Tag: training

What’s the difference between education and training?

On Wednesday 27th April. I’ll be keynote at UCISA’s spotlight. on Digital Capabilities: Digital skills, a priority or lip service?
https://www.ucisa.ac.uk/Events/2022/April/Spotlight-on-digital-capabilities

  • How can we raise the status and professionalism of IT trainers in education?
  • How can we best position digital capability needs?
  • What kind of business cases are successful and how can we show the impact, value and return on the investment?

Training in educational organisations is a contested space, with some significant challenges in ensuring that IT trainers have the right skills to support adults learning in the workplace. The differentiation needed in these classrooms along with sophisticated classroom management skills is an area often overlooked by managers. The sheer hostility of many university staff towards being asked to take time to learn any new digital skills may surprise many people who work in the private sector.

In this session I will share insights into experience of successful (and unsuccessful) initiatives and suggest ways forward for ensuring that digital capabilities considerations are underpinned by a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion.

 

grow your own learning technologists in-house

If you have a shortage of learning technologists about the place, you may need to  grow your own in-house.

If you can find colleagues who have a lively interest in learning and teaching and excellent digital skills, just sprinkle with them with a nutritious training programme and try to equip them with the resilience for coping with a lot of crop.

Our excellent teams in LTW have come up with a new learning technologist training toolkit.

This toolkit provides learning design and digital skills development resources and training for those new to working with learning technology, whether they have just joined the University or have moved internally from another role. It can be used as part of an on-boarding plan, or more generally for skills development.

The toolkit aims to build a foundation level of knowledge across our pool of learning technologists, covering the core learning technologies used at the University alongside learning design practices. Details of school-specific tools and practices should be added locally. 

Additionally, the toolkit aims to develop and maintain the University’s network of Learning Technologists through which you can meet others in similar roles, keep up to date with the fast-changing teaching landscape, share good practice and support each other. 

The toolkit offers flexibility through providing a variety of guidance and training, which you can work through on a self-study basis. In recognition of the variety of roles that exist in this area, you should use the toolkit on a pick-and-mix basis identifying with your manager which areas are most relevant to your role. 

The toolkit is based on Jisc’s Developing Digital Capability model and Learning Technologist role profile, job descriptions of learning technology roles advertised in the University in May 2020, and the University’s Digital Skills Framework. For further information, see the Digital Skills and Training web pages at https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/is-skills/programmes-courses-and-toolkits/development-programmes/new-learning-technologist or email us at is.skills@ed.ac.uk. 

 

This post can be read in conjunction with this one which describes how we re-skilled library shelving assistants to be learning technology assistants.

data driven

Just some of the roles we recruit to.

The Data Driven Innovation initiative programme led by the University of Edinburgh aims to expand on our existing expertise to grow data based projects, products, and services in the public, private, and third sectors. To do so in a way which is socially inclusive, we must tackle both implicit and explicit biases within the technology communities and industries, and data structures themselves. What can be done to support gender equality in data science at the University of Edinburgh?

Diversity programmes and women in STEM programmes are notoriously hard to implement and evaluate and there needs to be a strong management commitment to make a shift happen. The work we do in ISG to support gender equality in data science at the University of Edinburgh has been planned, sustained, reported and evaluated and is an example of best practice amongst the sector- the Scottish IT sector and in the Universities IT sector.

Information Services Group  aims to be a best practice employer with regard to tackling the gender gap in technology, information science and data science. We are one of the largest employers in the city and we compete with the big banks and famous tech companies in the city to attract and retain female staff.

GENDER EQUALITY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

The more diversity we can find in our teams, the more we can be sure that our services and products meet the needs of the diverse student and staff in the university and the more creativity we can support the more innovation and transformation we can deliver. It is vital that we position ourselves in the market as an inclusive employer.

ENGAGING WITH OUR OWN DATA AND STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY

We have delivered on a number of workplace initiatives. Over the last 3 years we have:

  • Improved all our EDI reporting across the organisation.
  • Produced a SMART plan of strategic management actions for 1,3 and 5 years to get us to a more diverse and inclusive workplace.
  • Addressed gender bias in promotion, reward, review processes.
  • Demystified the experience, criteria and competencies for management roles.

Based on decisions that generated by data, our senior managers chose to implement policies that support and benefit all staff. This allows us to have the most inclusive workplace we possibly can.  In 3 years the profile of women across grades has changed significantly with significantly more women now in senior roles at Grades 9 ( up 30%) and 10 ( up 300%) and our recruitment efforts routinely attract a more diverse set of candidates than ever before.

We have worked with third sector organisations such as Fathers Network Scotland, Equate Scotland, Age Scotland, Girl Geek Scotland and Wikimedia Scotland to create new opportunities for staff to engage with practical actions and the celebration of role models and mentors.

