Ms Theresa Schopper, Minister for Education, Youth and Sports, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
His Excellencies;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and gentlemen;
Introduction
1. A very good morning to all of you who are here with us, and also to our online audience, who are joining us virtually. I guess this is the hybrid way that we will have conferences nowadays, combining the best of in-person interactions with the ability to scale and reach more people virtually. I can see that many of you are also happy to be here, to be able to meet up with colleagues physically again, to exchange ideas, and to learn from one another.
2. Indeed, the pandemic has given us the impetus to do things differently – but not just differently, but also more efficiently and effectively. For example, technology today allows us to engage many more of our global counterparts.
Many organisations across the world have also accelerated their adoption of technology, and have created new and alternative business models over the past two years.
But, having said that, I must emphasise this – the pandemic is not the only driver for change. In fact, many of the changes preceded the pandemic. If anything, the pandemic has accelerated many of the trends that were already evident in the last few years. This has brought about a tremendous change in the demand for new skillsets from graduating cohorts from our school systems. But, over and above trying to equip our new cohorts with new skills, we also need to refresh the skillsets of the existing workers in the economy.
But, as I have always said, the challenge of refreshing the skillsets of new workers is a relatively smaller one when compared to the challenge of refreshing the stock of existing workers. In Singapore, new workers make up about 30 to 40 thousand people every year. However, training existing workers is a half a million challenge every year, and that is our goal.
3. And this brings us to the theme of this year’s conference: Pivoting Technical and Professional Education and Training for a Sustainable Future.
The shift in desired skillsets makes it necessary for us to help our students and workforce pivot quickly to remain industry relevant, throughout life.
4. The question is how we can do this.
An effective lifelong learning ecosystem is made up of several key ingredients. We need relevant courses and curriculum, flexible pathways for learners and opportunities for progression for upgraders, and buy-in from industry partners.
But most importantly, in any enhancement to training and education, we need effective trainers. Today, my sharing will focus on how we intend to up our game to build a team of effective trainers, in order to enable a more effective lifelong training system for our workforce.
For trainers to develop lifelong learners, we need to equip our trainers with three things:
The right skillset,
The right toolset; and,
The right mindset.
The Right Skillsets
5. Let me start with the first, the right skillsets. To ensure relevant skills are taught to our learners, we must equip trainers with the skillsets to meet the demands of a fast-evolving market.
Given the practical and specialised nature of technical and professional education, trainers must keep up to date with the latest industry trends and tools to teach learners effectively.
Take the example of automotive engineering. Trainers today need to teach students to work with not only traditional internal combustion engines, but also a new generation of hybrid vehicles, a new generation of electric vehicles.
6. To do so effectively, we not only need to hire trainers with industry expertise. We must also support those hired to keep pace with the right skillsets throughout their careers, and this applies to every industry. Not just to hire the right people, but to enable the right people to keep upgrading their skillsets, so they can be relevant trainers who pass on the currency of skills to their trainees.
The most direct way to achieve this is enabling our trainers to maintain close links with industries.
In Singapore, the polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education (ITE) work closely with our industry partners to design our curriculum.
Through these partnerships, lecturers keep up-to-date and acquire industry-relevant skills. For example, Singapore Polytechnic’s ‘train-the-trainer’ sessions connect academic staff with industry specialists to co-create key training and development programmes for their workplace. In doing so, academic staff can acquire relevant skills from industry specialists, which helps to shorten the cycle of acquiring and imparting new skillsets to our students.
We can also involve industry more in the teaching and curriculum development process.
One example is ITE’s Work-Study Diploma (WSDip) programme, where industry partners play a key role in co-creating curriculum that is in tandem with the evolving needs of industries and the economy. Participating employers can recruit fresh graduates within three years of graduation and prepare them to take up suitable job roles. To date, more than 400 companies have come on board as co-trainers of WSDip trainees.
The bottom line is that we must have a system to ensure the currency of our trainers’ skillsets for us to enable the currency of our students’ skillsets. So, everything starts with the currency of the trainers.
The Right Toolset
7. The next thing I want to talk about is the right toolset. We must equip our trainers with the right toolset to design engaging and personalised learning experiences. A one-size-fits-all model no longer works for us.
A more engaging and personalised education experience will help students enjoy learning, and make them want to keep learning for the rest of their lives.
Technology is a powerful tool to improve engagement with our learners.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies enhance traditional teaching methods by bringing learners into immersive practical learning environments.
Instead of practicing in a controlled lab setting, we can now simulate different scenarios in life-like environments. This broadens students’ learning experiences.
Tools to collect and analyse data also help educators ascertain and respond to students’ diverse needs. This is especially important given the multiple responsibilities that educators juggle, and the unique needs of each student. Self-paced learning will become more and more important in our toolset.
Technology also provides an opportunity to personalise learning.
