What Learning Should Be

What learning should be

Keeping skills fresh requires a multimodal journey

#GoodTechIBM What learning should be 2

Content overview

It’s time for new modes 3 of education

It’s time to level up 4

Profiles 5

Principles 7 3 IBM Corporate Social Responsibility

It’s time for new modes of education

We are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution. At IBM, we believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will change 100 percent of all jobs in the next 5 - 10 years.1 To create an inclusive and vibrant economy, we must address the disconnect between what is taught in schools and the skills employers are seeking in their new hires. This is true for workers of all ages and experiences who seek new jobs throughout their careers. An upside exists for those This is a business imperative. LinkedIn Learning’s Workplace who build new skills Learning Report found that 81% of executives say talent is the number one priority at their company.2 The Conference Board’s CEO study found that “failure to attract and retain The dynamic global economy offers rewards for people top talent” is now the number one issue on the minds of who can adapt along with it. When jobs change, an upside international CEOs, even more important than competition exists for those who build the skills to change with them. or the disruptive nature of technology.3 For example, France expects a shortage of 80,000 workers in IT and electronics jobs by 2020—which represents a Careers today have more significant opportunity in a country experiencing widescale protests over economic inequality.7 velocity and volatility Enabling all people, especially the most vulnerable, to build their skills doesn’t just happen. Government and business play Careers today have more velocity and volatility. It’s not critical roles, understanding that upfront investments surprising that only 35% of corporations feel new recruits lead to long-term economic and social benefit. and students are well-prepared with both technical and professional (or people) skills to perform at a high level in a competitive professional environment.4

Even those who enter the labor market successfully will need to continually update their skills or they may struggle to adapt to rapidly shifting economies. By 2030, as many as 375 million workers globally will have to master fresh skills as their current jobs evolve alongside the rise of automation and AI-capable machines.5 6 — In our increasingly digital world, lifelong learning—and 4 Building Tomorrow’s Talent: Collaboration Can Close Emerging Skills Gap., The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., PDF. Bloomberg Next. Copyright © 2018 by The Bureau of National new ways of enabling such learning—is a must for success. Affairs, Inc., http:// unitedwayswva.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Building-Tomorrows- Talent-Collaboration- Can-Close-Emerging-Skills-Gap.pdf Failure to address this challenge will diminish or close off economic opportunities for many citizens, potentially fueling 5 Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained: Workforce Transitions in a Time of Automation., McKinsey & Company, ASHX Document. McKinsey Global Institute, Copyright © McKinsey & Company, social unrest and instability. December 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/ Future%20of%20Organizations/What%20the%20future%20of%20work%20will%20 mean%20for%20jobs%20skills%20and%20wages/MGI-Jobs-Lost-Jobs-Gained-Report- — December-6-2017.ashx

1 IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: AI will change 100 percent of jobs over 6 The Future of Work: How New Technologies Are Transforming Tasks., Martin Fleming, Wyatt the next decade. Lori Ioannou, CNBC, 2 Apr 2019, https://cnb.cx/2Uy53fg Clarke, Subhro Das, Phai Phongthiengtham, Prabhat Reddy, 31 October 31 2019, https:// mitibmwatsonailab.mit.edu/research/publications/paper/download/The-Future-of-Work- 2 2018 Workplace Learning Report, Rachel Lefkowitz, PDF. Linked In Learning, How-New-Technologies-Are-Transforming-Tasks.pdf https://bit.ly/2t7VWFA 7 Skill Shift Automation and the Future of the Workforce., McKinsey & Company, 3 In 2019, CEOs are Most Concerned About Talent and a Recession, Joseph DiBlasi, PDF. ASHX Document. McKinsey Global Institute, Copyright © McKinsey & Company, May 2018, The Conference Board, 17 January 2019, https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/in- https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/skill-shift-automation-and-the- 2019-ceos-are-most-concerned-about-talent-and-a-recession-300779592.html future-of-the-workforce What learning should be 4