PROMOTING VISIBLE ROLE MODELS

We have transformed our ‘working for ISG’ web pages to include information and case studies about the flexible working and family –friendly aspects of our workplace. We have also:

  • Created an employer profile on Linked in and keep it updated with a steady flow of stories about what it is like to work here.
  • Highlighted and showcased on Linkedin some of the women in ISG and their varied digital roles, backgrounds and careers.
  • Engaged with our own history, libraries and collections to discover, highlight and celebrate diversity from our past.
  • Tackled directly women’s lack of engagement and representation with major technology areas such as AV tech, flying drones, media production, creating open source software, and software development for edtech.

CREATING AN ATTRACTIVE WORK CULTURE

When talking about the lack of women in digital technology, the focus tends to be on engaging the interest of girls and supporting women to become qualified in relevant areas. Without change within the industry itself, however, the women who pursue digital technology qualifications will still not remain in or be attracted to the sector. So we think about ways in which the digital technology industry can create a more inclusive and attractive work culture where women aspire to work and remain across their careers. Our activities include:

  • Creating an inclusive environment with a highly visible equality and diversity training programme – Called the Playfair Steps designed to highlight all the ways in which our workplace is experienced.
  • We take an intersectional approach to recognise that people’s identities and social positions at work – particularly in the technology industry – are shaped by multiple and interconnected factors.
  • We have developed a range of activities exploring how a person’s age, disability status, race and ethnicity, gender, gender identity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, and parent status contribute towards their specific experiences.
  • Between October 2016 and February 2018, we surpassed our short-term goal and that 60% of staff have participated in some form of equality and diversity training.
  • High profile events and support for Ada Lovelace day, International Women’s day and naming our training rooms  and systems after inspirational women.

ATTRACTING WOMEN TO THE SECTOR

We are a big recruiter, with a high turnover and a lot of innovation, so we need to attract and retain talent. It became clear that our recruitment effort and language needed to be overhauled. This is still ongoing, with some parts of ISG engaging more than others. We have run several training sessions for recruiting managers on Checking Language, Overcoming Recruitment Bias, and widening Recruitment Searches. We also directly support the female student pipeline by hosting 20-30 student interns every year and offering female-only placements (Scottish Witches Data intern) and women returner-ships ( Data skills training and development) – we do this by working with Equate Scotland

RETAINING WOMEN IN WORK

Because of course, we want to retain in our organisation, or in the sector as many women as we can, we invest in training and development including, personal development for women. We have a number of visible examples of Positive Action Measures which include:

  • Coaching and mentoring for women
  • Events and discussion on topics which raise awareness of gender issues in the workplace such as gendered communications, inclusive language, shared parental leave and menopause.
  • Continuing Professional Development opportunities (such as editathons and data skills training) targeted at women.

We are very aware that we have a large group pf women who have already chosen to work in Information services, who could develop skills more specifically in data science, so we have been running ‘Developing Your Data Skills’ Programme for staff and students at University of Edinburgh this year. The programme has been very successful and we have now had more than 100 learners complete.

We have designed the course to fit with participants’ busy working lives and thought specifically about how to attract mid-career learners to upskill in this area.

GAINING EXTERNAL RECOGNITION

This initiative at Edinburgh has already won a number of awards and recognition in the sector.

  • In 2018 we won Universities HR Excellence Award for Equality and Diversity and were finalists in the ‘Employer of the Year’ category in the Scotland Women in Technology Awards and ‘Diversity Project of The Year’ in the Women in IT Excellence Awards.
  • Our case study was highlighted in the Equality Challenge Unit’s briefing on ‘Intersectional Approaches to Equality and Diversity and
  • we were awarded the Scottish Union of Supported Employment (SUSE) Inclusive Workplace award in 2017.
  • Our student pipeline -women students into IT roles as summer interns providing paid work and industry experience winning the Student Employer of the Year (SEOTY) award in 2018.

The work we do  in ISG to support gender equality in data science at the University of Edinburgh has been planned, sustained, reported and evaluated and is an example of best practice. This is what can be done to support gender equality in data science at the University of Edinburgh.

developing data skills for all

You’ll be aware that we have been running ‘Developing Your Data Skills’ Programme for staff and students at University of Edinburgh this year. The programme has been very successful and we have now had more than 100 learners complete. Since our staff live and work in Edinburgh and the region, I think this can be seen as part of the investment we are making in retraining and upskilling in data skills for the city. We have evaluated the programme and gathered feedback, so we will be able to report on the ISG KPIs.

We have designed the course to fit with participants’ busy working lives and thought specifically about how to attract mid-career learners to upskill in this area.

https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/help-consultancy/is-skills/programmes-courses-and-resources/development-programmes/data-skills

Participants have enjoyed the programme:
‘There are many data courses out there. Having a course which is specifically designed and at the correct level was time-saving and encouraged me to finish. I loved doing the course and I’m keen to get started on the next level. I would not have been able to do this without the course format, nor the tutor with her helpful, caring approach.’.

There have been many more comments from participants that echo these sentiments along with a real thirst from learners to go on to study all 3 levels of the Programme.

We will be having a ‘graduation ‘ celebration for all the staff and students who completed the programme on Monday 1st July. If you would like to come along to hear more about the successes and how they plan to apply their new and improved data science skills, please let me know by reply and I will send you a diary invitation.