative, we will be able to improve access to courses for persons with poor or unreliable internet connections or people relying mainly on smartphones. We are aware it will take some training for staff to be able to design a mobile-friendly course and content and we are already brainstorming about ideas to launch a first staff training mobile course doing exactly that.” This is not the Centre’s first time to take the next step when it comes to online
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learning and learning technologies. The eCampus that originated 5 years ago hosted more than 400 courses in 2017, and the tablets that were introduced 3 years ago are now widely used (75% of the Turin-based open courses). We should therefore not be afraid of innovation. As Mr. Lams said: “The Centre has systematically achieved the best results when working together. Collaboration between different departments and units has been a key success factor for introducing and scaling effective and innovative solutions.”
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MICRO-
LEARNING REACHING MILLENNIALS IN THE WORKPLACE
Conclusion Learning with a device adds value to the ITCILO’s training activities. When implemented correctly, it can make participants interact and collaborate more in the classroom and share their newly gained knowledge with online networks. For the Centre, it means reducing its carbon footprint and increasing its outreach and visibility trough the content that is shared by participants. Going mobile with the eCampus will make results from those advantages mentioned above grow exponentially. Interacting with each other and sharing content will not only become easier, the ITCILO will also be able to provide training services to a new audience of participants that are most difficult to reach. Going mobile will require some effort and time, but when we work together we truly achieve great things.
Resources To learn more on how to use tablets in training activities, check out this ITCILO publication “Mobile Learning with Tablets, a Guide for Trainers”: https://blog.itcilo.org/ mobile-learning-with-tablets-free-e-book-for-trainers/
We find ourselves in the year 2030, and a little more than half of the workforce in Europe and the United States is made up of Millennials. With the rise of flexible jobs and the demand of employees to work more freelance, and likely for several employers at the same time, job hopping is at its top. These job-hoppers move on unsafe social ground and the need for training on social protection has never been higher. Though since they are so volatile, it became difficult for both governments and workers’ organizations to reach them. The profile of learners has also changed over time. As attention spans shrink, we have shifted towards learning solutions that educate and train workers that are more distracted than ever. The large majority of organizations are relying
on short digital lessons that workers can access at their convenience. Microlearning has officially entered the learning picture. The core principle of microlearning is to provide learners with daily, bite-sized chunks of content. It’s a way of tapping into the needs of a shifting learning environment. Portable microlessons are flexible and personalized. Learners have the freedom to engage while drinking a coffee, commuting to work or even during a flight. Short spurts of knowledge can be digested in a busy work environment or at home, wherever convenient. Breaking up content into microlessons increases learning outcomes, makes it easier to author and also easier to engage with. The method is most effective on specific tasks or to rapidly fill performance gaps. It uses videos, quizzes and
22 other interactive elements and can be used to learn how to bake a pizza or even learn a new language. With the growing demand of Millennials over the past 15 years for high flexibility and variation of jobs, now half of the workforce consists of freelancers changing jobs every couple of months and combining different projects at different organizations. This way, they keep learning new things without having the feeling of getting stuck in a routine. The fixed-term staff is able to focus on more substantial, long-term tasks with added meaning, while these flexible contractors can fill the gap by performing short-term and specific executive activities. A winwin situation. Human resource practitioners have jumped on the bandwagon. They work closely together with organizations, identifying the needs for freelancers and offering the exact online course adapted to the direct needs of freelancers. Their recruitment webpages do not only offer information about open positions but also provide a dashboard of online courses preparing the candidate for the task. Microlearning has proven to be very cost effective in security training. Today, all UN agencies use two-hour online courses – divided into 5 to 10-minute pieces – to be completed by applicants within a oneweek deadline, at their own pace. Microlearning is even used to promote ethics at work, mental and physical wellbeing and to support freelancers in building up social security. Nobody loses valuable time on training and with the introduction of the 6-hour workday for all shorttermers in the United Nations system, the contractor can now use his extra free time to start learning for the next job. The functionality of microlearning doesn’t stop at the workplace. With the migrant crisis becoming a now permanent
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feature of the southern European landscape, volunteering has gone mainstream. Volunteers helping out in their free time or creating small NGOs are not professionals and have never been exposed to these kinds of crises. Since it would be a logistical nightmare to train this army of volunteers face-to-face, the interagency taskforce easily reaches those groups with online courses, giving them a foundation in humanitarian principles and essential codes of conduct and skills. Other development organizations have teamed up to provide voluntourists – tourists combining travels in underdeveloped countries with volunteering – with basic training on development principles and conduct, as well as on how to use social media in an appropriate way. Microlearning functions as a pull technology, allowing people to engage rather than pushing them into a certain structure. That’s the only way it can work to reach these volunteers with whom you have no psychological contract. Using these principles of push and pull on a professional workforce as well, and adapting the tone of engagement have the advantage that people commit voluntarily, on their on time and where they want. It appeals to the “best self ” rather than to rely on imperatives. And that’s probably microlearning’s greatest force.
