UK Training Industry Press Releases

Fabrizio Cardinali, CEO of Giunti Labs and chair of the European Learning Industry Group (ELIG), has presented a five point plan to ensure economic competitiveness through worker competency in the face of global economic challenge and change. Cardinali was speaking at the recent Training Transformation Symposium, held at the Royal School of Mechanical Engineering (RSME) in Chatham, Kent.

Having pointed out that we are living in a time of change when we are all encouraged to do ‘more with less', the conference's chairman, Tim Redfern, of Holdfast Training Services, went on to say that people learn in different ways and concluded: "We have an obligation to deliver the best training we can and, in these changing times, that involves the contextualisation and personalisation of knowledge."

Cardinali commented that the biggest challenge today, faced by those in every sector of the economy, is not leading the competition but surviving it. He claimed that the rate of economic change is so great that today's ten top jobs did not exist in 2004 and went on to predict that the current ‘media age' will limit Europe's economic growth by at least one per cent per year for the next three decades.

"In the past, Europe faced economic competition from emerging economies, such as China, purely in terms of price," Cardinali said. "Now, these economies are ‘skilling up' and competing in terms of quality as well as price."

Viewing today's economic climate in a historical context - equating it with the change in the world's economy when America was discovered and recalling that the time when Europe led the world's economy was during the Renaissance when enormous wealth and patronage was concentrated in the hands of relatively few families, such as the Medici family - 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, Cardinali 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. Cardinali explained: "The traditional idea is that you produce average curricula to train average people. Now, however, the technology exists to allow you to find out what each individual doesn't know and needs to know - and this allows 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 added: "Traditional means of imparting learning, from books to broadcasting, were ‘individual massification'. Today's technology enables us to use ‘massive individualisation'. This is achieved 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, personalized self-development learning rather than ‘behavioural, prescriptive learning'. This enables the delivery of personal ambient learning (PAL) - learning that follows the learner, knows where the leaner is, what s/he needs to know and so on.
• 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.

Cardinali concluded: "'E-learning 1.0' was characterised by the rapid authoring of ‘traditional' education contents online. It was prescriptive and gave rise to the ‘unsatisfied user' issue. ‘E-learning 2.0' is characterised by self-generated, grass roots learning content production, profiling and exchange. There is still low average user satisfaction but we are beginning to see the emergence of ‘learning communities'.

"'E-learning 3.0' will see learning become personal, using constructive pedagogy and delivering individualised contents," he said. "It will be characterised by de-structured, well produced content which will be tagged using XML to make it available via mobile devices."

Other speakers at the Symposium  included Debbie Carlton, of Dynamic Knowledge; Jim Potts, of the Defence Academy; the Royal Navy's Lieutenant Alex Smith; Graeme Duncan, of Caspian Learning; Dr Majid Al-Kader, of Skills2Learn; Adrian Snook, of Learning Accelerators; Steve Barden and Julie Read of LINE Communications, and Dr Keith Williams, of the Open University.

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About Giunti Labs

Giunti Labs www.giuntilabs.com is a leading Online and Mobile Learning Content Management Solutions provider with offices around the world. Giunti Labs provides a wide range of solutions for content development, content management and content delivery, covering:

• Multi-language bespoke content production
• Content management and digital repository platforms
• ePortfolio and skills management solutions
• Mobile learning technologies
• Consulting and professional services

Giunti Labs provides solutions to many sectors including public sector, defence, manufacturing, finance, retail, ICT, education and healthcare. Giunti Labs is part of Giunti Group, a leading educational and cultural heritage publisher with roots back to 1841. Over the years, Giunti has built a catalogue of over 12.000 titles and has acquired new brands worldwide.

Further information from:

Minna Leikas, Giunti Labs, +39 3474435167, m.leikas@giuntilabs.com

Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405, bob.little@boblittlepr.com