Skills and Standards Webinar Series - Episode 6 - Skills Recognition and Progression

In the sixth webinar of this series, Deb Carr joined Dr. Mark Keough to discuss skills recognition and reform, in particular key discussion points:

- What is the value of skills recognition?
- How do we recognise similar skills between different competencies?
- What improvements could we make?

👉 Watch the full video on https://skillsaware.com/events/skills-and-standards-webinar-series/

About SkillsAware

SkillsAware is an AI-powered skills recognition engine developed through a collaboration between SkillsIQ, a skills-focused not-for-profit and Edalex, an award-winning EdTech and SkillsTech company, building on decades of technology and skills expertise. Its SkillsTech platform and associated services captures and maintains an evidence-based indicator of the plethora of skills that individuals accumulate progressively.

SkillsAware enables organisations to identify the skills that exist within their workforce and highlight strengths and gaps so they can plan for the future. SkillsAware assists with skills-based hiring and resourcing and supports and contributes to productivity, performance, opportunity and reward goals. SkillsAware has relevance for individuals, small, medium and large enterprises and industries in the recognition of current capability, prior learning and experience.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Thank you for tuning in to the Skills Aware Podcast. We are a human-centered Airpowered skills recognition engine, transforming how people and organizations understand and grow their capabilities. Each episode features insightful conversations with industry leaders, experts, and innovators who share their knowledge, experiences, and ideas on workforce skills, skills recognition, skills literacy, artificial intelligence, and so much more.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Hi Deb Carr, and welcome to uh the webinar. And yeah, I think about 20 people uh planning to come. So we'll see how that goes. Um uh and uh I want to welcome those that have logged in already and we'll um start with some introductions. And and so first thing I want to do is acknowledge that um I'm on the land of the Ghana people and um acknowledge um uh uh uh the traditional owners and uh elders, past, present, and emerging. And uh uh uh and I'm sure that um we want to show respect to all the lands that all of us are on, um, including you, Deb, who are in Fiji um as we speak. Um uh I I hear you're working and having a bit of a break, um, but you do so many different things. So I'll do a brief introduction. One thing I do know for sure is that you're doing a PhD currently researching the impacts of um RFP. Uh RP or RFP. I've got RFP's on the brain at the minute. Anyway, the impacts of RPL um um uh on individuals, and I'm really excited to learn more about that. Um, and I'm sure some of that will come up today. But also you're an international roaming consultant, really, aren't you, in your field? Um, how do you put your scope? Because I know you do a lot of work with RPL, but also with skills, frameworks, and skills advice. And um you were just telling me what you were doing in Fiji, which is fascinating.

SPEAKER_03 2:06

Yeah, yeah. Um it's really and like it is, I contextualize what I know and my expertise to so many different environments, and it is around skills recognition. It always boils down to that. Um, whether that's for a um rights to work, or whether that's for qualification, or whether that's for occupational mapping, um, it's or better access to higher ed, um, being university, or um meeting skills gaps in critical areas across the globe, labor mobility, um regionally, um nationally. Um it really just boils down to um what I know and can do in in terms of using a system, a T VET system. Um, lots of times it's around um the vet system, um optimizing that or changing that and thinking about it differently to be able to recognize the skills that people have. Um that's yeah, that's my cell, that's what I do, and that seems to be the critical need right across the globe.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Just just drawing out a bit, zooming up a bit, you know, what's so important do you think about skills recognition? Um, what's the what what is it uh, you know, why is why is why do people engage you? Why why is it important in the in the bigger bit? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:42