The simple act of uploading lectures and content online allows learners to progress and revise at their own pace is one such example. But it is not just about bringing the analog version online. More importantly, we need to refresh our pedagogy to see how we can engage our learners even as they learn online.
Putting information into an hour-long YouTube video is not going to interest our younger learners today. It has to be coupled with bite-sized modules that not only provides them with information and knowledge, but also engages them in learning, checking their own progress and charting their own way forward.
Pushing the boundary further, adaptive learning systems show us the potential of an even more customised approach, which adjusts to the learning pace of each student.
Our institutions are actively exploring these technologies and encouraging educators to incorporate these into their teaching.
This requires more than just investment in infrastructure, software or hardware.
Technology is but an enabler. What matters more is whether we know how to use it efficiently and effectively.
Through professional development opportunities, teaching and learning guides, we can build our trainers’ capacity to leverage these new technologies to redesign the classroom experience.
8. Using the right tools can also provide our educators with more time to create a meaningful impact in the classroom.
This includes streamlining workstreams by helping educators automate tasks which are more straightforward.
One example is automated marking and feedback. In schools, this could take the form of automated marking of exam papers or essays.
In technical education, this could involve using video analytics to review tasks performed by students, and providing real time feedback on performance.
I remember visiting ITE recently, where they partner NVIDIA to collect data using artificial intelligence, which helps to guide students and lighten the workload of our educators. This has allowed our educators to redirect their energy, bandwidth and time to focus on sharpening the skillsets of their trainers. And we do this not just through the efforts of one cohort. The data collected through multiple cohorts will also allow our educators to sharpen their skillsets in pinpointing how best to teach and spot the learning needs of the next batch of students. And if we can continue to build on this database, our teaching system will become more enriched, and even more powerful.
This is already being done in ITE for some of the courses. They have developed an Automatic Video Analytics Training System to monitor students’ ability to perform tasks correctly, such as the assembly and disassembly of a computer. The training system’s AI can detect if individual students are adopting the correct procedures to complete the tasks, and automatically score students based on a set of marking rubrics.
The Right Mindset
9. I have spoken on the right skillsets for educators, and the right toolsets for educators. The third and final point is arguably the most important – the right mindset for our educators.
Our educators need to learn alongside our students and learn from the frontier industry and business practices constantly.
They will need to go beyond their existing expertise and be willing to upgrade and retrain themselves to acquire the right skillsets. Our educators can be the most powerful testimony for lifelong learning if they can demonstrate this mindset to our students.”
10. To instil this mindset amongst staff, we need to establish in them the right culture and attitude towards continuous learning and, most importantly, support them in their efforts to do so.
In Singapore, we are committed to build an environment that celebrates continuous learning, and give trainers the opportunities to learn, grow, and recharge.
To support this, we are developing an employment model where educators can enjoy the flexibility of spending time both in the workplace and in the classroom.
One way is through staff exchanges, where academic staff take on industry attachments, and industry experts serve as adjunct lecturers in our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs), or Institutes of Continuous Learning as I like to call them.
For example, Republic Polytechnic’s industry attachment scheme supports academic staff to refresh their knowledge with the latest industry practices and developments through joint industry projects, and consultancy services rendered to companies through mutually identified problem statements.
At the same time, we should also provide organisational incentives to encourage cross-faculty collaborations. These collaborations can leverage on interdisciplinary expertise and skills, and spur faculty members to learn from each other.
Support from Industry
11. More importantly, Government and educational institutions cannot do all these on our own. A key enabler and stakeholder for us to equip trainers with the right skillset, toolset, and mindset will be our industries.
Support from industry partners is crucial in ensuring more trainers are given opportunities to acquire the relevant skillsets, and engender a mindset of lifelong learning.
This, in turn, will translate into more relevant curriculum, and better skilled learners entering the workforce. Hence, it is in the interest of our industry partners to work closely with our institutions, to equip our trainers so that they can in turn effectively train our learners. If we equip generations of trainers, they will help us to uplift many more generations of learners.
I urge all our industry partners to take on this opportunity to work closely with our ITEs, our polytechnics and our universities to co-create the curriculum for the future.
Closing
12. The examples I have shared only scratch the tip of the iceberg. I am sure that the conference will explore many more ideas to pivot technical and professional education and training.
13. I look forward to hearing from all of you on how you do things in your respective countries and regions. These best practices can inspire our institutions to embark on collaborations with international and local companies, who play an integral role in shaping the workforce of the future.
14. Our efforts to create a generation of lifelong learners must start with our trainers. We must equip trainers with industry relevant skills, the right tools to enhance the learning experience for students, and the right mindset for lifelong learning.
15. On that note, I wish you all the very best, and I look forward to jointly exploring how we can make our system even more robust for the next generation of learners, not just during their time in our IHLs, but throughout their lives.
16. Thank you very much.
Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore