International education over the past 10 years has been an enormous success story for Australia, and nowhere more than Sydney. According to Study NSW, more than 260,000 onshore students, $13bn in exports, 95,000 jobs and double digit annual growth over the past 5 years.

So what will international education look like in 2050? How can Sydney benefit from and plan for these changes? At the City of Sydney and Study NSW International Education forum last week, the question was asked of myself and my fellow panellists including economists, scientists, entrepreneurs, students and human rights lawyers.

What does the future of international education hold?

2050 is a long time, but not all that long – as far as today from 1990. Some things will be very different, but we’re not talking Starship Enterprise here. Among many, three key megatrends in evidence today will have a profound influence in the opportunities for international education. These are 1) the future of work, 2) global demographic & development shifts and 3) new technologies for work & learning.

The future of work is changing more rapidly than ever. Whether we accept that 47% of today’s jobs will disappear due to automation and other technologies, the world of work is changing. The average number of jobs in a given career is going up, and the lifespan of specific knowledge is going down. This means that 2 billion knowledge workers will need to upskill and reskill faster than ever before. Without taking anything away from the importance of foundational knowledge, in response education will become more personalised, modular, lifelong and experiential in nature. International education will be highly exposed to this trend, driven by student demand for an employability return on their education investment. The postgraduate, post work experience international education market will become more important. The human skills that complement increasing automation and are best taught experientially like creativity, problem solving and service orientation are more important.

Changing global demographic growth and economic development trends will reshape international education to 2050. Global student mobility will more than double grow from 5m to 10m annually. With the development of domestic higher education systems, China, developed East Asia and India student export growth will slow but with large absolute populations of 15-24 year olds and growing middle classes still account for the bulk of growth to 2027. Developing economies in South Asia & West Asia will provide important growth markets around this period, and by 2050 Africa is projected to be the high growth international education market, with 35% of young people aged 15-24 globally. One of the big challenges and opportunities for Australia will be that the vast bulk of students will continue to study and work at home, with increasingly sophisticated domestic economies and higher education systems providing competition for onshore students.

New technologies used for work & learning. Not all learning will be virtual – students will still value personal connections with professors and peers, but new technologies will be integrated into the educational mix, and a higher proportion of learning will be purely online. For those readers whose memories stretch far enough, think of the difference of the daily use of technology between 1990 and now in the workplace and higher ed. Expect pervasive applications of technologies including AI + machine learning, VR / AR, blockchain based credentialing, and later on human-machine interface. With all students firmly digital and mobile native, platform distribution means that awesome and highly personalised programs and solutions for specific niches can be distributed globally, generating economies of specialisation and scale. Just like physical goods supply chains – services and software supply chains will become truly global, where a great lecture, an industry project, a predictive algorithm can be deployed as easily in Dalian or Tanzania as Haymarket.

What can Sydney do to seize opportunity in this future?

Much of the discussion was framed around the onshore student experience, with the implication that growth will require a lot of urban planning and debates about who is congesting the buses. While this is undoubtedly the case, there is an aspect which is underplayed – the opportunity and the benefit of education technology and offshore delivery.

Sydney isn’t just part of Australia. Unique among Australian cities it occupies a privileged position as a global destination city, as part of a network of 20-30 truly global cities which concentrate the worlds human capital, creativity, economic growth and job creation to a degree unprecedented in human history. It enjoys a comparative advantage that other Australian jurisdictions do not.

Beyond fostering continued strong growth in onshore enrolments, Sydney education providers have a phenomenal opportunity to leverage the cities brand, institutions and strengths to facilitate exponential growth in delivering educational products, programs, credentials and expertise offshore and transnationally.

As learning and work become ever more digitally enabled, education providers in all industry sectors can adopt and adapt education technology to co-create new and potentially disruptive models building on world class brands, expertise and IP. One of the great potential enablers of this is a thriving local edtech sector. Of >350 edtechs in Australia, approximately 150 are based here in Sydney, according to EduGrowth and Austrade. The 2018 Startup Muster report demonstrated that more than 1/3 of startup founders are born overseas, including many international students. Edtech is the second largest industry vertical for tech startups. Examples of scaleup stage edtech companies that have raised significant capital and gained international traction in specific niches include Open Learning in Massive Online Open Course platform, Go One in corporate training, Smart Sparrow in adaptive learning, Learnosity in assessments and Practera in experiential learning.

As an example, Practera has worked with Study NSW and 10 NSW Universities to develop the NSW Global Scope program, which connects thousands of international students in digitally enabled projects with hundreds of Government, business + community organisations to solve real problems. This model is informing our collaboration with Northeastern University in the US to design a projects program with the capacity to serve >100,000 community college students in Masachussets. Boston University is using the platform to manage health development projects in 17 developing countries.

