Applicability and innovation in FVU-Digital
The 21st century comes with new IT-related competence and self-cultivation demands for young and old alike, regardless of whether they are operating in educational, occupational or social contexts.
These developments also pose challenges to education designers and providers, as education today must seize, challenge and make use of the digital world. It is no easy task to grasp, seize and keep up with digital and technological solutions; even in didactic contexts, technology offers possibilities as well as challenges!
Peter Holmboe, November 2020.
IT extends our capabilities
Some people may believe that our education system is fundamentally designed to meet the social and economic demands of the industrial revolution. In other words, what schools teach is premised on the needs - or anticipated needs - of society and the labour market. This means that ultimately, schooling and education are defined by an external goal fulfilment where the teacher is always at the core of the process as well as the subject-matter authority in the classroom.
With the implementation of reforms and a focus on digital dimensions, however, teaching has transformed to be not merely about imparting knowledge about a specific subject, but also about how, where and with what one imparts that knowledge to at least as great an extent. There is a major focus on ensuring that the learner is placed at the centre of their own learning in an active, exploratory and practical way.
At the same time, researchers have pointed to the fact that IT is not merely “another form of technology”; instead, IT extends our cognitive abilities and does not - as is the case with other technologies - ‘merely’ expand our physical capabilities. IT allows us to think, learn and ultimately work in completely different ways than what we have otherwise been accustomed to (Caspersen et al. 2018).
Employees suffer from inadequate basic skills
The 2017 Tripartite Agreement for Adult and Continuing Training: Improved and more flexible adult and continuing training states that “many adult Danes have inadequate basic skills in relation to reading, writing, arithmetic and problem-solving with IT”. Among other things, this assessment was based on the OECD’s 2013 PIAAC survey.
Being able to obtain new knowledge and upgrade ones qualifications requires a robust foundation of strong skills. A lack of basic skills creates challenges in the modern workplace, where tasks and assignments are growing in complexity and becoming increasingly demanding in terms of digital skills, among others.
In order to continue to have job opportunities and find work, it is important to ensure that employees and jobseekers possess the necessary competences and skills to seize these opportunities. This requires not only that employees and jobseekers are well-qualified, but also that they have a foundational understanding of how to make use of and see the consequences of IT and digital technologies, both in a personal and working context (Frey et al. 2016, Holmboe 2020).
Today’s social, economic and cultural needs point to the necessity of people being able to work creatively with a critical approach, both independently and with other people in communities and teams (Holmboe 2020). Technology expands the possibilities for how people can access, construct and communicate knowledge and on an informed basis.
If one asks an employee out in the real world, however, the reality is not always quite as positive and glamorous. It is not uncommon to find employees who believe that digitalisation has resulted in less autonomy and a lower degree of freedom, and who believe that while digitalisation may be important, it is not something they are personally keen on. They feel digitalisation poses challenges, and many of them accordingly only use IT to the extent that their job requires them to.
The result: A competence and skill gap
The great possibilities therefore also entail great challenges, and the possibilities will also reveal a gap between those who have access to, use and construct with IT and digital tools on the one hand, and those who lack the access, means or inclination to do so on the other.
In general, companies come up with pragmatic and sound solutions to get the work done. Typically, they employ peer training to ensure new employees learn the absolute essentials of their job and its associated duties. However, this approach, which solely focuses on ensuring an employee is capable of performing a specific assignment, carries the risk of turning that employee into a ‘one-trick pony’ of sorts. A negative consequence of this approach could be that the employee becomes ‘locked’ into certain job functions and never improves their generic IT skills. In the long run, that employee risks being phased out as the role evolves to demand more IT skills than they possess or the company switches to new technologies. At the same time, the company may also suffer if it lacks digitally competent employees who can ensure the company keeps up with technological developments and thus also the market, industry and competition in general.
The consequences are accordingly considerable and wide-ranging for companies and employees alike that do not understand and exploit IT and digital technologies.
This is where adult preparatory education (FVU) teachers can enter the picture to reveal the possibilities that exist, pave the way to those possibilities and take an application-oriented approach to teaching workers how to use IT. Especially FVU-Digital teachers face a great challenge in relation to ensuring a transfer of skills obtained from an educational context to an occupational one, regardless of whether or not the training is company-based.
Education through IT, with IT and in IT
The number of FVU course participants has doubled over the course of a single decade according to a register survey conducted by the Danish Evaluation Institute (https://www.eva.dk/voksen-efteruddannelse/brug-forberedende-voksenundervisning-fvu).
During those 10 years, the growth, possibilities and speed of IT, digitalisation and technology have far more than doubled. In light of that, IT competences have become a crucial foundational skill and qualification in the labour market on par with literacy and numeracy skills. For example, employers refer to terms such as “21st century skills”,“Digital self-cultivation” as well as more specific skills and abilities related to being able to use, understand and manage digital tools in a broad and versatile sense.
Accordingly, this creates a necessity to ensure that FVU participants are also equipped with the competences and skills adjacent to the subject they are actually studying, be it Danish, mathematics or something else. There is a need for the teacher of a course to create and organise learning processes where the digital aspect also becomes an important element, not only to allow for virtual education, but just as much to ensure the participants gain IT-related reflection competences.
