In-demand Skills Research Articles

The global polarisation of remote work.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise of digitally enabled remote work with consequences for the global division of labour. Remote work could connect labour markets, but it might also increase spatial polarisation. However, our understanding of the geographies of remote work is limited. Specifically, in how far could remote work connect employers and workers in different countries? Does it bring jobs to rural areas because of lower living costs, or does it concentrate in large cities? And how do skill requirements affect competition for employment and wages? We use data from a fully remote labour market-an online labour platform-to show that remote platform work is polarised along three dimensions. First, countries are globally divided: North American, European, and South Asian remote platform workers attract most jobs, while many Global South countries participate only marginally. Secondly, remote jobs are pulled to large cities; rural areas fall behind. Thirdly, remote work is polarised along the skill axis: workers with in-demand skills attract profitable jobs, while others face intense competition and obtain low wages. The findings suggest that agglomerative forces linked to the unequal spatial distribution of skills, human capital, and opportunities shape the global geography of remote work. These forces pull remote work to places with institutions that foster specialisation and complex economic activities, i. e. metropolitan areas focused on information and communication technologies. Locations without access to these enabling institutions-in many cases, rural areas-fall behind. To make remote work an effective tool for economic and rural development, it would need to be complemented by local skill-building, infrastructure investment, and labour market programmes.

ОБ ИЗМЕНЕНИИ В ПОНИМАНИИ СТУДЕНТАМИ ФАРМАЦЕВТИЧЕСКОГО ФАКУЛЬТЕТА СВОИХ ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНЫХ ПРЕДПОЧТЕНИЙ В ПРОЦЕССЕ ОБУЧЕНИЯ ФАРМАКОГНОЗИИ

The article presents the analysis of changes in the understanding of professional preferences of Ryazan State Medical university students of different courses of the Faculty of Pharmacy, who are at the preparatory stages of professional personality formation. In this regard, students evaluated the content, forms and methods of a special discipline taught — pharmacognosy, using a questionnaire developed at the Department of Pharmacognosy. 152 students of the 2nd, the 3rd and the 5th year who were trained at the Department of Pharmacognosy in the 2020/2021 and 2017/2018 academic years took part in the survey. Students consider the role of pharmacognosy in the preparation of a pharmacist to be very significant and highly appreciate the importance of the discipline in the professional training of a specialist with a higher pharmaceutical education. However, students' understanding of the role of pharmacognosy and the significance of various methods and techniques of its development varies from course to course. The 5th year students, on the eve of graduation, give extremely positive feedback about the role of pharmacognosy in the preparation of a pharmacist and the most detailed answers showing the interrelation of the discipline with the practice of pharmaceutical work. They highly appreciate both traditional and active teaching methods. The students' answers to questions about the preferable place of work after graduating from the Faculty of Pharmacy revealed a tendency to structural changes in their professional preferences. So, the majority of students of previous years (more than 50%) were going to work at pharmacies, a little more than 14% — in pharmaceutical industry, 4.7% plan to be engaged in scientific and teaching work at the university. In comparison, among the students of the last academic year, more than 29% would like to work in pharmaceutical industry, more than 27% — at pharmacy, more than 16% — at the university. In this regard, the process of teaching and learning, including the discipline of pharmacognosy, which provides a significant amount of basic training, should respond quickly and flexibly to the changing labor market, providing students with modern updated knowledge and in-demand skills and competencies, including in research activities, with the use of science-oriented forms and methods of teaching, related to pharmaceutical production.

The use of video essays and podcasts to enhance creativity and critical thinking in engineering

The current demands of the labor market demand a new compendium of skills from engineering graduates. To develop skills at a more complex level, this study analyzed the use of second-generation Video Essays and Podcasts to improve soft skills. The characteristics of students belonging to Generation Z as digital natives were considered and digital platforms were adapted for interaction in social networks to enhance critical thinking and creativity (Criticality). Active learning experiences in different engineering programs were analyzed using the 4-group Solomon methodology with a quantitative design and different assessment instruments were used for Pre-Tests and Post-Tests, including various fluency and originality tests, as well as answering articulation ability tests. and modified VALUE rubrics from the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Our results clearly suggest that the use of these two tools substantially improves understanding of scientific concepts in engineering subjects, a greater ability to develop increasingly in-demand skill sets, and a greater awareness of creative thinking competence.