This article is fictional and is a prediction of our environment horizon 2030. The Centre has created a microlearning prototype on Work for Human Development in 2017. It’s our goal to further explore this learning tool to create and improve sustainable learning solutions for the future. Read on about microlearning at: blog.itcilo.org/tag/micro-learning
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GRAPHIC DESIGN IN
DEVELOPMENT A CASE FOR SUSTAINABILITY, UNIVERSALITY AND TRUE HUMAN NEEDS.
Design for World Peace Back in 1945, a Yale architecture graduate called Donald McLaughin designed one of the world’s most recognizable symbols: the United Nations emblem. But at that time he wasn’t fully aware of the impact his design would have. When the delegates from 50 Allied nations gathered that spring in San Francisco, the conference required brochures, placards and, of course, badges. Mr. Mc Laughlin, then chief of the graphics presentation branch of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the C.I.A., originally designed a 2.7 cm round lapel pin. The emblem of the continents and olive branches was also
stamped in gold on the United Nations Charter, and a year and half later it was adopted, with modifications, as the official seal and emblem of the United Nations. To this day, there are very few symbols that are so widely recognised and universally understood. The UN symbols demonstrated the power of graphic design in its ability to unite people through graphic images and render complex ideas into one visual symbol. Over the last several years we’ve seen the most influential development agencies fully embracing the role of graphic design including the World Bank and Unicef.
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Design Must be Meaningful There is a strong cultural dimension to graphic design that is affected by traditions, language, diversity, gender, beliefs and value systems. Graphic designers within UN agencies carry the responsibility to embody these dimensions in their designs. Experience turned them into experts designing in all official languages, but also in integrating complex ideas such as impartiality, dignity and tolerance. They have the duty and power to represent the underrepresented and to promote inclusiveness through their ideas. Making it look pretty is not enough. Design must be meaningful. And ‘meaningful’ replaces ‘beautiful, ‘ugly’, ‘cool’, ‘cute’, and ‘nice’. Designers need to put end-users’ needs ahead of their own taste and love of aesthetics. Or as Victor Papanek put it back in 1971: “design must be an innovative, highly creative, cross-disciplinary tool responsive to the needs of (wo)men.” Design has always been inherent to all cultures and the next generation of graphic designers needs to be aware of their ability to emphasise deeper cultural meanings. Design can impact the world and therefore designers should cultivate their capacity in strengthening mutual understanding amongst people and nations.
In-house Capacity and Training The ILO Turin Centre has its own inhouse graphic design unit. Multimedia Design and Production (MDP) provides graphic design solutions for courses, training materials, conferences and publications. For many years MDP has also designed the publications of other UN agencies including UNHCR, OHCHR and many others. This year for the first time, the Centre will organize a course on how to design communication solutions for development purposes. As a discipline, Communication for Development embraces a broad range of functions and practices which centre around dialogue, participation and the sharing of knowledge and information, all with a view to creating empowerment and sustainable social change. From a humancentred approach, this on-site training course will explore the possibilities of contemporary and traditional communication tools in addressing development challenges and maximizing the impact of initiatives.
DESIGN MUST BE AN INNOVATIVE, HIGHLY CREATIVE, CROSS-DISCIPLINARY
TOOL RESPONSIVE TO THE NEEDS OF (WO)MEN. –VICTOR PAPANEK (1971)
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NUDGES: THE
DESIGN OF YOUR CHOICE
Chances are that someone today has nudged you. Any 3+1 free promotional emails in your inbox? Or a buzz on your phone to remind you about an upcoming webinar in 30 minutes? In fact, the private sector has been using behavioural techniques and nudges for years, ever since the rise of Madison Avenue’s Ad Men. It has taken a few generations, but increasing scientific attention to the psychology of consumers has led to an uptake in the public sector. The word nudge first appeared in literature in the late 90’s, but it was not until 2008 that prominence was brought to nudge theory by renowned behavioural economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in their book Nudge. Ever since, the Nobel-prize-winning theory has gained following in politics, economics and the development sector. Nudge Units have been set up at national level in the UK and Japan, but also on international level at the OECD and UN.
Choice Architecture Thaler and Sunstein defined their concept as: A nudge, as we will use the term, is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates. Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge. Banning junk food does not. In short: a nudge is a subtle shift in the way options are presented, making the preferential choice the most attractive, to help people make the best decision. Nudges are quite powerful, as they tend to take advantage of people’s existing intentions and make it easier to enact them. A simple example is the experiment Cornell University performed in 2013 that demonstrated that the consumption of apples in high schools can go up
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by 71% if the cafeteria offers pre-sliced apples instead of whole apples. Basically, the schools made it easy for students to choose to eat the apples, and so they did.
