How upskilling is essential in every age

EDUCATION TIMES 

How upskilling is essential in every age

Learning that is experiential and combines real-world knowledge and research enables us to have a strong grounding in whatever skill we set out to learn, writes Rajesh Panda

16.11.2020

In January 2020, the World Economic Forum announced that the world is facing an upskilling emergency. We live in a fast-paced age. From the turn of the 21st century, as applied learning gained prominence, the need has emerged to be hands-on with the skills. About a billion people need upskilling by 2030 across all ages.

The underlying message for schools, organisations, governments and the society is to work together towards bringing in a learning environment that is agile and enables people to live a good life and contribute at the workplace.

Why upskill at all

As the world becomes our university, ‘learning how to learn’ is the need of the hour –focussed on continuous reskilling. In this age of continuous disruption, individuals, teams and organisations

ISTOCK are required to prepare for a super-learning future, centred on upskilling. These are the reasons for disruption: Change in nature of work due to technological innovation Rising demand for new competencies Altering employee expectations in the organisation Changing labour demographics Diversity strategies Evolving business environment with its regulatory changes Reskilling and upskilling are the answers to these problems, however, the problem extends beyond the workplace. The challenge lies in the ability to learn, cope up with their fast-changing demands at the workplace.

Science of learning

Learning has four

stages – know, practice, perform and reflect. However, skilling focusses on two of these – practice and perform. The more you practice and perform, the better you are at executing a particular job with perfection.

Learn by doing

It is essential that whatever we know is practised and performed well so that it gets ingrained into our psyche and we can turn to that skill whenever the job at hand demands it.

This form of learning is also called the ‘learningby-doing’ model, which is a key driver to upskilling across all ages. The user learns from one’s experiences and applies theoretical knowledge in real-world to generate tangible outcomes.

This includes - learn by applying, trial-and-error learning, discovery versus instruction, experiential learning, practical experience versus bookish learning and practice-theorypractice dialectic.

How to learn

As children, we learn how to manage self because our learning happens in the real-world through our five senses – touch, smell, see, hear and feel. We imbibe the information from our surroundings using our senses and then understand what is what.

As we move to the formal classroom, learning is restricted to books and instruction. The yardstick of our performance suddenly changes from real-world to performance in the classroom. The skill-gap starts here. We struggle in managing self, family and work (at school). This continues in universities and well into adulthood. We do not have the skills to manage in realworld – self, family, team or tasks work etc.

An approach that combines experiential, hands-on learning with real-world knowledge and research will enable us to have a strong grounding in whatever skill we set out to learn. .Learning and upskilling is a lifelong process and one should reflect on what and how to skill up and stay relevant in the dynamic workplaces.

(The author is founder & CEO, Corporate Gurukul)