Um fundamentally at an individual level, people want to be recognized for their competency. They want to be recognized for the skills they have towards a decent job, towards the job and come that's commensurate of their skills and knowledge, or even just a community um recognition. They want recognition. And that's what my PhD is about, those um the um the value base for individuals um for when they go through the the RPL process, not necessarily always the credential at the end, but just because that meta learning, just becoming aware of the extent and the value of what I know and can do. So at an individual level, it's it's it's um socially empowering. Um, I was just listening to the um OECD Um and Singapore International Institute of Adult Learning um podcast. Um, Barney Glover was there as well. They've written um through four papers on skills first, and so it was a global conversation. And there was there's still some gaps to move along in terms of skills first, um, not not getting rid of qualifications, but seeing there's a skills agenda that can that can um develop in alignment with that. But the Singapore contribution to that was that what we don't have at the moment is um how to empower individuals in their learning and earning journey. Knowing what I get asked at an individual level a lot is what jobs how can I move from this occupation to this occupation? So that is um important for individuals and meaningful work, but it also is important at economic level, the gross domestic product um the GDP level is around utilizing the skills that you have in your also to compete um regionally for skills that have become a commodity. Um and so governments are interested in it and employers. Um their most constraining factor is the skills of their people, um, and recognizing the stock of skills that you have in your organization will um allow you to be ahead of the rest.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Well, it's interesting, isn't it? Because um, you know, I I um my focus is on systems and interoperability. And you know, part of this seminar has been to talk about standards and and people get very confused about what we mean by standards because some people think it's about standardization or you know, um taxonomies or language and and so on, but actually it's about interoperability for me, it's about making sure that dislike things can can be viewed with where they have the same meaning, but it might be written differently. We understand what the meaning is, you know. So standards brings a lot about meaning. You and I had a fascinating conversation in the car. I was driving.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

I knew you'd bring this up.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah, I was gonna bring this up. When when it recently, and uh and you you know, you and I have been talking for a couple of years, I suppose, now, um, and met through mutual friends, which was wonderful. Um, but um you said, I think it's finally dawned on me just how important the standards thing is. Um what was what was that moment that you what what did you what did what was it that you saw something, a glimmer of like, ah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 7:22

Um I don't know what it was. I think you know, like with marketing, you've got to see it seven times before it you know really hits home. I don't know, it was a a harm moment. And I finally understood what you're on about in terms of standardizing the language of skills. Yeah, um, and I see merit in that, absolutely. Um, particularly um because of international mobility. Um, one skills taxonomy may not talk to another. So standardizing the language of skills um can move with times as well, um considering the skills shelf life is becoming shorter and shorter. Um so I agree in terms of um a standard for skills language. I mean, I'm I'm an ISO auditor, and my whole practice is based on a standard um that I I was um um um examined on in using different contexts. Um so I do now understand the standardization of the language of skills is is important um and how that can um optimize the um portability um of um skills by using the same type of um the the uh the same type of language to describe the skills.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, yeah, I I that's the that's what I was hoping to draw out from you is the mobility and portability question. And there's another dimension to mobility and portability, which I think sometimes is a problematic in our current system, and that is that we tend to recognize skills at a point in time. Um, and again, I'm looking for systems that allow us to to um to recognise progression in a s in a standardized sort of way, you know, and you know, people have concepts like mastery and so on, but you know, mastery is also very open, open to interpretation, highly subjective, you know, often. Um do you have any views on this? Like what happens if if if um, because as we know in the Australian system, you either have a skill or you don't, right? That's the that's the the the the point in time thing at the various levels, AQF levels, um, uh and in terms of what's in the training packages. But what happens if you do better, improve? You know, have you got some thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Um I'm not going to enter the debate of um competent or not yet competent in mastery and proficiency. Um what I will enter um, what I think about is as you progress your expertise um that is beyond your your your first um qualification or credentials, um, there are um merging ways to be able to make that more visible. Um and um micro-credentials, for instance. Um it was a conversation that I had here um in a workshop across many countries was um how can you reckon like in terms of RPL, if we're saying our curriculum, and they call it the curriculum, um, is outdated, what is the point of recognising your skills into that dated system? And true enough, terrific, uh terrific um comment. However, I also had a person that has micro-credential expertise across um across the globe. And together, RPL and micro-credentials is exponentially um powerful for a um a skills development and recognition system. So a lot of emerging technology, particularly, people learn on the job. They teach themselves, they look at what is happening abroad, and their competencies are beyond what we've got in the standard training, occupational standards. We have though, for instance, um in Australia, we have the vet accredited courses, and it is a quality assured, and I will always emphasize that recognition is quality assured because it needs to have value in the market that you want it to have, and how that is validated or verified is important to the people that are wanting to believe in that in that um statement of skill. So whether that's an employer, potential employer, um, or whether that's an education institution, um, or whether that's a migration officer. Um in terms of micro-credentials, we do have in the vet system already, it's been in the system for dozens possibly of years, where we can get a micro-credential accredited nationally in 12 weeks. I've done four of them, I'm currently doing one in emerging technologies. And that system is embedded, it's quality assured, and we can get it into the market in 12 to 13 weeks. Um, so we do have mechanisms in the Australian VET system, and they part of that process, and I've gone through it four times, is to make sure there's no duplication. So we we don't want what's already there, and make sure that it's industry needs needed and it's and it's validated. It's a very robust system to show that evidence.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