Nudging for a gender aware labour force The ITCILO has its very own nudging project. ILSGEN created an online platform with the purpose to rethink policy design in terms of effectiveness and implementation. The website shows ILO colleagues’ existing tools to design gender-inclusive employment policies with increased relevance and power. “Gender discrimination often starts from an unconscious bias. The interesting part about this project was that we used a reversed psychology approach: nudge people’s behaviour on an often unconscious level by adjusting the choice architecture and guiding them towards more inclusive policies,” says Benedetta Magri, Senior Programme Officer of ILSGEN, International Labour Standards, Rights at Work and Gender Equality. The platform offers a basic explanation of what nudging is, as well as variety of examples on worklevel and policy formulation-level. There is also a section on how to get started yourself with recommended further reading on behavioural science that colleagues can apply to their own expertise. You can find everything at nudging.itcilo.org.
Everyone nudges Most likely, you have already used some behavioural strategies or nudges in learning activities to improve educational attainment and achievement. However, you probably won’t have done so consciously or extensively.
29 Ever used gamification in your training courses, be it face-to-face or online? Rewarding participants with a badge for completing a course, for handing in assignments early or stimulating creativity with an extra point are all forms of nudging people. Choosing to complete, hand in early or creatively go about an assignment becomes the most attractive choice. What about course marketing? When letting possible future participants know about new activities that are coming up, it is likely that you have kept the email short and creatively used fonts, colours and attractive images to make it easy for your readers to understand the content. If done well, the entire content of your message has built up to guide the targeted audience to click on the hyperlink to the activity’s webpage. Also this is a form of nudging: make the choice of clicking and reading more information easier and more attractive. Making resources easy to be accessed is another nudge you will have likely used. The ITCILO is moving forward on its digitization by developing the eCampus more and more. In 2017, over 400 courses and academies made use of the eCampus. An online platform allows learners to access content more easily and just in time when they need it. Managing your information resources digitally and providing clear and easy access to them will increase usage, another nudge you may already be familiar with. A last example you are surely familiar with is nudging to increase the level of achievement in training activities. The eCampus can signal course managers if a participant hasn’t completed a task. This information allows you to nudge the participant with a short message to find out what the problem is, provide extra guidance and enable him or her to continue with the course.
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A next generation of nudges The increasing use of technology to effectively provide information about important educational activities is a clear indicator the future of nudging for learning lies there. Learning platforms will soon be able to leverage user data to suggest personalized learning pathways. This personalization of learning will most certainly improve the quality of training services and increase the number of participants for a relatively small cost. Learners will also be more and more nudged instead of instructed; tutored instead of lectured. Behaviour will be guided by a web of associations and affiliations rather than clear pedagogical methodologies. Networked technologies will be used as a form of pedagogical persuasion to influence and shape the learner’s behaviour, maybe even at the unconscious or irrational level.
Beware of the nudgeocrats With learning becoming more open and networked, it is important that we can distinguish soft nudging for behavioural optimization, such as the sliced apples or nudging for gender equality, from political strategies that hide behind a subtle psychological persuasion. Ben Williamson, researcher of the interweaving of politics, economics and digital technologies in education at Stirling University says: “the nudgeocratic ideals of soft paternalism can just as easily promote inappropriate decisions and supplier bias, create cognitive errors, contribute to the formation of harmful behaviors, and lead to the stigmatization of behaviourally recalcitrant social
groups, as it can encourage personal responsibility and well-being. Nudging is also, potentially, politically manipulative, reconfiguring government as an agent of persuasion.” However, if applied as described by Thaler and Sunstein, nudging should only result in a small, short-term change of behaviour and does not have a long-term effect on people’s attitudes. Nevertheless, a fair warning is in place.
Complementing actions Digital nudging will never replace professional trainers, strong curricula or face-toface behavioural interventions. However, it does complement the ITCILO’s action to continuously improve access to and engagement with learning rather well. In a time when funding for the international development sector is stretched thin, the high impact and low cost of nudging can be a powerful tool, also for trainers. So let’s embrace future technological advancement, as nudging through data and networks can lead to substantial improvements in the optimization and personalization of training services in the future. Disclaimer “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness”, R. Thaler, C. Sunstein, 2008. To explore all kinds of nudging behaviours, have a look at the Nudge App: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ bct-taxonomy/id871193535?mt=8 Nudging for a gender-aware labour force: www.nudging.itcilo.org “What Is A Nudge?” TED Radio Hour. NPR. 24 June 2016. NPR. Web. 10 August 2016: www.npr. org/2016/06/24/483112809/what-is-a-nudge? “Nudging for Student Success: How Behavioral Science Can Improve Education” Ben Castleman, 23 October 2017: www.wise-qatar.org/ behavioral-science-improve-education-ben-castleman “Learning and the emerging science of behaviour change, aka nudging” Ben Williamson, 19 November 2012: https://dmlcentral.net/learning-and-the-emerging-science-of-behavior-change-aka-nudging/
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MOOCS THE MAGIC MASS FORMULA
Since the start of the modern massive open online course (MOOC) movement in 2011 and the explosion of possibilities and platforms offering them ever since, MOOCs are now going through a maturing process. Despite the hype, there is no question that MOOCs are here to stay. Rather than asking whether they are going to disrupt traditional education, we should start by understanding how. And finally: how they can contribute to decent work for all? MOOCs are freely accessible and available for anyone to enrol. They have the potential to enable high-level education on an enormous scale. MOOCs are affordable, flexible, free of charge and don’t require prior qualification. That’s what gives them the power to also reach participants often excluded from a traditional education system.
