Preparing for the future workplace

We are very excited about our new FutureLearn MOOC, Building your Career in Tomorrow’s Workplace, which starts on Monday 14th January. It will be run by myself and my colleague Alison Truelove from the University of Exeter Business School. We both strongly believe in helping people to achieve their potential in a rapidly changing environment – one that offers significant opportunities and also challenges.

The future of work is being shaped by digital and technological innovations as well as trends towards global organising. Developments in fields such as robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence (AI) are proving to be highly disruptive to society and to ourselves as employees or entrepreneurs.

Our objective is to equip learners with the knowledge and skills necessary to reach their intended career goals in a world of work which increasingly requires flexibility, adaptability and lifelong learning.

We are delighted to welcome Giles O’Halloran as a Mentor. Giles is fascinated by the future of work. He has been a keen observer of the changing nature of work and the workplace over the last two decades as both an HR and Career Transition professional. He is a freelance coach and consultant in the gig economy, and is also a lead tutor for the CIPD. He has spent the last ten years writing for a leading career transition publication on employability and the changing nature of careers. He is also passionate about the development of the digital workspace and helping people develop their digital skills portfolio.

We would also like to thank the following people for their contributions to the course:

• Nic Fair, PhD student in Web Science and Digital Educator from the University of Southampton. Nic is the Lead Educator on FutureLearn’s Learning in the Network Age MOOC.
• Dawn Lees, Andi Smart, Adam Lusby, Sarah Dyer, David Boughey, Claire Dinan, Steph Comley, Jason Flower and Olly Chanter from the University of Exeter.
• Our team of Student Digital Champions Ben Wood, Shuyi Tang and Luke Henderson.
• Our industry experts Andy Stanford-Clark, Kaitlin Gould and David Ferguson.

You can also raise questions, share useful resources or your own posts on Twitter at any time via the course hashtag #FLfutureofwork.

New ideas & new courses supported by Student Digital Mentors

There’s lots of exciting educational innovation happening this term 🙂

Firstly, our new FutureLearn MOOC, Building Your Career in Tomorrow’s Workplace, starts on Monday 14^th January. It includes contributions from a number of Exeter staff, business partners and Student Digital Mentors. We aim to encourage learners to think beyond “standard” (i.e. 20^th Century!) career pathways and consider the much wider range of options that are opening up in the digital economy.

The objective of our short open course is to equip learners with the knowledge and skills necessary to reach their intended career goals in workplaces which require increasing levels of flexibility, adaptability and commitment to lifelong learning. Certain jobs may disappear but entirely new opportunities will become available that currently don’t even exist.

For example, developments in fields such as robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence are proving to be highly disruptive to society and to ourselves as employees or entrepreneurs. These technologies integrate physical, digital and biological systems in new and exciting ways, resulting in significant changes that we are only just beginning to understand. It’s said we are now in the process of a “4th Industrial Revolution”.

Business School postgraduate students who are taking the Digital Business Models module, (#BEMM129) will be covering similar topics in a more blended format which includes regular face to face workshops. It is one of six modules from across the University that is trialling a potential new virtual learning environment, as part of the EdTech Exeter Project.

If the trial is successful, this could be the digital platform upon which the University builds its Global Digital Curriculum. The aim is to improve access to learning resources that are simple to use, easy to access anywhere, anytime and that will compliment face-to-face teaching across our campuses. The students will be encouraged to engage in discussions with each other online and with the global community of MOOC learners for mutual benefit, while both courses are live. It provides a valuable opportunity for students to obtain experience of active social learning, build their professional digital networks and gain a range of international perspectives on the key themes covered in their module.

The MOOC will run for a second time in June 2019 to coincide with a major CIPD Festival of Work event taking place at Olympia.

Student Digital Mentors (from left to right) Shuyi Tang, Ben Wood and Luke Henderson

The Student Digital Mentors have recently been employed through our Education Incubator project to support educational innovation, where next year we will be running an online module based on future of work themes open to students across all Exeter campuses. They will be carrying out action research with their peers on the MOOC and on the blended module to help us design and deliver the new course in a way that will maximise student engagement and participation.  This work will also provide valuable input to current discussions that are shaping the University’s new Education Strategy.

Incubating our Incubator project

Our Education Incubator project kicked off this week with the very first face to face meeting, as evidenced by the photo below 🙂 The team of Educators drawn from both Exeter and Penryn will be developing a new module that is open to students from all campuses. It will cover the changing nature of work in an increasingly digital and global economy, and focus on building the skills needed for success in this environment.

From left to right are Beverley Hawkins, Stephen Hickman, Alison Truelove and Lisa Harris

The future of work is an important topic for all of us because it offers significantly different challenges and opportunities, shaped by digital innovations and trends towards global organising. For example, 3D printing, the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and crypto-currencies will restructure entire industries and economies, transforming the nature and location of employment.

As the module is taught online, it will offer flexibility of student participation, study time and tutor involvement without the usual timetable constraints of face to face sessions. It will provide network building opportunities for students across the whole university, and also with the global cohort studying alongside them on our free FutureLearn MOOC, “Building your Career in Tomorrow’s Workplace”

Students will be committing to active participation, through their assessed work, in spreading the word in creative ways to their peers about preparation for the future workplace.

The teaching team will be diverse, drawing upon specific expertise offered by individual Educators who will also mentor less experienced colleagues new to online social learning. All contributors will be encouraged to participate in online social learning activities and subsequently adopt them within their other modules to spread best practice.

 

Co-creation presentation by Digichamps at Social Media in HE Conference #SocMedHE16

Recently I presented with Student Digital Champions Tom Rowledge and Tom Davidson at the Social Media in Higher Education Conference held in Sheffield Hallam University. Actually, the two Toms did most of the work discussing their extended input to our Students as Creators and Change Agents (SACACA) project.

You can watch the Periscope recording, read their detailed blogpost about the event, or check out the slides below:

Social Media used as part of Co-Created Undergraduate Learning from Tom Davidson

It was great to receive a number of appreciative tweets from the audience, despite our talk being scheduled in the dreaded  “after lunch slot” 🙂

@lisaharris @SBSbusprogs @digichamps @tomjdavidson @tdrowledge Really inspiring and well presented well done and thank you!

— CΛRL DΞΛN (@DJCarlDean) December 16, 2016