So um in that context, literally, and uh Catherine, thank you for your questions. There's some I've got a couple of barrel questions from Catherine McGilvray on the on the call, but it let's start with industry. Um, and also um um she's introduced the idea of confidence levels of people that they might have a skill, whether they've got the qualification or not. Um, so there's two there's two parts of that question. You know, what the role of industry. I I I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I I imagine you think that the current current industry validation of vet qualifications is a sound thing. I mean, it might be a bit cumbersome. What do you think? How could it be improved?

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Um, industry validation at design. Yeah um yep. So we've just had that conversation in terms of um uh in this district in this region, you've got a lot of um outlying rural um uh learners that um we need to work out a way how to practically assess skills and knowledge remotely. And um online practical assessment was brought up and we talked about that. So industry's involvement needs to be right from the start, needs to be from the design stage, um, and we can do it quickly through the uh vet accredited um courses system, not so quickly through the training package system, but the vet accredited course system is that a five-year micro-credential and with the intention to absorb into the training packages if it's um sustainably needed into the future. So that's at the design stage, whether it's training packages or courses. Um, and then during your training and assessment strategy as an RTO, you're partnering with industry to contextualize those skills into a valid work environment. We do have a problem with over overly prescriptive units of competency that makes it very difficult to contextualise into lots of industry needs, and that's the rigidity of the of the qualification system. I believe that it's overly prescriptive. Um, so we've got, but there's an opportunity there to uh partner with industries to get uh for assessment and for on-the-job um learning or projects that are based in the workplace, um, and then the credentialing. Um, in certain countries, um, training providers do not assess. It's third parties that assess, or if the third party assesses, there's external validators that come in for every um cohort. So I'm a big believer of external assessment. Um then one person trains and the one person assesses and the one person certifies, you know, that could be a conflict.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, that's that's uh a very good point you're making. Um and but just to pick up a couple, a couple of Catherine's other questions, thank you, Catherine, for them. Um just rolling back to standards and language, right? So uh I I I fully accept this because I live in it. When we start to work with standards and language, it gets confusing for people. And often language in skills is confusing for people, particularly if they're not used to the sort of system. Um but that plays to evidence too. And in your experience, I mean, what are the things we can do to make evidence gathering evidence um absolutely connecting the evidence to requirement? What can we do to improve that?

SPEAKER_03 16:23

Even like, and it is about um confidence, and I um thanks, Catherine, for bringing that up because you've got the Dunning Kruger effect, and then you've got the the other end of the um scope, and you've got the um syndrome, what's the um the other syndrome where you don't realize the extent of your expertise? Um I'm sure someone in the audience imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome, that's it, yeah. So, or you've got those people that have got the gift of the gap and they can really, you know, talk the talk, but do they really be are they can they really do it? So being able to my um what I know and can do, and I did I studied this in my masters, it's a nightmare. It really is a nightmare, particularly when the standard, and you may speak to this, the standard, the training package units will stay will stay competency-based and they're task-based. They're that even connecting that to what people do in the workplace is just so hard. And then, like, what does that look like in my workplace and which workplace? Because I might have worked in lots, and then how can I find a piece of evidence? Um, and many RTOs will default to uh you know physical art uh artifacts, which is quite unfair. Um, how can I connect that to an artifact that will be robust enough? And does that go over one PC or does it go over two units or part of unit? And do I have to put it up each time? Like it really is a nightmare and it's soul destroying to try and um encapsulate 20 years of your professional identity into um um performance criteria. So people find it incredibly difficult. What has been what um is empowering and helpful to do that is an interpreter, a person in the middle. And that person is a coach, they're a subject matter expert, and they know competency-based. So there's three um advanced competency-based assessment skills that you need to do that, to be able to coach them. And um, you're not telling them the answers, you can't make up experience. What you're helping to them to do to understand, you do this every day, these are just different words, and you're coaching them, but you're also the subject matter expert. So you may you may have you must have broad experience to know what those skills look like in so many different workplaces so that you can help that person. And then you must have competency-based assessment skill. You must know the principles of assessment and the rules of evidence to make that assessment robust because it needs to be quality assured if you if you want to have that value in the market, like labour market or education market.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Well, and not to I'll take a moment for advertisement. Of course, one of the things we're doing at Skills Aware is trying to reduce the time and cost of that evidence management process using AI. But we we openly acknowledge you still need a human in the loop, right? Someone's got to say um this is this is um sufficient and um you know.