The Stanford MOOCs In 2011, Stanford University organized it first three MOOCs. Online education had been around for a couple of years but what changed with these courses was scale and availability. The first three courses were developed and taught by Andrew Ng (later co-founder of Coursera), Jennifer Widom, Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun (founders of Udacity). The three courses launched rapidly into public awareness but contrary to popular belief, MOOCs were not an overnight success. The idea of highly scalable education had taken years of germination, false starts, and experimentation. Four years earlier, Andrew Ng started videotaping courses and posted them online with
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lecture notes and self-graded homework. The videos were viewed by millions and inspired others to experiment on different forms of online education. Between 2009 and 2011 several hundred hours of self-recorded lecture videos were uploaded on a number of experimental websites. These efforts finally culminated into the three 2011 MOOCs which were on the subjects of machine learning, databases and artificial intelligence, with only the latter attracting 160,000 participants from 190 countries. Ironically, none of the four Stanford pioneers had heard of the term MOOC when launching their initial courses, nor were they aware of earlier groundbreaking work of researchers like Siemens and Downes. It is still uncertain who first used the term MOOC to describe these first three courses.
MOOCs for development Imagine a world in which high quality vocational training adapted to labour market needs is freely available to unemployed youth, or higher education degrees from the most prestigious universities worldwide become freely available to the lowest layers of the least developed countries. Assuming that knowledge truly equals opportunity and power, making it freely available could change the whole state of play. The hope of MOOCs is indeed to bring the best education in the world to the most remote places on earth. If everyone with an internet connection is able to enrol, even without prior knowledge or qualifications, they could have the huge potential to reach the millions of underserved learners in ILO partner countries.
33 With this aspiration in mind, the Centre launched its Crowdfunding MOOC for Caribbean Entrepreneurs (2016) in partnership with the World Bank. This MOOC aimed to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills to use crowdfunding to test the market demand for their product or service and plan their own rewards or presale Crowdfunding campaign. At the end of the course, 57 Crowdfunding Campaign plans were successfully submitted by participants. Besides training beneficiaries, MOOCs can also be used to train development professionals. The Centre worked together with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy to develop courses for humanitarian staff at early stages of their career. The ‘Humanitarian Essentials’ MOOC helps staff to apply humanitarian principles in their work context. The ‘Gamification MOOC’ strengthens capacities in disaster and risk management, disaster and resilience and the use of gamification in capacity building. We are only at the start of our discoveries on how to efficiently use MOOCs in the world of work, and at the verge of exploring how to use them to train workers, the unemployed and those who have the power to create decent work opportunities. But we have now built the technical expertise and the confidence to broaden our scope and focus on more profound challenges in the learning process.
ITCILO MOOCs In 2015, only 3 years after what the New York Times called ‘the year of the MOOC’, the Centre started working on its first massive open online course. The ‘Crowdfunding for Development’ online class taught how to build and launch a
34 crowdfunding campaign. The following year it was run a second time for participants from South Africa. Following this initial exercise, the Centre created three more in-house MOOCs, thereby increasing its internal knowledge and expertise and enlarging the scope of topics and teaching methods. “Gamification for Development” taught to apply game elements and digital game design techniques to development contexts and the “Technology at work” MOOC gave insights into the world of technology and the frontiers of work. Internally, different departments of the Centre worked together resulting in a promising MOOC on the roles and responsibilities of board members in business member organizations. This initiative of the Employers’ Activities programme responded to the need for strengthening employers’ representatives in economies around the world and attracted employers from all continents. The story didn’t end there. What was initially an internal knowledge hub became an external recognition of expertise granted to the Centre, creating MOOCs on behalf of partner organizations such as GIZ, the World Bank and the Humanitarian Leadership Academy. Today we have co-created nine MOOCs reaching a combined number of 4,606 participants.
