Archive for the ‘Wales Wide Web’ Category

Using Labour Market Information for Career Development in the Changing World of Work

February 18th, 2021 by Graham Attwell

I was invited to make a presentation earlier this week to the European Union Horizon 2020 HECAT project exploring the use of algorithms within public employment systems. Waterford (Ireland) Institute of Technology is coordinating the project and according to the WaterfordLive web site “HECAT is a sociologically and anthropologically led project to make data trapped in public employment systems (PES) and national statistical offices available to unemployed people and those trying to help them to improve their personal decision-making and visionary future.” Dr Griffin from the Institute said: “Everyone is concerned or should be worried about how algorithms and big data is being used in the labour market, we cannot put the technology genie back in the bottle, rather we need to figure out how to make the output from these novel technologies ethical, fair and transparent. We need to crack them open sociologically and anthropologically so that traditional researchers can fully understand how they operate and communicate that to the public.”

Anyway here are my slides.

Posted in Career Guidance, careers, Data, labour markets, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on Using Labour Market Information for Career Development in the Changing World of Work

Keynote presentations released as Open Educational Resources

February 9th, 2021 by Graham Attwell

Tony Bates has released a series of five 40-50 minute keynotes which an be downloaded without cost from the Commonwealth of Learning’s online institutional repository for learning resources and publications, OAsis, under a Creative Commons license. The subjects of the keynotes are:

  1. Developing quality blended learning courses
  2. Digital learning and the new economy
  3. New technologies and their potential and limitations for teaching and learning
  4. Ten lessons for online learning from the Covid-19 experience (based on research findings)
  5. Online learning in the (k-12) school sector

The intention is that these can be streamed during virtual conferences, included in education and training programs, or watched individually. As James Clay says on Twitter: “I think this is an interesting concept for future online events. However there is a difference between YouTube or Netflix and an online conference. How do you add value to an event so that it is more than just streamed video?”

I went to a couple of events last week that were trying different formats. One was a professorial inaugural lecture by Bob Harrison who, it seems insisted on prerecording his presentation so he could actively participate in the accompanying chat. The other was the OECD conference on AI and the Future of Work, where the real value was not presentations as such but great (and well prepared moderation of panels of speakers, with limited opportunities for particpant questioning.

However, coming back to Tony Bates’s video keynotes, the real value I see with these is with remixing. They are released under a Creative Commons attribution, share alike license which means they are free to remix. This allows using (in my case short) clips from the video in Open Educational Resources for a MOOC we are developing on AI for vocational teachers and trainers and part of the taccle AI project. I’m going to have a go this afternoon.

Posted in #AIinEd, AI, digital revolution, Open Educational Resources, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on Keynote presentations released as Open Educational Resources

LinkedIn says growing job demand for growth hackers!

February 8th, 2021 by Graham Attwell
job, job offer, workplace

geralt (CC0), Pixabay

There is increasing interest in what labour market information job advertisement portals can provide. OK, most sites will have various skews in terms  of what kind of companies advertise on them, but the good side is that they can provide near real time data about labour market supply and demand. In the UK the best known are probably Burning Glass and Emsi. Of course these are both commercial services, charging for their data. LinkedIn also has been collecting and analysing Labour Market jobs adverts and have recently published a list of the UKs fifteen fastest growing job sectors for 2021, including Top jobs, Top skills and Hiring hotspots.

The job sectors are (in rank order):

  1. E-commerce personel
  2. Health care supporting staff
  3. Digital content freelancers
  4. Construction
  5. Creative freelancers
  6. Finance
  7. Specialised medical professionals
  8. Professional coaching
  9. Social, media and digital marketing
  10. Customer service
  11. Education
  12. Mental health professionals
  13. Real estate
  14. Specialized engineering
  15. Artificial intelligence

I’m sure there has been a great deal of work in cleaning and analysing the data. However, I am not quite sure how seriously to take the findings. LinkedIn has presumably a quite heavy skew towards higher qualified professional jobs.

And it is no surprise to find to find the ‘hiring hotspots’ clustered around the major UK cities. In many ways it is teh job titles (or top jobs) that are the most interesting. Job titles are a major problem in trying to clean and analyse data from job adverts. Only recently I had feedback from someone testing a system I am developing that they could not find any jobs for ‘sandwich artists’ on my app.

The top jobs that LinkedIn list for E-Commerce personnel appear neither high paid for requiring high qualification, I am not quite sure what a online specialist is but the rest are driver, supply chain associate, supply chain assistant, warehouse team lead,

And it is pretty obvious why heath workers are in high demand and short supply.