It’s time to level up

We already have the answer to the skills challenge and We need new powers to surmount new challenges, and it the way to seize the opportunity. It’s learning—and humans is digital technology that provides the breakthrough for more are great at learning, especially learning from others and flexible and continual learning. Learning needs to be more learning from experiences. frequent, more relevant, and more focused—providing learners with an experience that is more like a news feed than a set The challenge isn’t that progress is outpacing our learning of encyclopedias. abilities. The challenge is that many traditional learning approaches are designed, optimized, and scaled for situations The way we now receive and can compare news from many that seem more like our past than our future. different sources and perspectives is a form of multimodal learning. Technology is great at this as we have all seen across Our schools and colleges were mostly created in a world the internet with reporting, commerce, social media, music, where people had one career and those careers didn’t etc. Technology is also increasingly available with over 5 billion change much. people owning mobile devices at the end of 2018.8

And what has been built has often left people behind who lacked access or were burdened with challenges. We need new structures for new times. If we don’t change, those underserved people will be left even farther behind, creating more economic segregation and disparity.

Consider how fast social media technology changes compared to how fast your local schools change. Even if they were perfect, however we want to define that, the idea of giving students one big boost—even a sustained one spanning pre-kindergarten through college—to help them with the rest of their lives doesn’t work. It’s like trying to jog across a large desert with a single bottle of water. We need to address the gap between the need for new skills and mainstream training for those skills. We can jog across that desert if there is a route that passes restaurants and hotels along the way.

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8 The Mobile Economy 2019, GSMA Intelligence, PDF. 2019, https://www.gsmaintelligence. com/research/?file=b9a6e6202ee1d5f787cfebb95d3639c5&download 5 IBM Corporate Social Responsibility

Case study profile: Chris—From Case study profile: Deja—From the frontlines of the army refugee to web developer to cybersecurity

Chirs, cybersecurity expert in IBM Global Business Service Deja graduated in full-stack web development

Chris served in the Army fresh out of high school until an Deja did have the opportunity to attend college and study injury forced him to retire. He joined the civilian workforce coding and design. However, the war in Syria forced him as a law enforcement officer and pursued an associate to drop out and to leave his home country. degree in cybersecurity at night. He traveled to Turkey and then Germany, where he realized Magic happened for Chris in early 2017 when he was he needed updated skills to find a good job. He connected advised by his school counselor to apply for IBM’s Veterans with CodeDoor—a network of developers using technology Employment Accelerator, which is focused on equipping to expand access to education. Given his prior experience, veterans with the software skills widely used in the two he was able to graduate from a program in full-stack web professions he is most passionate about: defense and development in only 5 weeks. law enforcement. Deja is now using his new skills as a successful developer. The training and certification Chris received have given him a high-demand skillset and today he is a cybersecurity expert in IBM Global Business Service helping clients achieve their missions. What learning should be 6

The answer is learning— Case study profile: Karuna—Re- nontraditional, multimodal learning starting a career in technology

Multimodal learning doesn’t replace important face-to-face interactions and hands-on practice—it organizes and extends those vital elements. We know online learning alone is not enough. A meta-analysis of research done by MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab showed that, “initiatives that expand access to computers and internet alone generally do not improve kindergarten to 12th grade students’ grades and test scores”10 We need to pair what technology can do with what we know works in classrooms to deliver hybrid learning experiences.

Some of the best multimodal learning that addresses economic skill needs will be created by public-private partnerships, which combine the expertise of educators with Karuna re-started her career in technology through IBM Tech Re-Entry the expertise of companies.

Karuna left IBM India to move to the United States and start a family. She knew she would miss the joy of working with her team, but worked on her own to learn new skills so that she might one day return to work.

Despite working with a non-profit and taking online courses, Karuna had difficulty finding a new position. Even though she landed some interviews she felt like she was always the oldest or oddest applicant. She was proud of taking a break to raise her girls and was not going to hide that fact on her resume.