Future challenges In September 2015, the new global agenda placed education at the heart of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Around that same time, in South Africa the MOOCs for Development Conference took place. In a therefrom
The Future of Learning
Expanding inclusion In order to make MOOCs truly inclusive and a tool for democratizing education, making them free is not enough. Specific barriers preventing certain populations from gaining access such as the level of education, digital literacy, linguistic constraints, economic class and gender should be taken into account. One solution is mother-tongue literacy learning and the collaboration with local teachers, who use materials and content produced in the West, but adapt it to the local context to meet the needs of their learners. Infrastructure The most tangible challenge of MOOC4Dev is perhaps the lack of adequate telecommunication infrastructure outside of urban settings. Although internet availability keeps rising worldwide, an estimated 4 billion people are still offline. The difference in connectivity speed should be taken into account, knowing that mobile internet is more common than broadband. Therefore extremely lightweight web apps providing core content offline should be studied, together with digital compression technologies. The prevalence of mobile devices in development countries presents a unique opportunity for MOOCs, if analysed and implemented in an adequate manner. Sustainability With the question whether MOOC can provide for sustainable learning solutions, automatically comes the need for a viable business model. Besides some experiments on Freemium models (where the course is offered at no cost but premium services are charged a fee), the only thing that is clear today is that an appropriate solution should be linked to relevant skills for the workplace or sufficient incentive for the sponsor. Two other aspects that are crucial to the sustainability of the MOOC are systemic policy initiatives and end-user support.
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“MAKING THEM FREE IS NOT ENOUGH” resulting publication, the University of Pennsylvania addressed a number of barriers challenging the potential of MOOCs to enable access to high-quality education to students in the most underserved regions of the world.
Scale up to inclusion We could say that the MOOC4Dev committee formulated a set of specific sustainability targets for the upcoming years with regards to MOOCs. As much as the Centre is involved in contributing to the SDGs, we will also take these recommendations at heart and let them guide us through our thinking. The MOOC movement, like any other successful tech evolution we’ve experienced over the past years, can evolve from maturity to scaling up, all the way to those who need them the most.
Disclaimer This article used valuable input from Castillo, N. M., Lee, J., Zahra, F. T., & Wagner, D. A. (2015). MOOCs for Development: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. Information Technologies and International Development, 11 (2), 35-42. The ITCILO is a member of the European Alliance for Quality in e-learning. See all our online courses at: blog.itcilo.org/tag/mooc
Evaluation and accreditation MOOCs’ content must be aligned with an existing country assessment in a way that can demonstrate that learning actually had an impact. Therefore, a valid evaluation system should be put in place, taking into account diverse learning backgrounds and unique cultural contexts. Besides final examination, mid-term evaluation is equally important. First try-outs have been done to use mobile phones to encourage peer-to-peer monitoring and interaction between lecturers and students. However, if the challenge of marketable accreditation is not properly addressed by a closer collaboration with ministries and private institutions, MOOCs may lead to greater divides between learners in rich and poor countries. Opportunities The MOOC4Dev conference revealed untapped opportunities for MOOCs in development countries. They are still used too little or not intensively enough to actually realise the potential impact they could have to improve economic, social and health outcomes if they would address the right learning inequities. All current evidence on the successful use of MOOCs in development is based on outcomes rather than results. Implementation should go wider and address challenges more broadly to create impact rather than rely on mere opportunities.
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ON THE STREETS OF 2040 ...
GAMIFICATION
AT THE ILO TRAINING CENTRE
It is only real when there is an ad about it 15’
Imagine a typical product, service, policy/government advertisement that you would see on the streets in 2040 and that would show you straight away that things have changed in this future. Think about all the elements a typical ad has: great imagery, a simple key message, a logo/brand + baseline, where to find more info, stuff-in-small-letters-that-no-one-reads-but-tells-a-lot etc.
Games are suited to change the world for the better. Or as the American game designer Jane McGonigal points out: “When we are playing games, we are tapping into our best qualities, our ability to be motivated, to be optimistic, to collaborate with others and to be resilient in the face of failure”. Being able to fail actually helps you to learn better and to learn from your mistakes, and that’s what happens in games. Therefore games can be a vehicle for learning, to promote sustainable behaviours and raise awareness on social topics. Innovative companies and organizations recognized the opportunity to use “gamification” to that extent and the power it has to create shared values for individuals and communities. The ILO Training Centre didn’t miss the game train and started experimenting early with
adding game elements to training programmes and other activities. We recognized that gamification emerged as useful to solidify the knowledge of learners on certain theoretical topics. During courses it thereby enhanced group participation and teamwork, both during the game and in other lectures. Finally, it also helped participants to network with one another despite linguistic and cultural barriers. This article gives an overview of eight key gamification projects developed by the Centre which all use gaming elements to get an important message or knowledge across. Or, as one of the pioneers of gamification, Mary Poppins, likes to put it: “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and “snap” the job's a game. And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake”.