Designing a course as e-learning, Flipped Learning (Hachmann & Holmboe 2014), Blended Learning or whatever other label one may use for it is not without its challenges!
Among other reasons, the pedagogical diploma degree in FVU-Digital was created with a view to giving FVU teachers the qualifications and up-to-date competences to teach with IT, through IT and with a view to ensuring that FVU course participants acquire IT knowledge and skills.
The answer: FVU-Digital
A good teacher has a versatile set of skills, competences and forms of expression that are not restricted to the course they are teaching. Relationship-building skills, excellent conversational skills, didactic imagination and (pedagogical) empathy, to just name a few. Today, however, IT, technology and digitalisation are also a necessary consideration for teachers or courses/programmes seeking to responsibly provide learners with a well-rounded education. Teachers who wish to address these challenges can take several paths, one of which is to consider the FVU-Digital pedagogical diploma programme.
Technology plays a role in spurring pedagogical and didactic change, and institutions must be cognisant of this, among other reasons to avoid a situation where technology ends up driving education, teaching and development rather than the other way around. This is precisely what the pedagogical diploma programme in FVU-Digital is about; to link didactics, pedagogy and skills specifically and explicitly to using IT to teach IT.
How does that look in practice?
If the learning acquired via FVU-Digital is to be retained and result in beneficial and lasting capacity building, and if the participants are to have the opportunity to use what they learn in new contexts, it is crucial to ensure that what they work on during the course is also used in practice!
In cases where the teaching is company-based, this link is practically a matter of course, as the curriculum ought to also be directly related to the employees’ duties at the company. Regardless of whether the teaching takes place at a company or institution, however, it is also essential to link the course material to workplace considerations in a way that makes the participants reflect on the significance, possibilities and consequences of IT.
If one were to ask the course participants about how they most often work with the course material, they will refer to a form of teaching that combines learning supervised by a teacher with short group work assignments. The course content is characterised by training assignments where participants either work in pairs on one screen or in slightly larger groups where everyone has their own screen.
If we - i.e. teachers and institutions - wish to develop teaching in a world that is connected and dialogical to a far greater extent that ever before, we must also shift our focus from considering technology as something that is solely about how to act in relation to IT to regarding IT as a participatory, supportive, dialogical and collaborative that can facilitate learning and link directly to practice, resulting in immediate utility both in the practical and educational context.
The participants, like their teachers, also have to work with and dive into IT tools and the possibilities and challenges they offer. This not only builds an educational action readiness, but also creates the possibility of building action readiness in relation to how, why and when they should use IT tools and technology.
It gives them an opportunity to develop constructive and critical digital competences in their working lives. It gives them a type of preparedness in terms of being able to select or deselect a specific resource, both in a learning context and occupational context.
Practically speaking, it is crucially important that the teacher’s presentation of the subject matter is activating and not merely something to be consumed, memorised and copied. It is important that the participants get the opportunity to take ownership of their learning situation and become testers, explorers and thinkers in relation to what their teacher just demonstrated and exemplified.
A well-known and widely used pedagogical principle is that you yourself can learn even more by explaining how something works to another person. This principle offers potentially huge gains in FVU-Digital, where the participants join the course with a very varied level of prior experience and knowledge. For example, certain participants could be assigned the task of teaching others in parts of the course material, or asked to help demonstrate examples of how to perform digital tasks.
This would give the teaching the potential to occur in a productive interplay between teaching, learning and investigation.
And if that seems like an insurmountable challenge, then remember: Innovation - regardless of whether it relates to technology, evaluation, assessment or instruction - requires time and space for experiments and lots of tolerance for uncertainty and unpredictable outcomes.
Literature
Caspersen, M.; Iversen, O.; Nielsen, M.; Hjorth, A.; Musaeus, L. H. 2018, Computational Thinking – hvorfor, hvad og hvordan. It-vest – samarbejdende universiteter. Retrieved from:
Frey, C., & Osborne, M. 2013. The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? Oxford Martin School. Retrieved from: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
Frey, C., Osborne, M., & Holmes, C. 2016, Technology at work v. 2.0. The future is not what it used to be. Citi Global Perspectives & Solutions (GPS). Retrieved from: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/reports/Citi_GPS_Technology_Work_2.pdf
Hachmann, R & Holmboe, P 2014, Flipped Learning: mere end bare video. 2 udg, PRAXIS, Kbh.
Holmboe, P. 2020, Afdækning af virksomhedernes behov for digitale og teknologiske kompetencer: Digitalisering i faget - udvikling af et digitalt mindset i erhvervsuddannelserne. Retrieved from: https://www.ucviden.dk/da/publications/afd%C3%A6kning-af-virksomhedernes-behov-for-digitale-og-teknologiske-k
OECD (2013), OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills, OECD Publishing. Retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264204256-en
The Government of Denmark, (29 November 2017), Trepartsaftale: Styrket og mere fleksibel voksen-, efter- og videreuddannelse. Retrieved from https://www.regeringen.dk/media/4249/trepartsaftale-iii_endelig.pdf
