Lifelong learning and employabiity: moving from face-to-face lessons to digital content in the midst of lockdown

Abstract

Today over 750 million learners globally are unable to learn skills that can enhance their employability. For the majority, there is almost a need to cut off the development of these skills to pursue achieving higher grades in their core subjects, especially in regions in South Asia and in the MENA region. This causes a complete mismatch between the requirements in the job market and the qualification achieved by the students, leading to high unemployment rates. Inserting key employability and transferable skills in the development of learners is crucial. Our curriculum that we developed over 18 months is solving this for 750 million learners one region at the time. This session will focus on the rapid shift to digital learning that was needed when the first lockdown hit the world in March 2020, just at the time when we were about to launch our curriculum with several institutions and a state Government in India. We transferred our curriculum to digital sessions and implemented in nine countries globally. The majority of our learners are underserved, come from disadvantaged backgrounds, are first-time learners and English is not their native language. Student feedback (N = 199) showed an overall satisfaction of 93.8%. In addition, 93.4% of learners agreed that they understand and learned more about the topics provided each week. Furthermore, comments from trainers showed positive feedback and engagement with the learners, and saw continuous improvement despite some language barriers. Most recently we also received UKRI funding to take our solution to the African continent. Overall, this shows the need for this type of training. This presentation will discuss the curriculum development, its implementation, its usability across countries, and student engagement, performance and feedback.