After piloting gamification in humanitarian context in two experimental labs in Kenya and the Philippines, the Centre collaborated with the Humanitarian Leadership Academy to create a MOOC on gamification. It is designed to increase awareness of the potential of gamification within the non-profit sector, especially among those working in disaster and risk management, disaster response and resilience.
The MOOC was a response to the growing need for effective training of humanitarian staff, while adapting the learning formats to their preferences (mobile learning, in English, on Android devices) and enhancing engagement with the content. Moreover: when in a game, a learner is allowed to fail and learn from his or her mistakes, where this comes at a much higher price in real humanitarian settings.
SPACE RACE
G A M E HUMANITARIAN LEARNING
Space race is an intergalactic quiz bowl available on the Socrative application and designed for adding fun to the classroom. We used it the first time on Campus as part of a course on Employment Policies. Space race is a great alternative to any gradable assessment. It makes groups of learners race across the screen by giving correct answers to questions. The icons on screen can be personalized to make it even more fun.
While playing the game, participants assess their learning in small groups, review and reinforce the knowledge acquired during the training, all while strengthening team cooperation in an enjoyable way. It takes about 40 minutes to play and all you need is an internet connection, one tablet per group and a big screen where everyone can see his own space rockets race against the others.
CAN YOU PLAY THE FACILITATION ROLE? This market system facilitation game is an online role-play game using narratives and storytelling. Its use is to familiarize learners with the principles of Market System Facilitation before attending faceto-face training. The game is designed to help learners recognize the principles and match them to real-life situations: it guides participants through their personal decision-making process.
The road to formalization is a board game for entrepreneurs and own-account workers in informal economies. Through the different steps of the game, they learn how to formalize their activity on a local level, by focusing on rights, productivity, income and protection. Since informality is such a complex phenomenon, manifested in different ways across the world, the game focuses on how to deal with challenges encountered during the formalization process rather than on concrete measures to take.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT AT WORK
Republika is a social interaction and simulation game designed for the annual Academy on Labour Migration. In a participative and engaging way, it helps participants better understand the challenges and opportunities linked to labour migration. The game is played by six teams representing the different stakeholders in labour migration policy: national governments, employers, workers, civil society, origin countries and local authorities. First, the teams receive instructions on the game and the characteristics of their team. Second, they receive a case study based on the state Republika, as well as details on the characteristics of the other teams and a list of challenges to be completed. The finale is a plenary session held for the government to adopt a new labour migration policy for the state Republika. In preparation of this session, all stakeholder teams have to complete a list of actions, according to their own best interests.
COMPASS The Compass card board game navigates players – just like a compass – through 60 participatory learning, training and knowledge sharing methods. These techniques and methods that were tested in hundreds of workshops all over the world are also available as a pack of cards and online. Though the cards can be used by anyone who has to facilitate a workshop or discussion, the game specifically aims
THE ROAD TO FORMALIZATION
The road to formalization board game presents challenges in form of “falling rocks” and opportunities in form of “bridges”. It is up to the different teams to handle the different situations and arrive at the end of the path. It is part of an ILO training package for all tripartite constituents and private or civil society stakeholders.
at new trainees, collaborators, junior facilitators and non-expert staff. It can be played between colleagues in an informal workplace learning setting or as part of a structured workshop. Each team of three to five people competes with other teams by answering questions, passing challenges and milestones and withstanding unforeseen events. The player who finishes the learning cycle first, wins the game.
The replicability and personalized learning style allow players to recognize a range of different situations at risk, make good decisions and act upon harassment in the most appropriate way. The sexual harassment at work activity is a good example of how gamification can be used effectively in awareness raising.
The Green Campus Game was developed to encourage staff, participants and all people using the campus facilities to take an active role in ensuring a green and sustainable working environment. For the first time, we used the mobile application Mobilize. Life. Originally developed for the purpose of “serious games” (crisis response training and security simulation exercises), Mobilize. Life also has a number of fun applications for table-top exercises, team building events and peer-to-peer learning.
THE GREEN GAME The Green Campus Game uses mixed-reality and mobile supported games to focus on green behaviour. Players used their own mobile devices to participate in challenges and competitions as part of the game. A ranking system was used to motivate players by triggering the desire for friendly competition between colleagues. After receiving the 2014 Eco-Schools Award Certificate, the game helped to boost green behaviour and helps staff on Campus to better understanding the reasons for environmental consciousness.
REPUBLIKA
F I C A In the game, learners navigate through different situations where they are asked to analyse the stakes of all actors. There is no one right answer to each situation, which makes the outcome of the story different for all players, depending on the path they decide on. This offers them the possibility to test different options for different outcomes, something which might be hard to do in real life. It also teaches that, according to the people we are dealing with, different strategies might be desirable.