SPEAKER_03 19:34

Also, yeah, I've just yeah, I've just done a global um desktop review of 14 countries across four continents, and um not a lot of people are digitally um literate. So when you're using, and it's great, I mean we we need I call it blended RPL. So, you know, you're using digital enhancement to be able to make that a little less painful um in time in terms of mapping um evidence to a standard, um, in terms of trying to select what evidence to use is very helpful. But the digital literacy of being able to um play in that space is we cannot assume is um is a given, not only for the learners or candidates, but also for the practitioners. And that has been the the digital, um besides the digital infrastructure, digital literacy for um assessors, um, institutions, and um learners has been one of the biggest barriers across the world.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

It's interesting, isn't it? Because who does whose responsibility is it? Like we hear the Productivity Commission's calling for RPL, but you know, is it should the RTI be doing this? Thanks, Catherine, for that those prompts. And also, could we get more involved in the L and D sector too? Like there seems to be a gulf between the L and D sector and the vet sector, which I just don't understand. Yeah, what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Well, not in my world, um, because um employers um have that pain point more than RTOs. So RTOs, you know, whilst RPL is mandated, um, there's no punishment really for not doing it. Um, but for enterprises and organizations, particularly ones that go across a country or like hotels that go across different countries, um, being able to recognise the skills that are not so visible in your workforce so that you can move them around, so that you can transfer those skills over to this context becomes more efficient, particularly when there's not a uh when recruiting is more expensive and the and the skills are just not there. So to grow your own and recognize your own, um there's more uh more. Economic drivers for employers, large and small, than there are than there is for RTOs. You said the driver is there from a government point of view. So we've got, and the JSCs as well, they've um expressed the need for skills recognition in lots of different words. And the employers are asking for it, the peak business um bodies are asking for it. Um the education providers that um are not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

And so there's a and it's a it's a cost. Do you think it's just a cost problem? I think it's largely a cost problem that it costs as much or more to RBL someone than for them to participate in a course. Is that an is that an assumption we should question?

SPEAKER_03 22:47

Well, I think it's funding. Yeah, I think that um as um our TV, our vet sector in Australia has um been relegated to a training system rather than how it started was a recognition system.

SPEAKER_04 23:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:02

And now the funding is all attached to training, training, training rather than recognition, recognition, recognition. So whilst um government has the policies in terms of the rhetoric, um, it needs to transition into um clever and quality-assured funding mechanisms.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So perhaps for both the education sector, the RTO sector, but also for employers to give some incentive. Because um, Catherine makes a very good point. There's an awful lot of people employed in training in industry that are not part of the vet sector, but they could be better connected, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:38

Absolutely. And we were talking about this. Love having you on board here today, Catherine. Um, we were talking about that here in terms of um utilizing the um in-the-workplace trainer. And in fact, um, we had industry representative at a lot of our workshops giving a perfect case study of one of the largest employers in this country here, um, um showing the rest in the room, which were all providers and regulators, how it was organically and is being organically done. He has a a workshop and also a classroom at the workplace, and they are rotating apprentices in through his workshop doing real repairs for the for the mill. And so it's been so successful that even the um the mechanics and the trained and experienced technicians are asking to come in for these workshops. Um, so it's just been very um extremely um successful. Then I asked the trainer, I said, how did you learn how to train? He's uh he's a um engineer, um, a very experienced engineer, and I said, You don't know how to train, you haven't, you've never been, you've never learned how to train better pedagogy. And what about people that you know um have learning difficulties and how how to work through that? And there was some online resources that he read, and he had a mentor from a training organization that they hang out together and they just talk around, you know, what what do I do here, what do I do there? And I said, What else do you want to learn? And he said, I want to learn um feedback. What do I do? How do I get feedback from the students, workers, and how do I um adapt to that? How can I do that systemically? So in Australia, we have a skill set, it's called the workplace trainer skill set. Um, and we could work much more closely with industry by utilising those skills in the in the workplace. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

