Here’s a picture of the Learning and Skills Council doing what it should do – actively getting in the face of the public with information about skills and training. The event was a Careers Advice roadshow at London Bridge station earlier this week.

Donald Clark divides government initiatives into Turtles and Fruit flies. Turtles don’t move fast, but last (Open University), Fruit Flies make a lot of noise, move around a lot and then die and are quickly forgotten. (UKeU, Individual Learning Accounts).

Which of these is the Learning and Skills Council?

At first glance the LSC, due to be disbanded in 2010, looks like a fruit fly – it has had a short life, and it will be replaced by at least two new bodies which will divide up its £11bn+ budget.

But I’m not sure that the LSC has been given enough time to become a turtle. It looks to me as if it might have been sacrificed as a way of trimming some of that budget, even though there are very good reasons for having such a massive quango.

Take just one reason – the need for a clear single place for information about training as young people mature. Here’s a quote from a recent IoD policy paper Training in the recession: winner or loser?

“With the demise of the LSC, if we employ 16, 17 and 18 year olds then any training for them will be funded from one (or several places) whilst funding for 19 year olds and above will be funded from a different place, even if they are on the same course. As a very small business I cannot afford the time or the hassle factor to do this.”

The IoD is no lover of big government, but this quote points out exactly why the LSC was created, and where it should be adding value. There is a good reason why adult education needs to be big – because, like the NHS, it is national and spans generations.

I have certainly criticized government initiatives in the past, and the LSC has not always covered itself in glory (particularly with the recent mess on the schools rebuilding programme), but that does not mean that it is the wrong institution. This is an institution that – I believe – can be fixed rather than eliminated.

LSC: turtle or fruit fly? We’ll never have the chance to find out.

The Irish Knowledge Economy

I was recently mailed this 11 minute clip from Irish Broadcaster RTE. Broadcast last January, its focus is that Ireland could respond positively to a dire set of economic circumstances through the smarts of its people.

As one of the interviewees says about the property boom that precipitated the crisis, it’s now time to concentrate on intellectual property.

Thanks to Barry Davis of Creganna, one of the companies featured in the clip. Barry is a member of of the Learning and Skills Group, and is using it to build his own knowledge and skills, and to share his insights with others – a good example of valuable social networking in practice.

Ireland’s been here before, of course. Before the property boom and all it brought with it, an Irish Development Agency advertising campaign in the 1980s focused on attracting external investment into the country.

It was over 25 years ago, but I have a very clear memory of reading in Scientific American an advert with the slogan We’re the Young Europeans. It grabbed my attention. It grabbed others’, too, and was part (along with some handsome EU funding) of creating Ireland’s economic success at the end of the last century.

Here’s hoping that they’ll have a similar success at the beginning of this one.

(Plays in Real Player. If no picture shows above, click here.)

Ever get tired of explaining how Wikis, blogs and social networking differ from each other? Here’s my attempt to explain it – very simply – by assessing these social media according to whether they are mostly used for viewing or for creating content, and also according to whether the focus of that content is mostly about people or about information.

It’s a Slideshare Slidecast that runs a little over 5 minutes. Click the green ‘play’ button to begin.

Graphic not showing above? Click to see the original slidecast.

#SSMMap

As part of last week’s cabinet re-shuffle, the department responsible for the UK’s skills was once again re-shuffled. As Number 10 put it:

The Government has today created a new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills whose key role will be to build Britain’s capabilities to compete in the global economy. The Department will be created by merging BERR and DIUS.

Hhm … that will be the same government that created DIUS (the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) two years ago at a reported cost of £7m.

Nobody’s fooled by the ‘merger’ talk. BERR is the dominant party here. The result: universities in particular are up in arms about the supposed subsidiary role that universities are now supposed to play to business. At least, that’s the view of the Guardian’s excellent Polly Curtis, according to her minute-by-minute posting of the day’s events last Friday.

Actually this is both a good move and a bad move, but not for the reasons that universities are apparently complaining about.

It’s a good move because:

• Lord Mandelson (heading up DBIS), like him or loathe him, gets things done, especially in the current government
• Including only ’Universities’ in the title of DIUS was a slap in the face for Further Education and workplace learning
• It associates skills directly with business and innovation

But it’s a bad move because:

• Departmental changes take time and money and disrupt policy implementation
• There will be an election within a year, and we could face another new department then

So what about the universities? Here’s what Polly Curtis said:

My inbox is filling up with complaints about the fact there’s now no government department with education, universities or colleges in its title.

There’s only one response to that: ‘That’s because universities and colleges are delivery mechanisms. Skills is the destination.’ At least the new department puts that foremost. Whether workplace learning and development will now get a higher profile at the DBIS remains to be seen.

Is further and higher education only about skills? No, but you have to choose. Do you want FE/HE in the department for culture, where it could justifiably belong? Probably not. Should FE/HE be in its own department? Possibly, but I would still vote for skills being associated with business, not under the purview of FE/HE, and it would make no sense to have FE/HE in one department and skills in another. Result: put skills and business together, and delivery mechanisms under them. Job done.