One day she found an IBM Tech Re-Entry9 position that matched her skills. The job description included “candidate must have a break of a minimum of 2 years.” It described her! She applied and was accepted along with 29 other amazing people who had also taken career breaks. For the first time, she belonged. She successfully completed her apprentice- ship and re-started her career in technology. v.2 needs to be better than v.1

Technology-boosted education is not a new idea although it is not widely experienced. Many of us have shared some bad history with online learning that rightly make us question technology hype.

Since the Web arrived—and well before that (television)— technology that sounded transformative in theory has led in practice to stale online learning presented on clunky platforms that locked everyone into expensive vendors. Let’s not do that again. Legacy learning technology does

— not work for learners in their moment of need and inhibits ongoing innovation. 9 www.ibm.com/techreentry

10 Will Technology Transform Education for the Better?, J-PAL Evidence Review. 2019. PDF, Cambridge, MA: Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, https://www.povertyactionlab.org/ sites/default/files/documents/education-technology-evidence-review.pdf 7 IBM Corporate Social Responsibility

Principles

— Build it and they will come is a lie. Learning must follow design thinking best practice to place the learner at the center of the experience. As learning designers, we need to consider how learning is accessed, where it is offered, how it is supported, how much it costs, and how it exists on a continuum from learning to job.

— All learners—but especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds—need comprehensive supports to balance online learning and help them apply what they learn. This could include mentoring, hands-on practice, and We know what we want internships.

The world needs more learning aligned to business needs, — Professional development for those who teach / guide our which in turn leads to employment at competitive wages. learners is critical. Such learning will build digital skills and We need learning to enable people to be engaged citizens pedagogical knowledge of these new content areas. who work collaboratively to solve great problems such as climate change, and food and water security. Learning must — Online content needs to be fully accessible by person thus form a complete portfolio which includes academic and device. This means it should work if you have vision foundations, technical topics, and professional skills such issues. It should work if you are using your mobile device. as critical thinking, problem solving, and communication It should work no matter what. It should just work—always. which apply to all industries and cultures. — We need open platforms. The openness of the Web itself has We have an understanding of what high quality, multimodal, accelerated adoption. An open architecture allows individual digital learning should look like. Our bad past experiences applications or services to be combined into new ideas rather plus the impactful experiences we’ve had from the world than being locked into one vendor’s way of doing things. Think of consumer digital platforms provide a set of principles of how convenient it is when your electronics all use the same that demonstrate the way forward. plugs—that’s an open architecture. Think of how annoying it is when someone invents their own custom plug—that’s a closed architecture! With open architectures, our learners will benefit from increased innovation and more valuable experiences.

— The content itself also needs to be platform-agnostic and portable. A great learning module should be able to be reused across many platforms with minimal customization. Imagine if the best work of a great author such as Shakespeare was only accessible by one specific app. What learning should be 8

— Learners should be assured that they—not someone’s An example of principles platform—own their accomplishments. Digital credentials such as certifications and badges need to be portable for all in action: SkillsBuild the same reasons that a medical record should be portable. You might change companies or doctors, but your important personal information remains the same. If you’ve told doctor A that you’re allergic to something, then doctor B should also know. If you became a great coder at company X, you’re still a great coder when you move to company Y.

— Along with openness and portability, the privacy of a learner’s information must be carefully protected, again, for all the same reasons as a medical record.

— Learning technology exists to make practice and guidance more widely available and more effective. We need to scale job-critical learning to more people than can fit in our school buildings. We need it to be more affordable. We can do this with technology.

SkillsBuild provides job seekers with resources they need to re-enter the workforce

In May 2019, at the Tech for Good Summit in France, IBM announced the initial launch of SkillsBuild. This new digital platform provides job seekers—including those with long-term unemployment, refugees, asylum seekers and veterans—with career fit assessments, training, personalized coaching and the experiential learning they need to re-enter the workforce. The program also goes the final mile to show employment opportunities. 9 IBM Corporate Social Responsibility

SkillsBuild exemplifies The key idea our core principles: Multimodal journeys provide learners with a seamless interaction across digital, live-virtual, and face-to-face moments: each delivering relevant content and the In accordance with our principles, we used a design thinking opportunity to learn. process including journey mapping, sponsor user feedback, The journey includes all the features of a consumer and rapid iteration to ensure that learners are at the center of digital platform (such as click-to-chat, digital nudging, the SkillsBuild experience: AI personalization) to accelerate skills acquisition.