“It made me feel like it was okay to be wrong”: Student experiences with ungrading

This paper presents an interpretative phenomenological analysis study of students’ experiences with ungrading in the form of reflection-based self-evaluation in a college course. In the landscape of student evaluation, ungrading strategies respond to the limitations of traditional grading systems, particularly with respect to cultivating in-demand skills and capacities, such as adaptability, creative thinking, and self-management. Through in-depth interviews with eight students, this study reports on four experiential themes that characterize the switch to ungrading: de-gamification, or unsettling the “gamified” nature of evaluation in the traditional grading system; time to think and reflect, creating space for review and the deepening of learning; rich communication, or continual feedback between teacher and student; and learning community, in which students felt like they were part of a team effort rather than siloed individuals. Considerations for further research, as well as implementation of ungrading in other courses, are discussed.

BUILDING A NEW SKILLING SYSTEM TO MATCH THE NEW JOBREQUIREMENTS

Economic growth is a reflection of jobs created and skills and knowledge are evident requirements for any job. Both developed and developing countries are focusing on skilling people and India is no different. Our aim is to become the future skill capital of the world and government is not leaving a single stone unturned. Being the youngest nation with more than 62% of its population in working age group of 15-59 years, and more than 54% of its total population below 25 years of age, it seems feasible. Recent skill initiatives such as National Skill Development Mission, Amendment in The Apprentices Act are examples of government’s action to move towards reality. Employment landscape is changing swiftly, and new jobs are emerging with rapid disruption in the business models around the globe. Today’s job market and in-demand skills are hugely different from the ones of 10 or even 5 years ago and the pace of change is only set to accelerate. New jobs require new skills which either does not exist or the population is niche. Building a skilling system to match the new requirements, a system that responds well to business needs, while opening opportunities for all people is the need of the hour. This paper summarizes the results of a research conducted in Indore, to find out the various skills gap found among present employees and the future employees of selected companies in Indore. The total of 320 managers was taken as sample and they were administered with a structured questionnaire. The summary of the skills gap is mentioned in the paper along with suggestions, training need analysis, and the employees can be trained to be fit for the job specifications.

Subtitlers on the Cloud: The Use of Professional Web-based Systems in Subtitling Practice and Training

The bourgeoning and rapid evolution of cloud-based applications has triggered profound transformations in the audiovisual translation (AVT) mediascape. By drawing attention to the major changes that web-based ecosystems have introduced in localisation workflows, we set out to outline ways in which these new technological advances can be embedded in the AVT classroom. Along these lines, the present study sets out to explore the potential benefits of cloud platforms in AVT training curricula by exploring ways in which this technology can be exploited in subtitling training. An analysis of current subtitling practices and tools, localisation workflows, and in-demand skills in the AVT industry will be followed by an experience-based account on the use of cloud-based platforms in subtitler training environments to simulate and carry out a wide range of tasks. Our study pivots around the idea that cloud subtitling might prove useful to bridge the technological gap between academic institutions and the profession as well as to enhance the distance-learning provision of practice-oriented training in subtitling.