But I am not convinced about high demand for voice over artists and script writers included in the creative freelancers category.  Nor am I sure about a shortage of Life coaches (professional coaching), less still ‘growth hackers’ (Social media and digital marketing), whatever that might be.

I wonder if employers are just getting savvy in how to appeal to younger people with job titles not reflecting the real level of pay or indeed skills. But maybe I am too cynical

Posted in Career Guidance, careers, labour markets, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on LinkedIn says growing job demand for growth hackers!

Artificial Intelligence degrees

February 8th, 2021 by Graham Attwell
convocation, mortar board, graduation

mamir_k94 (CC0), Pixabay

The UK operates a central university admissions service, called UCAS. Today they have released their analysis of institutional and subject admissions for 2020. In an article in the online Higher Education newspaper, WONKHE, Sander Kristel, Chief Operations Officer at UCAS, points out some of  the more striking features of the data.

He reports that Artificial Intelligence degrees have grown by more than 400 per cent in the past decade – from just 65 acceptances in 2011 to 355 acceptances in 2020.

As he says:

This growth will be music to the ears of employers according to research from the Industrial Strategy Council, which highlighted the adoption of automation as the biggest driver of a shift in skills and estimated that 39 per cent of the activities that people are paid to do in the UK today could be automated by 2030, with current technology creating demand in technology-related occupations such as software development.

Less welcome news, however, is that although the ratio of UK male acceptances to UK female acceptances across all Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths subjects has shrunk from 1.34 in to 1.06 over the last decade, there has been little progress made in closing the gap for computer science (6.2 in 2011, relative to 5.7 in 2020), perhaps related to the significant amount of growth in this subject overall.

Posted in #AIinEd, 21stCenturySkills, AI, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on Artificial Intelligence degrees

Teaching, Learning and Assessment

February 3rd, 2021 by Graham Attwell
review, opinion, feedback

Tumisu (CC0), Pixabay

I went to a great inaugural professorial lecture today by Bob Harrison (@BobHarrisonEdu) on Teaching Learning and Assessment in a digital world. Organised by John Traxler at the University of Warwick, the session was informative, provocative, passionate and fun. Although delivered through Zoom, it seems Bob had insisted on prerecording his presentation to allow him to participate in the chat alongside the lecture. Its well worth watching and as soon as I get the address of the recording I will post it here.

I have a growing interest in e-assessment, which I see as  one of the crucial areas in which education needs to change and we have an outstanding funding bid for an international project in this area. Anyway Bob passed on a whole series of references during the presentation and in the chat. One of these was to the E-Assessment Association.

According to its website the e-Assessment Association (eAA) is a not-for-profit membership body with three major goals.

  1. To provide professional support and facilitate debate/ discussion for everyone involved in this field of expertise;
  2. To create and communicate the positive contributions that technology makes to all forms of assessment and;
  3. To develop statements of good practice for suppliers and consumers of e-Assessment technologies. 

The eAA builds awareness of the benefits that technology brings to assessment, particularly around delivering better learning and assessment, rather than just greater efficiency.

The eAA also works to ensure that it has a strong voice and influence in the key policy debates involving the assessment of learning, training and competency.

Membership is free!

Posted in Assessment, e-learning 2.0, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on Teaching, Learning and Assessment

The Future of Work: an annotated bibliography

February 2nd, 2021 by Graham Attwell
macro, cogwheel, gear

Pavlofox (CC0), Pixabay

There is growing research and debate over how technology – particularly AI and automation – will result in changes to the world of work. LMIC  (I think it stands for Labor Market Information Centre – but I couldn’t find anything about the name of their website)  in Canada has a project to set up an ongoing annotated bibliography. And, although there is a focus on north American literature and reports, the site is useful for anyone interested in this topic.

“The future of work is a hot topic and the focus of many initiatives in recent years. Addressing gaps in labour market information (LMI) ensures that policy makers and stakeholders can help shape the future of work. For Canadians, information to help them adapt to this fourth industrial revolution is essential.

What the project is about

The Future of Work Annotated Bibliography features reports from a variety of sources, emphasizing Canadian information. These reports examine all aspects of the future of work. The complex interactions between megatrends, key gaps in LMI and forecasting tools are some of these topics

Posted in #AIinEd, AI, Wales Wide Web | Comments Off on The Future of Work: an annotated bibliography

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