Digital credentials or badges allow the learner to build Applicable: SkillsBuild exists to help a portfolio of learning accomplishments that further people—especially the disenfranchised— differentiate them to prospective employers. build their skills so they can find better jobs. It does this by providing online learning, The learning journey is also a lifelong journey that personalized coaching, and experiential continuously adjusts and evolves based on past learning opportunities. interactions and future needs.

Accessible: SkillsBuild is online and will be fully accessible by mobile devices next year. It also is useable by people with different visual and auditory abilities.

Open: SkillsBuild is a content-agnostic platform currently featuring high-quality content and services from IBM, CodeDoor, CoorpAcademy, Credly, MyInnerGenius, and Skillsoft.

Portable: IBM Digital Badges, issued using Cybersecurity experience journey with increasing skill over time the Credly Acclaim platform, generate digital resumes and offer embedded job postings and connections to employers. Once you earn a badge, it’s yours—not ours. These credentials signify your personal accomplishments.

Private: SkillsBuild data is safe. This includes compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.

Available: SkillsBuild helps people around the world who don’t have access to opportunity. The platform is currently available in France, the UK, and Germany for users who register through local nongovernmental organizations. SkillsBuild will deploy in the US, India, China, and other countries in 2020. What learning should be 10

Let’s go!

Since we know what should happen, it’s time to make The future of learning is a shared it happen. Too many people are waiting: a recent IBM responsibility. Both the public and Institute for Business Value survey discovered that only 50 percent of company executives are using any strategy private sectors need to create our at all to close skill gaps.11 next generation of learning tools and experiences. Better learning is lifelong We need the right expertise to have the conversation: public- learning—which enables all of us to private partnerships where expertise on how learning happens can be coupled with the best technology expertise to create succeed at what matters most to us effective learning platforms available to many citizens. throughout the full span of our lives.

— At IBM, we are using SkillsBuild to bring digital learning to adults in need of upskilling and reskilling.

— We are also making digital learning available to high school students via our P-TECH network of schools. P-TECH is a new type of school that brings together the best elements of high school, college and the professional world. P-TECH enables students to begin their college and professional lives more quickly and with more support than the typical school- to-work pathway.12

— The IBM Skills Academy is designed to overcome the digital skills gap by partnering with universities to offer a proven, skills-oriented, training program for students of various backgrounds and ages. IBM provides a cloud-enabled digital learning environment and train-the-learner learning model leveraging IBM and open source technology and delivered both digitally and face-to-face—the best of both worlds. Upon successful course completion, faculty and students earn badges in high-demand skill areas, such as cybersecurity, data analytics, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.13

— The IBM Academic Initiative provides faculty and students worldwide with access to the most current technology such as cloud access, software, courseware, and other valuable learning tools. Students can leverage industrial-strength tools to help them in their chosen career.14

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Our Executive Sponsor is Guillermo Miranda, Vice President & — Global Head, IBM Corporate Social Responsibility. 11 https://www.ibm.com/downloads/cas/EPYMNBJA 12 http://www.ptech.org/ This paper is a co-creation of IBM CSR: Grace Suh, Vice 13 https://developer.ibm.com/skills-academy/ President, Education; Lisa Neddam, Offering Manager, 14 https://my15.digitalexperience.ibm.com/b73a5759-c6a6-4033-ab6b-d9d4f9a6d65b/ dxsites/151914d1-03d2-48fe-97d9-d21166848e65/home SkillsBuild; and Kyla Maloney, Offering Manager, SkillsBuild. 11 IBM Corporate Social Responsibility

Produced in the United States of America

November 2019

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