Application of the global computing curriculum guidelines and skills frameworks for competency discovery and analysis: a case study of data analytics

The current global computing curriculum guidelines including MISI2016, IT2017 and IS2020 are built to promote and facilitate competency-based higher education programs development and to enhance graduate employability. Their applications however are facing challenges in understanding, interpretation and operationalization. Taking data analytics and data engineering, this study shows how these guidelines are used to discover and analyze competencies, the boundaries between typical IT and IS programs and between IS undergraduate and postgraduate programs and further, the gaps for these programs to fill to incorporate professional practice competencies. The global skills frameworks are invoked and SFIA 7 is used to assist analysis.

Global Skills After COVID-19

COVID-19 has profoundly reshaped our world. The disruption to lives and livelihoods has been staggering. The economic devastation has thrown many industries into survival mode. As we begin to revive jobs and economies, it will be important to understand the impact of the crisis on the skills landscape. Universities among the ones adapting to the crisis. Equal access to education and skills is one of them. COVID-19 has further exposed many inequalities with respect to education and employability .Online learning has proven effective in delivering on that promise, now more than ever. From March to July of this year, more than 15 million new learners registered on different courses. School closures have disrupted higher education for millions of students in countries already in need of more accessible learning. Eighty percent of students enrolled in tertiary education are located in countries that have both closed schools due to COVID-19 and are in the bottom half of the world rankings for proficiency in business, technology, and data science skills. To help overcome deepening skill inequities, institutions must work together to democratize access to quality online learning resources and ensure we are all prepared for the rapidly changing economy.

EXPLORING THE BENEFITS OF ACADEMIC BANK OF CREDIT (ABC) FOR ST THE 21 CENTURY LEARNER

The National Educational Policy 2020 is a dynamic, progressive and modern framework of education which aims at achieving full human potential among the learners. It aims at providing equal and equitable opportunities, inclusive education to all learners, making them global in outlook yet armed with traditional values. The Academic Bank of Credits proposed under the New Policy of Education, an online repository of credits accumulated by the leaner, to be looked after by the University Grants Commission, promises to provide academic exibility to the students. It will pupils studying at higher educational levels to accumulate credit points by moving across various academic levels such as certicate, diploma, post graduate diploma, graduate and post graduate degree programs, enjoying multiple exit and entry points and having the facility to continue life-long learning. However, there are certain challenges such as risk of dilution, loss of academic rigor, possible adverse impact on the educators, presence of digital divide, lack of digital knowledge and skills among students. However, despite foresight of possible challenges and probable issues, ABC holds great promise for the academic fraternity by laying the path for a exible, student-centric academic journey where the learner is not forced to study the prescribed traditional courses instead he gets to choose a course in accordance with his interests, needs and passion, learning them from institutions of his choice and at self- pace. Thus, the ABC will help to prepare world class learners with global skills and traditional values, which are hallmarks of the present generation of leaners.

WORLDSKILLS RESPONSE TO TRANSVERSAL SKILLS

Developing and maintaining the skills of an increasingly global workforce is a challenge all governments face, particularly as the world emerges from the effects of the2020/21 pandemic. Coupled with the impact of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” working lives are changing at an unprecedented rate. This article looks at the critical role of transversal skills in enabling ‘employability’, as traditional occupations reconfigure, shift and new roles rapidly appear. Whilst definitions and classifications vary it is agreed that transversal skills are those which an individual can apply across all work roles and life situations, - they are a platform for flexibility, adaptability, and progression. For over 70 years WorldSkills International (WSI) has been working with governments to raise the profile of technical and vocational education (TVET), principally through a biennial global skills competition focusing on excellence. In recent years WSI has been investing in a strong research base working with global partners such as the OECD, ILO and UNESCO. In 2012 it began a project to develop WorldSkills Occupational Standards (WSOS). This article plots the journey WSI has taken to strengthen and embed transversal skills within its standards to ensure the currency of the Competition and more widely drive global skills development forward.

