In an age of workforce disruption, flexible learning is becoming increasingly important to professionals and the organisations that employ them. Professional learners are often looking to upskill or reskill in response to the changing demands of their jobs. Rather than committing to an entire degree, people are increasingly looking for short courses that they can use to rapidly enhance their skills.
In response to this drive, universities are working to disaggregate their courses by creating microcredentials and other short forms of learning that can be stacked in new and flexible ways to support retraining. But with this flexibility comes a problem of navigation. How can we help adult and professional learners to choose the right short courses for them? It is all too easy to get lost in a sea of alternatives…
At the same time, UTS is increasingly approached by organisations and Government that are seeking to reskill their workforce to meet new or emerging skills needs. For example, in the last two years we have partnered with Telstra to deliver microcredentials that are upskilling their workforce in data literacy, data analytics, machine learning and data engineering. But how can we make sure that employees choose short forms of learning that are appropriate to their needs and pre-existing knowledge?
Back on TRACK
Enter the TRACK project (Tailored Recruitment Analytics and Curriculum Knowledge). Previously on Futures, we have explored:
- TRACK its early test phase
- How it upscaled with the integration of TRACK Learner and TRACK Designer
- Putting TRACK Learner into practice with first-year students in two classes
In coming months, we will see two new products launch, which aim to support professional learners in choosing appropriate study pathways through UTS short courses.
New: TRACK Explorer
TRACK Explorer will be launching as a tool that helps people to explore the Data short courses available on UTSOpen. The first version of this skills analytics tool will make use of a UTS-developed skills capability framework to help people to think about the skills they need to develop to deal with data in their work. It then recommends the courses in UTSOpen that are most likely to help them to fill the skills gaps that they identify.
As this tool develops, it will help people to build up a skills profile. This will help users to plan out their lifelong learning journey and encouraging them to return to UTS again and again in order to keep developing their capabilities as required.
New: Future TRACK
Turning now to organisations, the Future TRACK product builds upon the Explorer tool to help enterprises up-skill their most valuable resource – their staff. Future TRACK enables organisations to set roles and capabilities they would like their staff to move into. Staff can then work through a diagnostic that helps them to think about what skills they already have with respect to these capabilities, and where they might need further development. This tool will help people to identify targeted training that moves them closer towards their organisation’s identified skills needs.
Get on TRACK
Together these tools will help UTS offer a distinctive experience to our professional learners, supporting them as they work to plan out pathways to their future career goals and learning aspirations.
Would you like to find out more? Contact track@uts.edu.au to arrange for a demonstration of these tools, or to discuss what other TRACK-related tools are coming online during 2022.
Feature image by Kwa Nguyen.