Digital Environment in Academic Libraries: Leveraging on Advanced Information Communication Technologies for Better Service Delivery

The advancement in technologies coupled with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and its associated technologies such as artificial intelligence, AI, robotic technology, virtual/augmented reality, big data, blockchain, cloud computing, and the likes have entered into the academic and other types of libraries have all brought changes into the digital environment of academic libraries. In light of this, this chapter examined the current digital environment of academic libraries. The chapter discusses the concept of the digital environment and academic libraries, describes digital components in academic libraries (old versus new), describes the impact of the digital environment on academic libraries, identify the new knowledge and skills required for academic libraries users’ and librarians’ functionality in the digital environment of academic libraries, and identifies changing formats ofthe environment of information material; the technological issue; the changing role of librarians; a collection of virtual information, archiving or preserving the virtual information; accessing of virtual information; special skills needed for librarians in building a virtual library; the cost factor of information technology; and the likelihood of job loss by the librarians as current challenges associated with the digital environment of academic libraries. The chapter recommends based on the findings that Academic librarians and studentsshould work to develop in-demand skills and continuously learn to use tools that reveal their capabilities and expertise to function in the digital environment of academic libraries and to provide efficient and effective information service. The academic librarians should anticipate and integrate new technologies to redesign access and delivery mechanisms to maximise utilisation of information and to minimise the costs of supporting such services. Keywords: Academic libraries, Digital environment, Digital literacy, Digital skills, Advanced technologies, Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies.

Digital Environment in Academic Libraries: Leveraging on Advanced Information Communication Technologies for Better Service Delivery

The advancement in technologies coupled with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) and its associated technologies such as artificial intelligence, AI, robotic technology, virtual/augmented reality, big data, blockchain, cloud computing, and the likes have entered into the academic and other types of libraries have all brought changes into the digital environment of academic libraries. In light of this, this chapter examined the current digital environment of academic libraries. The chapter discusses the concept of the digital environment and academic libraries, describes digital components in academic libraries (old versus new), describes the impact of the digital environment on academic libraries, identify the new knowledge and skills required for academic libraries users’ and librarians’ functionality in the digital environment of academic libraries, and identifies changing formats ofthe environment of information material; the technological issue; the changing role of librarians; a collection of virtual information, archiving or preserving the virtual information; accessing of virtual information; special skills needed for librarians in building a virtual library; the cost factor of information technology; and the likelihood of job loss by the librarians as current challenges associated with the digital environment of academic libraries. The chapter recommends based on the findings that Academic librarians and studentsshould work to develop in-demand skills and continuously learn to use tools that reveal their capabilities and expertise to function in the digital environment of academic libraries and to provide efficient and effective information service. The academic librarians should anticipate and integrate new technologies to redesign access and delivery mechanisms to maximise utilisation of information and to minimise the costs of supporting such services. Keywords: Academic libraries, Digital environment, Digital literacy, Digital skills, Advanced technologies, Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies.

On the Congruence Between Online Social Content and Future IT Skill Demand

The speed of digital transformation has resulted in new challenges for job seekers to become lifelong learners and to develop new skills faster than before. In this paper, our main objective is to examine how online content can serve as indicators for changes to the Information Technology (IT) industry and its in-demand skills. To study this relationship, we collect Reddit posts to represent social media content and job postings to reflect the IT industry based on which we explore possible correlations between them. Further, we propose a methodology to quantitatively estimate the predictive power of social media content for future in-demand skills. Our results show that the frequency of skill-related conversations on Reddit correlates with the popularity of skills in job posting data. Additionally, our findings indicate that the number of social posts dedicated to a specific skill can be a strong indicator for future job requirements. This is an important finding because identifying what skills the labor force should acquire will assist job seekers to plan their lifelong learning objectives to (a) maximize their employability, (b) continuously update their skills to remain in demand, and (c) be informed and actively engaged in defining knowledge trends, rather than reactively becoming informed of the latest information.