To Understand You, I Need to Know Me:

Due to Covid-19 and the inaccessibility of study abroad for some students, we successfully tested an alternative for building intercultural effectiveness -- a glocal classroom (GC) pedagogy highlighting assessment as learning. Over a 15-week course, the GC replicated the work context and job demands of expert global leaders and developed global skills via activities and simulations. Pre-posttest measures of the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES) found significant improvement in all dimensions. Students with prior international experience had higher pre-test results in the world orientation and relationship development dimensions; however, students without study abroad experience approximated those results in their post-test assessment, apparently as a result of the GC. Quantitative and qualitative findings suggest that assessment, self-awareness, self-directed PDPs, well-designed simulations, receiving and giving extensive feedback, and reflection can be effective methods for moving the needle on intercultural competencies without a physical international experience.

Skills-adjusted human capital shows rising global gap

Human capital, broadly defined as the skills acquired through formal education, is acknowledged as one of the key drivers of economic growth and social development. However, its measurement for the working-age populations, on a global scale and over time, is still unsatisfactory. Most indicators either only consider the quantity dimension of education and disregard the actual skills or are demographically inconsistent by applying the skills of the young cohorts in school to represent the skills of the working-age population at the same time. In the case of rapidly expanding or changing school systems, this assumption is untenable. However, an increasing number of countries have started to assess the literacy skills of their adult populations by age and sex directly. Drawing on this literacy data, and by using demographic backprojection and statistical estimation techniques, we here present a demographically consistent indicator for adult literacy skills, the skills in literacy adjusted mean years of schooling (SLAMYS). The measure is given for the population aged 20 to 64 in 185 countries and for the period 1970 to 2015. Compared to the conventional mean years of schooling (MYS)—which has strongly increased for most countries over the past decades, and in particular among poor countries—the trends in SLAMYS exhibit a widening global skills gap between low- and high-performing countries.

Policies for Developing Vietnam's Science and Technology Human Resources: A Perspective from Reality

Nowadays, the fourth industrial revolution and the extensive international integration process has posed many problems for S&T human resource development. The development of interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary technology of the fourth industrial revolution not only brings opportunities but also poses great challenges to the requirements of building and developing S&T human resources. Machines and artificial intelligence replacing human power will inevitably result in the cheap, unskilled labor to be replaced by highly qualified human resources. Therefore, more than ever, the need to develop S&T human resources has become more urgent. In particular, the process of comprehensive international integration is imposing that S&T human resources must have update and global skills, keeping up with new trends in the development of S&T. Recently, the Government of Vietnam has determined the important role of S&T human resources and has issued a number of policies to develop S&T human resources, but these policies have not brought the expected results.

Upon the Plausibility of Teaching English to Toddlers and the Need of Global Skills Development in Foreign Language Teaching Programs

The article explores the topic of ELT to toddlers and possibilities to develop language skills among the youngest cohort in Banská Bystrica region, Slovakia, which has got a long tradition of being a training hub for future language teachers, located at the Matej Bel University. The primary goal is to explore the potential of foreign language classes to become an experimental laboratory for global skills´ development through the medium of trainee teachers facilitating their learners with early contact with other languages(s) through the medium of being exposed to linguistic and cultural diversity. Following a set of observations, self-reflections and semi-structured interviews, we have outlined a sample of activities which are deemed beneficial to toddler´s personal development. The inspiration comes from our own teaching experience in selected community centre located in Banská Bystrica region. Given the fact that globalization took hold of our lives on a global scale, we have tried to make a list of recommendations suited not only to future English language teachers but also to other foreign languages´ future teachers within the Faculty of Arts. It is our overall aim in the Department of English and American Studies to train candidates for teaching jobs in global skills including critical thinking, creativity, cooperation, communication, digital skills, etc. so that they can disseminate them further among their pupils at pre-primary, primary and secondary level. In the individual chapters we deal with the most significant reproductive and productive, all-inclusive activities practiced during our teaching English to a group of toddlers for more than a year (2019) with the ambition to serve as guidelines to university students and to point out to the fact that global skills enhancement among future teachers should play an inevitable role in any foreign language teaching program.