Footnote: It is said that a DIUS employee put out this tweet on Friday:

Don’t know: you can’t go for a coffee and blueberry muffin without your department being abolished

I am sure that Steph Gray would never say such a thing, and if you search @lesteph you will find no such tweet. And the idea that anyone would delete a tweet to avoid a ‘Muffingate’ scandal is beyond the pale.

Next Tuesday sees the Learning and Skills Group Conference at Olympia in London. We have a great line up of speakers, including:

• Gordon Bull – former head of L&D at Vodafone
• Tony Buzan – inventor of Mind Mapping
• Jay Cross – learning visionary and champion of informal learning
• Jane Hart – social media learning luminary
• Nigel Paine – former head of L&D at the BBC
• Clive Shepherd – Mr e-learning

What a line up! And there are plenty of other speakers, too, with some exciting stories to share. It’s a great programme, but we haven’t made much of a fuss about it. Nonetheless, the conference is completely full.

What’s going on?

Simple – the event is guaranteed to fill up, because it is one of the benefits of membership of the Learning and Skills Group (LSG). Members have to have attended the Learning Technologies Conference in the previous January, or can apply.

It will be a very busy day, with 7 concurrent interactive events occurring at any time. I am looking forward to it immensely, and I’ll post afterwards to say how it’s gone.

Yes, it’s true. Belmont Academicals are top of the league.

My Thursday night 5-a-side team has won its first two games of the new season, bagging us 6 points and placing us firmly at the top of the ‘Premiership’, the very pinnacle of all British 5-a-side football teams. Or at least, those playing in Turnham Green, London, on a Thursday night.

During our last spell in the Premiership we managed a miserable 3 points over 10 games, with an average of 2.3 goals per game.

Last night we scored 9 and conceded one.

So what has changed?

Actually, not much.

We have simply concentrate on doing one thing better. We mark up, close, and make it very difficult for the other team to play. Then we get a goal on the break. Then another. Pretty soon the other team are chasing the game, leaving gaps, which we exploit. 

If you come from a training background (as I do), the initial reaction to any problem tends to be to lay on more skills. But that isn’t always necessary or even a good idea.

Possibly we could do with some better close ball skills. Maybe some training would make a difference. A small difference.

But at the end of the day, what has made the difference to our performance is nothing to do with training, and everything to do with attitude. Together we decided that we were not going to suffer another terrible season, discussed the options and settled on marking up and keeping our shape as a team.

John Purcell’s adaption of the AMO model to performance is well known:

P=f(AMO)

Performance is a function of Ability, Motivation and Opportunity. You have to be able to do the job, want to do the job and have an environment giving you the opportunity to do the job.

In this case we have good enough skills, and the opportunity is there. What we decided, as a team, was to really apply ourselves to doing one thing really well. One thing which we thought could make a difference to our game.

It turns out we were right – at least for the first two games of the new season.

And it also turns out that training is not always the answer to performance issues.

Is training dead? Not in Ireland, apparently, although if you believed the news, you couldn’t imagine anything surviving the current economic blight.

Yesterday I keynoted at the Irish Computer Society’s National IT Training Conference in Dublin. According to the local media, and just about anyone you talk to, the Irish economy is in meltdown.

The taxi drivers, the barmen and even the hotel staff, everyone told the same story: the housing bubble has burst, bringing down government income and forcing up unemployment.

This is more than just a bit of complaining or the love of a good story. The headline on the Irish Independent on the Aer Lingus flight out was We’ve never had it so bad. Unemployment is likely to top 500,000 soon and national income to fall by 14% over the three years from 2008 to 2010 – the worst three year drop in any developed country since the 1930s.

Training’s been hit, too, as the government has withdrawn funding for training programmes, and employers and individuals have cut back on spending.

Yet about 200 people took time out to attend the ICS Skills event, and although they were realistic about the current situation, they were also intent on surviving it. Plenty of them – in the private and public sectors – have seen downturns before. Many referred to the 1980s, the time of the last bad downturn, and talked of the very practical ways they plan to ride out this rough patch.

From the training magazine that folded in print format, only to relaunch online, to the school that’s creating its own interactive whiteboards rather than pay for expensive imported items. From the drop-in centre for the unemployed finding ways to carry on regardless to the innovative learning technology start ups, there is plenty of fight here, and plenty of good news, too.

On the way back to the airport my taxi driver took me past huge patches of land cleared for construction that may now never happen, and the vast Ikea store that is apparently empty and unwanted by a population that has no plans for redecoration at the moment.

Things are tough in Ireland right now, no mistake, but nobody’s giving up just yet.

I spent a very pleasant morning on Friday at Tate Modern, courtesy of e-learning provider IMC. After the normal registration coffee we had a fifty-minute tour of the Tate (or a small part of it, at least) followed by a discursive presentation from Prof. Stephen Heppell entitled ‘The Art of Learning’.

Now this is not your normal way of approaching a conference or a briefing. The normal drill is: turn up, drink some coffee, chat, listen, chat, leave. You don’t normally walk out of the meeting room before the main event to wander through an exhibition and hear an expert guide talk you through each a collection of challenging mostly abstract art.