Enhancing learning capabilities of movement primitives under distributed probabilistic framework for flexible assembly tasks

This paper presents a novel probabilistic distributed framework based on movement primitives for flexible robot assembly. Since the modern advanced industrial cell usually deals with various scenarios that are not fixed via-point trajectories but highly reconfigurable tasks, the industrial robots used in these applications must be capable of adapting and learning new in-demand skills without programming experts. Therefore, we propose a probabilistic framework that could accommodate various learning abilities trained with different movement-primitive datasets, separately. Derived from the Bayesian Committee Machine, this framework could infer new adapting trajectories with weighted contributions of each training dataset. To verify the feasibility of our proposed imitation learning framework, the simulation comparison with the state-of-the-art movement learning framework task-parametrised GMM is conducted. Several key aspects, such as generalisation capability, learning accuracy and computation expense, are discussed and compared. Moreover, two real-world experiments, i.e. riveting picking and nutplate picking, are further tested with the YuMi collaborative robot to verify the application feasibility in industrial assembly manufacturing.

Graduates’ employability skills in East Africa

This paper reports a study about the perceptions of the academic community, employers and civil servants regarding graduates’ employability skills in East Africa. Specifically, it focuses on the mismatch between skills acquired in Higher Education (HE) and those in demand by employers, and explores factors influencing the situation. A mixed method approach was implemented including a survey and a set of focus groups. The questionnaire on employability skills was distributed among regional stakeholders attending the Open Day events organised by three East African HE Institutions. A Principal Components Analysis was applied for the categorisation of the most in-demand skills and the identification of four major workplace skill sets. To gain further insights into the stakeholders’ perceptions of the graduate employability skills gap, 11 focus groups were organised at the same universities. The general results showed that employability skills were mostly perceived as insufficiently developed during the students’ progress in their programs. The final results enabled a better understanding of the nuanced relationship between labour market valuation and graduates’ acquisition of each skill set. It also allowed us to identify problems and barriers, and suggest possible solutions to overcome the shortcomings experienced by the sub-Saharan HE system.

Skills for a Working Future: How to Bring about Professional Success from the Educational Setting

Globalization, digitalization, and the permanent alteration of information have led to important changes in the world of work. This demands a realignment of essential skills in order to access job positions in the coming years. In order to face up to the digitalization process, education is one of the ambits that has most come to a tipping point. This adds an urgency to the need to bring skills in line with the new demands of the job market and the challenges posed in the 21st Century. The methodology was based on a systematic review of the most commonly-used databases. It analyzed and synthesized the existing information on the skills required for the future job market and educational proposals to facilitate their acquisition. At the beginning of the search, 2045 records were selected. However, following the application of the exclusion criteria, a total of 63 records were included. From this in-depth analysis, it was uncovered that the most in-demand skill for the job market relates to the management of technology. Different proposals were located which targeted these skills in educational settings. The majority of these pertained to innovative projects emanating from digital and technological phenomena.

Gateway to Opportunity: A promising summer youth employment model to address local workforce needs

Throughout Maine, employers struggle to find workers with in-demand skills and competencies. Concurrently, work-eligible youth are often unable to find skill-building employment experiences. The Gateway to Opportunity (G2O) program is a comprehensive youth-adult partnership model developed in Portland, Maine, that is designed to address both of these challenges. G2O connects high-school-aged young people with paid, work-based learning projects at Maine-based businesses and nonprofits. The model for this program is based on national best practices and lessons learned from multiple highly successful summer youth employment initiatives led by Brandeis University’s Center for Youth and Communities from 2011 to 2013. This article highlights the development and growth of this program model and explores how innovative work-based learning programs such as G2O are critical for Maine’s workforce and local economy.

The polarisation of remote work

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to the rise of remote work with consequences for the global division of work. Remote work could connect labour markets, but it could also increase spatial polarisation. However, our understanding of the geographies of remote work is limited. Specifically, does remote work bring jobs to rural areas or is it concentrating in large cities, and how do skill requirements affect competition for jobs and wages? We use data from a fully remote labour market - an online labour platform - to show that remote work is polarised along three dimensions. First, countries are globally divided: North American, European, and South Asian remote workers attract most jobs, while many Global South countries participate only marginally. Secondly, remote jobs are pulled to urban regions; rural areas fall behind. Thirdly, remote work is polarised along the skill axis: workers with in-demand skills attract profitable jobs, while others face intense competition and obtain low wages.The findings suggest that remote work is shaped by agglomerative forces, which are deepening the gap between urban and rural areas. To make remote work an effective tool for rural development, it needs to be embedded in local skill-building and labour market programmes.