‘Experiential learning’ is rapidly evolving as key response to educational needs and models like these could deliver a broader economic & social dividend for Sydney. For example students, educators and industry from Sydney and global cities can be connected today through high-impact and high-quality online projects and accelerators. Transnational experiential learning brings an unfair share of the worlds human capital into building opportunity with Sydney institutions, industries and students. This initiative alone would promote connection and innovation through facilitating collaboration between Higher Education and business on which Australia ranks poorly on a global basis. It would promote the development of more global connections and collaborations for Sydney. It would promote a more just and sustainable city through offering industry experience and connections to many more students, including from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Government has a key role to play in facilitating initiatives like this, in bringing actors together and providing the brands, seed funding, license to operate and connections required to facilitate large scale cross sector collaboration.

More systematically, across the many niches and opportunities of a world of education that is more modular, experiential and lifelong, a city like Sydney can ask itself the question – not can we handle half a million international students in our city, but can we educate 100 million learners globally?

About the author

Beau Leese is Co-Founder & Co-Chief Executive Officer of Practera

Remarks adapted from City of Sydney / Study NSW International Education Forum 2019

Education Technology (EdTech) startup Practera and its collaboration partners have been awarded $1.995 million in government funding as part of a $7.45M project to develop a data privacy protection product for online student data.

Practera’s was one of sixteen projects awarded a total of $30 million by the Commonwealth’s Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) Round 7 grants program. Collaboration partners in the project include CSIRO’s Data61, University of South Australia, global education company Navitas, Education Technology peak body EduGrowth, and cyber security solution provider Cybermerc.

Learning analytics and AI research while preserving student privacy

The project will develop a product for education providers to provably preserve the privacy of student data records. This will enable education companies to maximise the value of their student datasets, for example in learning analytics and training of artificial intelligence algorithms. The product will be applied initially to Practera’s experiential learning platform which supports programs such as project programs, internships and skills credentialing.

EduGrowth CEO David Linke said that “Learners globally are demanding more control over the data from their learning.  So having Australia at the centre of building this incredibly important tool will be a global advantage for our education providers, the EdTech sector and most importantly the learners themselves.”

Ruth Marshall, Practera’s Director R&D and Data Integrity and leader of the project said “Learning Analytics on student data provides the insights that EdTech companies need to deliver increasingly valuable and personalised insights, evolve their products and compete in the global marketplace. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly important for EdTech systems to provably protect personal and confidential data.”

Global education companies need to meet increasingly complex privacy requirements

The CRC-P grant will pay for research to apply and further enhance privacy-preserving technology and techniques developed by CSIRO’s Data61 for other applications. “We are very interested to apply these techniques in the Education industry” said Professor Dali Kaafar, Group Leader of the Information Security and Privacy Group. “The techniques we have developed at Data61 aim to quantify and measure the “privacy risks” of personal identification or re-identification, and then reduce that risk using mathematically provable risk reduction techniques.”

Professor Kaafar elaborated, “Removing obvious identifiers such as names and addresses is not sufficient to protect users from re-identification, with a linking attack for example”. Linking attacks use data from other sources such as social media to determine the identity of individuals from an anonymized data set.  A famous example is New York City taxis who released a “de-identified” set of trip data in 2014 to have it re-identified within the hour using information found on Twitter and online news.

Marshall continued, “Edtech companies with global operations like Practera need to meet increasingly complex privacy requirements around the world. Provable anonymisation of data offers a tremendous business advantage. Our customers like Universities and education providers like Navitas will be increasingly required to prove that their data remains private under regimes like the EU’s GDPR. This is becoming more important as multiple systems are used, some or all operate in the cloud and the provider has multinational operations.” The project will enhance the privacy & security capabilities of Practera in the first instance, but we certainly envisage that we are building product in its own right with application for other EdTechs.”

Media Contact

Ruth Marshall

Mob. +61 0411 222 040

Email ruth@practera.com

Queensland is set to attract its “unfair share” of global talent following the launch of Australia’s largest ever student career development drive.

International Education Ministerial Champion Kate Jones today launched the Study Queensland Talent Program which will be available to all students studying in Queensland.

The Study Queensland Talent Program will offer new employer engagement programs to all students to build their 21st-century skills as well as e-portfolio and micro-credentialing app to help them record their experiences and achievements in real time. 

Ms Jones said the program would position Queensland to be able to offer students world leading recognition of the skills they develop alongside their study to better prepare them for their future career.

“We have great education and training providers and some of the world’s leading tourism destinations,” she said.

“We want to make sure everyone who gets an education in Queensland builds authentic connections and has great employment prospects, both here and globally. That’s what this program is all about.

“It’s also part of our plan to attract more international students to study in Queensland.”

The $1.6 million program will be funded through the Queensland Government International Education and Training Strategy.

The Start Here Go Anywhere e-portfolio and micro-credentialing app – which is currently being piloted in Cairns – will be rolled out across the state in coming months.

Ms Jones said the app would encourage students to take up new and existing employability programs and enable students to record their participation in activities to help build their extra-curricular profile, allowing them to be more attractive to global employers.

Importantly, she said the program would be supported by a new Study Queensland Employer Champion Groups, which includes Urbis, Queensland Tourism Industry Council, Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation and Bank of Queensland.

