A Researchers "Outsider-in" perspective, insights and current thoughts on how to create "The Future Ready Graduate"

My perspective and insights comes from someone who has spent over 20 years in the Technology Business sector and Industry, hence the “Outsider” tag and lately more and more time in teaching, training and mentoring. Here in... [ view full abstract ]

My perspective and insights comes from someone who has spent over 20 years in the Technology Business sector and Industry, hence the “Outsider” tag and lately more and more time in teaching, training and mentoring. Here in this presentation I bring together my perspective and insights within the headlines of my overall research which is focused on how to ensure for Industry we have what I refer to as “Future Ready Graduates” (FRG). There is no singular definition of what is a FRG. It is more of concept. My research frames it within a Critical Thinking (CT) base line as well as one which is on a graduate with highly developed Competitive skills (Int Journal of Learning and Innovation 2011).
Rifkin (2013) referred to The 3rd Industrial Revolution and even over 30 years ago Toffler (1981) the 3rd Industrial Wave as the “definiens vis” (Defining force) that has subsequently shaped every level of society (Glenn E. Baker et al. 1992). This has also changed forever how teachers and professional trainers approach and deliver and training, due in most part to how students in formal education expect now to be communicated to both in terms of context and content of the educational material. This has ultimately created a high level of Disruptive Innovation in Education (Christensen C 2008).
Juxta positioned the technology developments over the last 20 years has been the coming of age of new what is referred to as the “X” and “Y” generations. This has very much resulted in the traditional classroom setup and lecture delivery fast disappearing as these generations have different requirement on how the want and should be to be educated and the overall delivery of the learning process.
Over this 20 year journey up to today much has been achieved in marrying technology and teaching principles but too often new Technologies are seen as the panacea and enabler to delivering better learning outcomes (OECD 2015) and too often still being used when there was no pedagogical foundation or purpose to the technology. This has resulted very much in the use of Technology for Technology sake (Daniels,J.2002).
Schostak & Schostak (2013) argue “Perceptions” in education can create values and beliefs that leads to dominion and universal acceptance of a phenomenon or “Change agent”. This is one of my questions, what is the relationship between TEL and the prevalence of the Future Ready Graduate?
What is a fact is that the 3rd Industrial Revolution has fueled the need for more and more Graduates (European Commission 2012) who will work in roles that can support the “Tech” Revolution. This does not mean that they such graduates have to be Computer Science or Engineering graduates. My multidimensional approach looks at how strong Critical Thinking (CT) abilities? (Scriven, M 2011) can be fostered within the right Learning Space. The Future Evolving Workforce requires CT’s rather than what Government bodies are arguing as ICT skills (Dept Edu 2014).