Gaining in-demand skills in the ESP classroom: a case study in Oman

The most recent trends in education emphasize the importance of its strong focus on the learner’s job-readiness, a convergence of education with the world of work, and its adaptation to the needs of the learner and the employer. Ascribable to its far-reaching partnership with 21st-century educational thinking, demand-driven education and planning for the future, the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classroom is no exception to this, seeing modifications and adaptations in its search for a deeper understanding of the reliable skill set introduction and development. While debating current global and local issues, changes, and challenges in the broad area of ESP, this paper focuses on Omani tertiary education students’ understanding of in-demand 21st-century skills and their development in the dimensions of these skills. The discussion is anchored in the personal feedback of students enrolled in English for Business course offered by the Centre for Preparatory Studies at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. In terms of future employability, students were asked to rate twenty-three skill areas and how these skill areas were covered in the course in bilingual English and Arabic questionnaire administered online. The results demonstrate students’ understanding of the importance of 21st-century skills for future employability. They also show that effective in-demand skill instruction requires teacher initiative in the enhanced incorporation of learner-centered teaching approaches and more language learning activities and tasks with a focus on interactive and experiential instruction. This involves a synthesis of best practices in integrated language skills with a special focus on speaking, the application of different innovative tools and techniques of teaching, and enhancement of positive attitudes toward aligning skill areas, with an emphasis on idea development, content knowledge, critical and creative thinking.

Demand-Aware Career Path Recommendations: A Reinforcement Learning Approach

A skill’s value depends on dynamic market conditions. To remain marketable, contractors need to keep reskilling themselves continuously. But choosing new skills to learn is an inherently hard task: Contractors have very little information about current and future market conditions, which often results in poor learning choices. Recommendation frameworks could reduce uncertainty in learning choices. However, conventional approaches would likely be inefficient; they would model previous (often poor) observed contractor learning behaviors to provide future career path recommendations while ignoring current market trends. This work proposes a framework that combines reinforcement learning, Bayesian inference, and gradient boosting to provide recommendations on how contractors should behave when choosing new skills to learn. Compared with standard recommender systems, this framework does not learn from previous (often poor) behaviors to make future recommendations. Instead, it relies on a Markov decision process to operate on a graph of feasible actions and dynamically recommend profitable career paths. The framework uses market information to identify current trends and project future wages. Based on this information, it recommends feasible, relevant actions that a contractor can take to learn new, in-demand skills. Evaluation of the framework on 1.73 million job applications from an online labor market shows that its implementation could increase (1) the marketplace’s revenue by up to 6%, (2) contractors’ wages by 22%, and (3) the diversity of new skill acquisitions by 47%. A comparison with alternative recommender systems highlights the limitations of approaches that make recommendations based on previously observed learning behaviors. This paper was accepted by Chris Forman, information systems.

Who is the Blockchain Employee? Exploring Skills in Demand using Observations from the Australian Labour Market and Behavioural Institutional Cryptoeconomics

LinkedIn recently predicted that blockchain skills will be the most in-demand skill in 2020, and in 2018 blockchain led the list of the fastest growing skills in demand according to Upwork. But what exactly constitutes the skill set of a blockchain employee? We use Australian labour market data to explore what skills are in demand among the blockchain workforce. We also take a deeper dive and explore what educational qualifications and experience are required of blockchain employees, and how blockchain-related jobs perform on salary scales. We discover that alongside ‘hard’ software engineering skills such as programming languages or computer science, blockchain-related jobs require candidates to have ‘soft’ skills such as creativity, communication and leadership. To explain this, we use institutional cryptoeconomics, applied game theory and applied behavioural science to suggest that the skills demand may be understood as a function of challenges to blockchain adoption. We suggest that for blockchain to enter a mass adoption phase, the industry will need employees with an integrated skill set of both hard software engineering skills and soft behavioural or enterprise skills. Furthermore, blockchain leaders, community leaders and end users will need to gain ‘blockchain literacy’ to overcome the challenge of coordinating expectations by developers and users, who will create network externalities and facilitate rapid, coordinated adoption. We contribute to the evidence-based blockchain literature by using Australian labour market data to derive insight into the challenges posed to the adoption of blockchain as (and if) it climbs out of the current ‘trough of disillusionment’.