And yet, strangely, it worked. Of course Prof. Heppell is an experienced speaker, with a great deal to say, all backed up by experience. One of his themes was the need to change our learning spaces in schools in order to change the way pupils learn, and he led a fascinating discussion on this.

The discussion, however, would not have been as wide-ranging, I believe, without the gallery tour beforehand. It acted as the equivalent of a mental warm-up, getting us out of whatever mindset we were in before we arrived, prompting us to look beyond the obvious, and to challenge our existing thinking.

This business of learning by walking about and chatting was absolutely in line with Prof. Heppell’s message, but I reckon that any event could benefit from a beginning that asked people to use their minds a little differently, on a subject matter which they would never normally encounter in their working day.

There has been much electronic comment this morning about a piece in the Guardian saying that MEN Media, which publishes the Manchester Evening News, will be using a skills matrix to decide on who to keep (or not) in a round of 150 redundancies.

What exactly are they doing? What will it mean and will it work?

A skills matrix (also called a competency framework) is a grid, with a list of skills on one side and a scale of ability on the other, for example from 1 (no skills) to 5 (expert). You might include a ”0′ grade too, to indicate that the skills is irrelevant to a person or role.

A person’s skills can be assessed using the grid, or it can be used to specify the skills required for a role. In this case, it sounds as if MEN may be doing both – assessing which people have the right skills for the remaining available roles.

According to the article, staff are scored out of  20 marks, which sounds as if the ratings against skills grades are put into a calculation to produce a score per person.

Who’s getting graded on what? The Guardian says:

Reporters, subeditors and features writers will be assessed differently. Elements will include: commitment and professionalism, design skills, judgment, speed/accuracy, multimedia skills, media law, adaptability and resilience, and story generation

In other words, this sounds like a decently thought-out skills matrix for the profession – depending, of course, on the clarity of description of the behaviours used to describe each skill.

So what are the advantages and disadvantages of using a skills matrix in this way?

The advantages
The key advantage is that in a time of high emotion, a skills matrix provides some form of objectivity for deciding who stays and who doesn’t. It provides some reassurance for individuals who are not close to the decision makers that their skills will be assessed equally with others who may be chummier.

It also provides a way of balancing a team adequately – of deciding to keep a certain person because he or she will contribute vital skills in a particular area.

I have known a skills matrix used in exactly this way very effectively during the re-organisation of a large IT department. The unions felt the approach worked because it provided a level playing field for decision making; managers felt that they had a good tool to help them make difficult calls fairly, and as a result of using the matrix, a good number of staff were actually re-allocated when it was discovered that their skills could be re-used elsewhere in the business.

The disadvantages
This skills-based approach only works, however, when the personnel systems and an understanding of skills have been in place for some time and both managers and staff are familiar with it.

I do not know the situation at MEN Media, but if they are introducing the skills matrix now, during redundancies, then it will be viewed with suspicion, and you have to ask how the data on skills will be collected. It will be in nobody’s interest to give an accurate assessment of their own skills when bumping themselves up a grade or two could save their job.

In these circumstances, the ’skills matrix’ would become nothing more than a checklist, used by the managers to assess staff, rather than a starting point for a mature, adult conversation between managers and employees. That makes it subject to all the normal problems of employer favoritism.

Another disadvantage of beginning using a skills matrix or competency framework in this way is that it will forever be damned in the eyes of the remaining employees. It will never be possible to use it as it should be used – to help with making decisions on training, resource allocation and recruitment.

And finally, it will never, ever, be possible to base lay-offs purely on the results of a skills analysis, and it shouldn’t be portrayed that way. As paulcockerton puts it on Twitter:

Will they stick to ’skills matrix’ if it means paying veteran staff 100k redundancy rather than more skilled newbies 2k?
 

We only have half the story from this article. I hope for everyone’s sake that the part of the story we don’t see includes a well-crafted skills matrix, already in situ, used as one part of a fair system for making some very difficult decisions.

Is training dead? That’s the question I’ll be asking in my keynote at the Irish Computer Society’s National IT Training Conference in Dublin on 30th April.

Is it dead? No, of course not. It’s just evolving.

That, though, provokes some questions: what’s it evolving from? What’s it evolving into? And what’s causing the change?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be using my blog to reflect on these issues as I formulate my presentation, summing up my thinking on a topic that has been at the front of mind for the past several years.

Here are some questions, conundrums and paradoxes that I’ll aim to be dealing with:

• Is all training the same? How does brain surgery training differ from holiday Spanish classes?
• Is all learning the same? Why is learning your second language different from learning your first? How is learning to swim different from learning to walk?
• What are the limits of learning technologies?
• Is the ADDIE model of content production dead?
• Just what is the role of the training department in the age of Google?
• Did we ever really have an industrial model for training?

That’s not an outline of the talk, by the way, just some thoughts that my preparations have provoked in me. Throw in some jokes, a couple of 2×2 grids and then you have a presentation.

If you’re attending the conference, or even if you’re not, I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on the topic. Either drop a comment here, or mail me at donaldt [at] learningtechnologies {dot} co {uk}.