In this online game participants learn to find suitable solutions to harassment and how to help victims. With the use of fictional characters and strong storytelling, role reversal is simulated so the learner can get a better grasp of victims’ realities by putting him or herself in their shoes. The stories do not have a unique end, but three possible endings. According to the learner’s choices, the learning path differs as reality isn’t correct or wrong, but nuanced, depending on how we interact with people.
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THE RETURN OF THE MENTOR
Bringing learning to where people are and at their point of need is a phenomenon that must be reckoned with to stay competitive. Mentorship could be an excellent solution, as a meet-up can be agreed at the workplace on a when-suited and when-needed basis. Sharing professional issues and giving experience-based advice in a safe partnership empowers the leaders of tomorrow within the organization as well as contributes to a healthier work environment. It comes as no surprise that the UN encourages mentoring across nations and organizations. It can be organized in a variety of ways among colleagues, but a recent pilot project has shown promising results to use mentoring as a training methodology for the ITCILO’s external service as well. Maybe it is time to bring back this forgotten personal and professional development tool, and scale it up beyond the Centre’s gates to unlock its training power.
Pay it forward Feedback is a gift, especially if it is a non-sugar-coated version that you would otherwise never get. An honest and open mentor will challenge views and opinions, help think through what the next steps should be and be an entry point into new networks and high-profile projects. Mentoring, if carefully managed, can be one of the most efficient personal development tools to support young talent in their career aspirations. Or what about a mentorship with a twist, where a junior staff member “mentors” a senior manager? Reverse mentoring involves a younger staff member, preferably from a different gender and ethnicity, sharing a diverse professional experience for the senior staff ’s benefit. Oftentimes, bottom-up feedback doesn’t reach senior leaders anymore and getting a new perspective that is different
44 from the feedback of senior peers can be refreshing. However organized, mentoring will connect generations and empower younger colleagues, as well as foster diversity, promote inclusion, spark innovation, and accelerate collaboration.
Coaching coaches The International Training Centre of the ILO could also introduce mentoring and coaching (which focusses more on business development rather than personal development) as a service to its constituents. Why not train people to become a mentor or coach? Or coordinate a mentoring connection between two peer institutions?
Coaching in Afghanistan Years ago, before its current hype, the ILO established training packages for entrepreneurs with four core modules on how to start a business, generate income, improve the start-up and how to expand it. Even though this is a great start, there wasn’t any further support foreseen after the course had ended and the survival rate of the businesses was oftentimes rather low. Joel Alcocer, Senior Programme Officer at the Employment Policy and Analysis Programme (EPAP), identified the cause of the gap between start-up phase and the first obstacles a business encounters and came up with a solution: coaching. A pilot project was initiated to enable Afghanistan to move from fragility to resilience. One of the programme activities had the objective to train business coaches in Afghanistan to support local start-ups to overcome those first obstacles and thus promote youth employment. Over the course of 12 months, distance learning
The Future of Learning
with weekly contact was interspersed with 8 face-to-face trainings in the region, getting nine business coaches ready for the job. Thanks to a strong local partner, the team was able to set up a sustainable structure to ensure the continuation of coaching for new businesses. They generated a spending bank of coaching hours with combined funding provided for 70% by the donor and 20% by the national chamber of commerce, leaving 10% to be paid for by the client start-up. “It is not a one-off what the coaches do with their knowledge. They can serve multiple clients and instigate others to become a business coach or mentors, too. Over time we will be able to see the overall impact of our pilot project, but already the project is giving us some return on investment. The coaches form a feedback loop that goes back to the ILO and ITCILO, providing us with local input and keeping us in touch with that is happening in the field,” says Michela Albertazzi, Junior Programme Officer at Employment Policy and Analysis Programme (EPAP).
South-South mentorship Another programme activity under the same project was training on policies tailored to the Afghan country context. Again, mentorship turned out to have a positive impact. “Here,” Ms. Albertazzi says, “participants brainstormed about 4 thematic policy areas: gender equality, technical and vocational skills, migration and entrepreneurship. To move to the next phase, the training delivery, the ITCILO partnered with the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute in India to collaborate with the design and delivery of trainings and study visits. Involving them became a true example of SouthSouth cooperation where the Afghan
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participants got a lot of exposure to the latest and best practices in India.” At its core, this peer exchange was also a form of mentorship.
Becoming a better version of oneself Mentoring or coaching are not a magicwand solution to personal and professional growth. It takes careful management, step by step, to ensure that both parties benefit from the opportunity. It encourages people to maximize their own learning potential, develop new skills and basically become a better version of themselves. This is a worthy cause to strive for, be it internally between colleagues, or externally between experts and start-ups or two peers, as we can all collaborate to build towards the more resilient world of work of tomorrow.
