At the recent Training Transformation Symposium (at the Royal School of Military Engineering (RSME) in Chatham, Kent), Fabrizio Cardinali – CEO of Giunti Labs and chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG) – presented a five point plan to ensure economic competitiveness through worker competency in the face of global economic challenge and change. Cardinali’s recipe for surviving the global economic crisis is to create a multi-disciplinary meeting point for learning industry creativity and innovation. In particular, he advocated:

• Bridging skills and competency gaps by adopting competency-based qualifications which take account of the rapid changes in the skills and knowledge that today’s workers need (rather than rely on the rigid, formal structure of national qualifications currently in place).
• Fostering personalised learning. He explained: “The traditional idea is that you produce average curricula to train average people. Today’s technology allows you to discover what each individual doesn’t know and needs to know – enabling you to design learning materials for that person and so speed up his/ her time to competence.
• Using new media and knowledge distribution channels. Cardinali said: “Today’s technology enables us to use ‘massive individualisation’ – via the use of open and interoperable digital repositories of skills and competencies; qualification tests, and remediation contents, delivered via new media and knowledge distribution channels (including viral casting, such as You Tube, and social casting, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Second Life) – to reach a targeted but widespread audience and deliver personalised learning plans and portfolios.”
• Conceiving new pedagogical formats to motivate and engage each learner, via constructive, personalised self-development learning rather than ‘behavioural, prescriptive learning’.
• Using open and interoperable technologies to enable the interchanging of standard components in learning design, development and delivery. This is done via e-learning service oriented architectures (SOAs) which separate learning management systems (LMS) and learning content management systems (LCMS) to produce PALs which are ubiquitous, wireless, broadband and mobile providing just-in-time services, empowering the personalise learning experience.

Comment: Cardinali gave an interesting and, at times, perceptive analysis of how (e)learning has been used and how it can – and should – be used in the future to keep Europe’s workers competent and competitive in tomorrow’s world.