Repackaging LIS professionals and libraries for the fourth industrial revolution

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the need for African Library Schools to repackage their curriculum to be able to produce graduates that will match up with jobs demand in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) era. The discussion argued for the review of African Library Schools, identified the technologies that drive the 4IRs which LIS graduates will be working with, if employed, and relevant skills needed for functionality in the era. Design/methodology/approach This viewpoint adopts discussion method with reference to some review of literature to argue the pints. Findings This viewpoint finds out that to be relevant in the 4IR, LIS graduate will have to possess the required skills relevant to function in the 4IR. The skills identified among other are information curation, in-depth research, digital scanning, preservation, cloud data expansion, collaboration, teaching and facilitation, analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies. Originality/value This paper is an original idea from the author and has been published or submitted to any platform. This paper is original because it has been able to emphasise that African LIS schools should work closely with the employer to make sure their courses and curriculum are designed in such a way to teach employability skills. Moreover, this paper is important, as it made it clear that there is need to ensure removal of barriers to implementing better assessment and training and providing much-needed funding and resources to support the efforts. LIS graduates or those in training should also work to develop in-demand skills and learn to use tools that reveal their capabilities to their potential employers.

Project-based learning efficacy in vocational education: Literature review

A shift in-demand skill in the workforce at the cognitive level and the need to adapt is a challenge for vocational graduates. Therefore a strategy is needed to enhance the 21st-century skills in vocational education. One of the strategies is implementing an active learning model such as Project-Based Learning. This article aim is to gather, summarize and integrate the quality of empirical evidence supporting links between Project-based Learning (PBL) and 21st-century competency framework. This study conducted with a systematic literature review. The data was collected from textbooks, journal articles, and internet searches. The result shows there are a lot of evidence of project Based Learning positive impact in fostering students skill in accordance to 21st-century competency framework including critical thinking, problem-solving, communication ability, collaboration ability, and creativity. The result also shows that several factors that could limit the effectiveness of PBL implementation including the teacher’s role, students’ roles, and other factors including equipment and the environment.

Demand-Aware Career Path Recommendations: A Reinforcement Learning Approach

A skill's value depends on dynamic market conditions. To remain marketable, contractors need to keep reskilling themselves continuously. But choosing new skills to learn is an inherently hard task: Contractors have very little information about current and future market conditions, which often results in poor learning choices. Recommendation frameworks could reduce uncertainty in learning choices. However, conventional approaches would likely be inefficient; they would model previous (often poor) observed contractor learning behaviors to provide future career path recommendations while ignoring current market trends. This work proposes a framework that combines reinforcement learning, Bayesian inference, and gradient boosting to provide recommendations on how contractors should behave when choosing new skills to learn. Compared with standard recommender systems, this framework does not learn from previous (often poor) behaviors to make future recommendations. Instead, it relies on a Markov Decision Process to operate on a graph of feasible actions and dynamically recommend profitable career paths. The framework uses market information to identify current trends and project future wages. Based on this information, it recommends feasible, relevant actions that a contractor can take to learn new, in-demand skills. Evaluation of the framework on 1.73 million job applications from an online labor market shows that its implementation could increase (1) the marketplace's revenue by up to 6%, (2) contractors' wages by 22%, and (3) the diversity of new skill acquisitions by 47%. A comparison with alternative recommender systems highlights the limitations of approaches that make recommendations based on previously observed learning behaviors.