Can our workforce compete in an increasingly digital world?
Australia prides itself on being an advanced society with a sophisticated information economy but how true is that and how well equipped are our citizens to excel in a 21st century characterised by rapidly changing technologies? The Digital Education Revolution (DER) is an unprecedented program aimed at improving access to information and communications technologies (ICT) in schools across the country to help raise digital literacy in our school children. This is seen as essential for our future. Children however aren’t the only members of our society to be impacted by these rapid changes and there are other initiatives in place to support learners in VET and Higher Education. But what about the rest of us? We are all lifelong learners, all striving to survive and hopefully succeed in what are turning out to be extremely challenging times. Being ‘digitally literate’ is essential to that survival. Those who understand and can exploit technologies will do far better than those who do not. Having a ‘digital presence’ that you can manage and exploit will no doubt be very helpful. It is hard to conceive of an advanced society in just a few years time where its citizens do not have a digital presence of their own. Eportfolios will play an important role in establishing such a presence. Many institutions offer eportfolio services for their students that assist them throughout their time with the institution and transitioning out to further education or employment. However, over a lifetime we make many such transitions and very few eportfolios readily support this lifelong process. Globally, this challenge and also the opportunities that it presents are starting to be recognised. In parts of the USA, Europe and the United Kingdom we are starting to see an increase in regional eportfolios (to support lifelong learners/workers) and also industry specific eportfolios to support professions such as nursing, architecture etc. Given the changing nature of work, industry specific eportfolios might not really be considered lifelong as many people will work in a number of vocations/professions over their lifetime. We may change the regions that we live in too but generally we still retain citizenship of a given country. What is Australia doing to support lifelong learners, those already in the workforce/trying to re-enter the workforce, and those who are not part of formal learning environments, in developing and managing their own ‘digital presence’ so that they can plan and work towards their aspirations and make meaningful contributions towards society as we transform into a (largely) digital world?