Disclaimer Mentoring within the UN: https://hr.un.org/page/mentoring To read about a personal experience of reversed mentoring, please refer to this website: https://www. trainingzone.co.uk/lead/culture/mentoring-with-a-twistencouraging-employees-to-stay-curious-creative To learn more about the Afghanistan project, check out this website: https://itcilofragilestates.atavist.com/ afghanistanprojectreport or contact Mr. Joel Alcocer at j.alcocer@itcilo.org or Ms. Michela Albertazzi at m.albertazzi@itcilo.org
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LIFELONG
LEARNING QUESTIONS FROM READERS
“For 15 years, I have been following courses in the ITCILO and I noticed a refreshing change in the pedagogy of delivering the trainings. It opened my eyes on the need to always keep myself updated and seek new knowledge. How did you move from the model of binge education to introducing spaced learning and pushing people to continuously learn?”
In the light of this, the Centre enhanced its use of micro learning to to complement its initial macro learning offer and promote an ongoing, voluntary, and selfmotivated pursuit of knowledge. Lifelong learning not only enhances social inclusion, active citizenship, and personal development, but also self-sustainability, as well as competitiveness and employability.
— Anuj, India
We are so glad to hear this Anuj! Your feedback is very important to us. Your observations are quite right; after years of content development and curation on ILO topics, the Centre took a strategic shift towards building an architecture that teaches people what content to use when, to make our approach to learning more sustainable and to promote the culture of longer-lasting learning experiences. We moved from blended approaches – off and online – on the three stages of pre, during and post training, to multi-level learning approaches, micro and macro approaches. As research has proved, we – humans – don’t learn well through “binge education”. We learn by being exposed to new skills and ideas over time, with spacing and questioning in between.
“For many years, organizations focused on sending their officials to classroom-based training events or blended courses that would last no more than few weeks. How did the Centre support the shift towards a continuous lifelong learning culture?”
— Eduardo, Argentina
Great question Eduardo! With the booming of micro learning in the late 2010s, the Centre’s instructional content naturally fell into two categories; Micro and Macro learning. The Centre introduced a new adaptive training service that answered the needs of its market: an à-la-carte menu to support each partner/customer in identifying their best-fit tailor-made learning solution. No more “one size fits all” products.
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The menu featured the two categories: Micro learning solutions – i.e. content that can be quickly read, viewed, or consumed and that would only take 10 minutes or less. These solutions included videos, tailor-made blogs, or a set of instructional questions that would help orient the client in their reflection. Organizations finally became aware of their officials’ new learning style; a learning attitude based on information – seeking, just-in-time consumption of this kind of material on a daily basis and all day long. A learning experience that most websites and social networks offer in massive, curated streams. Macro learning solutions – i.e. on and off campus open courses, MOOCs, video series and instructor-led learning programs on eCampus. While we used to call these “activities,” in the context of a digital learning world they are simply “macro” in size. A government or organization could this way send its officials to Torino for a macro activity (academy, on-campus workshop…) and complement the experience with additional pre and post on-theshelf micro learning solutions adapted to its very specific needs. “I saw on the Centre’s catalogue that the lifelong e-learning course has been offered for several years now. Great initiative! Why a course on this particular topic?” — Kokeb, Ethiopia Thank you Kokeb! Information and communication technology (ICT) in our knowledge society are changing at a breathtaking pace. These technological innovations are currently transforming the way we create, share and publish information, the ways we collaborate and share knowledge resources and the way we learn
and train. Internet is a central element of the infrastructure of the Information Society and is increasingly becoming a global facility available to the public. The potential impact of ICT and internet in development has been widely discussed by the United Nations System, by intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, by civil society, the private sector and international organizations, especially in the World Summit on the Information Society. ICT and technology enhanced learning (e-learning) has opened up new potential in education and training. It is becoming ever more widespread and can make education and training available to many more people around the world and can provide multiple answers in our search to have access to lifelong learning. At ITCILO, we launched our first session of this course in 2017 and it was a success. Many organizations and institutions started using e-learning as it seemed to be as effective as traditional learning only at a lower cost. Moreover, e-learning helped reach a wider target audience by engaging learners who have difficulty attending conventional classroom training. For these reasons, the Centre launched this online course which provides trainers with the knowledge and competencies needed to design and implement e-learning courses. In a broader perspective, the course contributes to the general question of how e-learning and communication technology can contribute to the promotion of lifelong learning and enhance individual and organizational performance.
Disclaimer Part of the content was retrieved from the blog post “The Disruption of Digital Learning: Ten Things We Have Learned” by Josh Bersin and adapted to the needs of this publication.
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COLOPHON Editorial team: Luca Putteman, Fatma Feki, Lisa Leysens, Tom Wambeke Proofreading: Michelle McLure Graphic design: Joseph Miceli, Lina Ozerkina Illustrations: Michelangelo Nigra Edition: 200 Printed in Italy Edition #1, 2018
Š 2018 ITCILO All Rights Reserved