And we can local them into the trainer skill set as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

It's an interesting thing. I'm a member of ARTD, and I brought I brought this up, I brought it up a couple of times, and you know, there just isn't an understanding of how to do the next steps. Now I want to um let everyone know that this is the last of a series of five webinars that um have all now been converted into podcasts and are available as videos, and it's been an incredibly incredibly um um enjoyable thing to do over the last uh six six or nine months we've been doing it. And um, and Deb, you're the you're the last guest. So I'm gonna ask you one really big question. If you could change anything, what would you start with?

SPEAKER_03 26:33

Um, a little bit. Um the biggest barrier for RPL across the world is awareness. People that do it go, why didn't I know about this before? And why and why don't other people know about it? And lots of times they become a champion for it. So awareness that it's not a big thing and be for the institutions, that it can be a profit-making exercise. It can be a service that you provide to industries, and it's a it's a it's a product, it's a service. They want it, learn how to do it well to provide that service to um to recognize, but then you've got gap training, you've got upskilling as well that comes along with those close industry partnerships. So awareness and see it as a a service to um to uh with industry.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

And I I think that's the thing we've come up with today, which I wasn't expecting, to be honest. Um, but it it it's it's it's mobility, right? So it's mobility from um one workplace to another, within one organization to another role, it's mobility around um from one context to another, mobility between contexts. We've got so much work to do on this stuff.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Oh, actually, I'm just looking at a project now that is looking at occupational mapping. So, in terms of industry restructures, um, people are um looking at redundancy and retrenching, you know, how can those skills be used in other areas, particularly in green skills, um technology, emerging technology, and how can we utilize that? And so occupational mapping is um a way to do that in mass.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah, and and um you know the other one is there's this thing about between technical skills that you need for a job versus as uh again, thank you, Catherine and Roger, for your comments um around um uh transferability.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Now, people people talk about transferable skills, but it is it's it's another messy area because Yeah, yeah, it's it annoys me a little bit to kind of categorize it into hard skills, soft skills, transferable skills. Like you know when you're doing something that you have the skills because you've been using, you've been doing this but differently in a different project or a different job, you know, to categorize it, whether it's you know, it all it is is that skills that you can use in other contexts. It's contextualization. Um and there may be gaps, there may be a little bit of learning, it's the zone of proximity development. This is the area I know. I know I'm using these skills. There's a little bit extra to learn, but I'm using these skills.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and um that notion that recognition is the key, not necessarily like we get a bit hung up on exactly matching skill statements and text when in fact it's the recognition and capability that we're looking for, you know.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

Yeah, and also for individuals not having to start again, like mid-career, and there's so many careers trans uh people um transitioning careers now, um, because of the you know, rapid change uh of of work and green skills and the digital transition. Um, people are having to change jobs, and that's where the confidence comes in. Like adult adults are lots of times not too fussed about going back into the classroom. Um, and but they don't want to start again. They can't start again. They've got mortgage kids, like there's no way. And so they need to be recognized for what they know and can do, and then access that gap training in an equitable, open way, um, that they don't have to sit in classrooms and from one o'clock to four o'clock in the afternoons.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah. Well, we've come to the end of our time. Deb, it's been delightful. Thank you for making the effort from where you are. And um, you and I actually haven't met face to face yet, but I'm looking forward to that day too. Um that's not too far away. Thanks everyone for joining us today.

SPEAKER_03 30:40

Absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

Thanks for tuning into this Skills Aware podcast episode. Don't forget to follow us on your podcast app so you don't miss a thing, and be sure to visit our website at skillsaware.com to learn more.