Thinking bigger – closing the ever growing skills gap

Simon Tindall | The Open UniversitySimon.Tindall@open.ac.uk

“Our problem is to bridge the gap which exists between where you are now and the goal we intend to reach”.

Earl Nightingale

• Nearly 60% of UK adults lacked a full set of core skills

• Skills weakness across all age ranges

• Older workers (51-65) tended to have higher skill sets but low confidence

• Younger workers (16-35) lower skills but high confidence in their abilities

• Women consistently score higher (47%) to men (39%)

• Nearly 4 out of 5 employers rated these skills as important to their industry, yet a third offer no training plan to develop these

• To be successful in addressing this employability skills gap, educators, businesses and the Government must work more closely together

Measuring the gap – Barclays SurveyThe Open University

• 2/3rd of employers think the skills gap will not improve in the next 3-5 years

• More than half of employers expect skills gaps to have an adverse impact on their productivity - (Summer 2018)

• Amazon Web Services see cloud skill shortages directly limiting their current and future growth rates

Skills and UK productivityThe Open University

What is The Open UniversityThe Open University

Meeting the users where they are takes reach to 11m p/a

The power of syndicating Open Resources.The Open University

Digital credentialsThe Open University

Badged online courses - BOCsThe Open University

• Series of online courses – free to the learner

• Common course structure

1 2 3 4 5

All aspects of course must be

completed

24 hours of learning –

3 hours per week x 8

weeks

Successful learners ‘earn’ a

Digital Badge / Certificate

Weekly testing –

longer tests at Week 4

and Week 8

Digital badge has ‘currency’

and showcases

achievement

Awarding of shareable digital badge and certificate

Learning with meaningThe Open University

Developing career

resilience

Understanding your sector

Leadership and followership

Success in the workplace

Communication in the

workplace

Working in diverse teams

Exploring career mentoring and

coaching

Personal branding

Employability Badges Online Courses (BOCs)The Open University

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

COMING SOON

The Open University

In the last 12 months…..• Enrolments to a BOC = 110,000+

• Completion rates higher than other online courses > 10,000+ badges awarded> 9,000+ prospectus requested > 4,000+ have started the process to enrol on higher qualifications.

• Satisfaction rate 98%

• Up to 85% declaring they’ll share with an employer

Addressing the Skills ShortageThe Open University

• Establish a default platform of core skill provision

• Academically endorsed

• Recognised by employers and potential employees alike

• Achievable courses, building skills and confidence

• Free of charge to all

• Google pledges to help 1 million Europeans to find a job or grow their business by 2020

• Cross validation and endorsement of courses

• Use of BOC’s within Google

• Direct link and promotion of OU courses from Google’s DG platform (4M)

Sundar PichaiGrow with Google

March 2018

Working with Google on promoting skillsThe Open University

Next steps – how to get involvedOpen University Apprenticeships

• Review courses

• Use for internal training

• Build additional training programmes from this platform

• Promote to your audiences – supply chains to customers

• Talk to us… share ideas

Simon.Tindallsimon.tindall@open.ac.uk