Lifelong Learning and The Education World Forum 2020

The Education World Forum (19-22 January, London) brings together education ministers, policy makers and experts from around the globe to share ideas about improving access to education and discuss policy solutions. In keeping with this year’s theme – ‘One generation – what does it take to transform education?’ – D2L is releasing its latest whitepaper The Future of Lifelong Learning.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. Our systems of learning must transform to fit the reality of today’s workforce demands.

An evolving skills landscape

With the arrival of AI and automation, the pace of change in the workforce has rapidly increased, shrinking the half-life of skills to just a few years at best. Whilst previous generations could expect to learn a set of technical or job skills to sustain them throughout their career and into retirement, no person today will be able to say the same. Employers are recognising this and are increasingly valuing the ‘soft’ or ‘durable’ skills that point to an individual’s adaptability and resilience over time.

However, our systems of learning today are not set up to enable real lifelong learning. When an adult enters the workforce, their options for formal learning are limited to those offered by their employer, as those offered outside of work are often disconnected from the realities of the workforce. Furthermore, informal or unstructured forms of learning where skills and knowledge are picked up from daily activities or non-traditional sources (such as videos), are not recognisable or verifiable in the workforce.

Learning systems in support of lifelong learning

For effective lifelong learning to happen at scale the right culture needs to exist. The D2L whitepaper The Future of Lifelong Learning explores the limitations of our current systems and lays out a vision for lifelong learning. This vision includes instilling a new concept into our cultures – the Learning-Integrated Life – where individuals are always in a learning mindset, and intensive and episodic opportunities for learning are woven through the fabric of our lives, preparing us for successful careers and rich life experiences

Leading a Learning-Integrated Life as an individual requires that our systems of learning provide continual opportunities for access to learning for working adults, and a willingness to recognise the learning that occurs in unstructured and informal methods.

D2L is looking forward to exploring the transformation necessary to achieve this vision of lifelong learning at The Education World Forum. In the meantime, please explore our series of papers on the future of work and learning.