“International education is Queensland’s fastest growing service export, last year injecting more than $5 billion into the economy,” she said.

“We want to grow this industry to create jobs for Queensland.”

The program will be delivered by Study Queensland, which is charged with implementing the International Education and Training Strategy to Advance Queensland.

The program was launched at the Study Queensland International Education and Training Summit held in Brisbane this week.

Attracting more than 300 people, the summit explored ways to attract skills and talent from across the globe featuring TIQ Commissioners from China, Japan and ASEAN.

This is the media statement originally published in the Queensland Cabinet and Ministerial Directory on June 26, 2019.

Study Cairns has partnered with Study Queensland to launch a “world first” pilot program aimed at helping students get a foothold in the Cairns job market.

The Start Here, Go Anywhere Global Skills Passport is an app platform for 12,000 international and domestic students to build portfolios of globally relevant skills.

This app launch is part of Study Cairns Connects – a program designed to log employability experiences for domestic and international students and to engage a network of Cairns business, community and government organisations.

Study Cairns president Carol Doyle said the program offers students access to volunteering and internship programs which complement employability experiences offered by Cairns-based education providers.

“With Study Queensland’s international education tagline  ‘Start Here, Go Anywhere’, this exciting pilot project showcases the opportunity for international and domestic students to study in a unique regional Queensland location like Cairns”, she said. “Participation in the project empowers students to develop transferrable skills like service orientation, innovation, teamwork and communication.”

“This is a bold, world leading ‘region scale’ initiative and potentially serves as a pilot for broader adaption by other Queensland international education regions.”

The Global Skills Passport and introductory workshops are designed to equip students with a World Economic Forum skills based framework and issue open badge standard micro-credential certificates.

For students the resource provides a digital tool to help them to build and demonstrate the skills needed to succeed in the future of work. 

This article was published in the Cairns Post and DailyTelegraph

The CRC Association has partnered with edtech startup Practera to support the education and knowledge transfer activities of CRCs with the Practera experiential learning & micro-credentialing platform.

CRC Association CEO Tony Peacock announced the partnership during last week’s Collaborate | Innovate | 2019 conference. He said “The CRC Association is pleased to announce our partnership with Practera to develop a series of experiential learning products to help CRC’s enhance activities like industry skills development, PhD mentoring, innovation challenges and industry education. These programs are critical to build the impact skills of our scientists and to collaborate effectively with industry, but we often reinvent the wheel in these spaces. Practera offers the opportunity to provide digital templates that can be adopted and adapted by CRCs to use with their students and industry partners. Practera is a great Australian startup which brings to life a clear vision for work integrated learning and industry-research collaboration that closely aligns to the mission of the CRC program.”

Ruth Marshall, Practera’s R&D Director and a former Commercialisation Advisor for Data61 has been working with a small group of CRCs on developing prototype products. She ran a workshop at the conference to elicit best practices and demonstrate prototypes.

 

Mike Ridout, Innovation Broker and Education Director of the Food Agility CRC said “this project has the potential to help students and early career researchers develop needed business skills including teamwork and collaboration in an industry setting”

Liz Barbour, CEO of the Honey Bee Products CRC agreed – “this project will help develop solutions to challenges such as helping students get a more consistent and reliable mentoring experience, supporting students across different geographical locations.”

Ruth said “Practera will work with CRCs to develop a portfolio of useful digital experiences to facilitate students, researchers and industry practitioners undertake collaborative activities and develop their skills. High-quality experiential learning programs can be costly to run and are not easy to repeat because there are no economies of scale. Practera provides the digital tools to support the design and delivery of quality experiential learning courses at scale”.

The platform steps students through goal setting and skills-development planning framework with multiple opportunities for reflection. Students can earn micro-credentials for their achievements along the way, earning badges that can then be published to other platforms such as LinkedIn. Students can showcase the particular skills they have developed in their applied R&D projects, which are hugely valuable but may not otherwise be recognised in their formal academic achievements.

Enquiries: connect@practera.com

This month in experiential learning

Industry news, customer success stories and product updates.

Hi there,

Practera works with educators around the world at the frontier of experiential learning for the future of work. Here is a snapshot of leading thinking and practice.

WHAT WE ARE READING

Interesting news in the world of experiential learning

Forbes published a commentary about a big shift that might impact Higher Ed sooner than expected. Instead of going to college to get a job, students will increasingly be going to a job to get a college degree. How Great Teachers Are Thinking Outside the Classroom to Help Students Learn. Their classrooms are increasingly diverse, but their responsibilities remain the same: to ensure that all students have access to the learning opportunities that will help them be successful as students and throughout their lives.

PRACTERA CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Enabling inspiring experiential learning programs

More than 1,000 successful  participants in the Study Melbourne Live Projects Program paved the way for further investment to grow the initiative with Practera in 2019/20 – bigger and better than ever!. University of Melbourne launches Practera app to help students feel welcomed to campus, navigate the city of Melbourne, make the most of student life and develop their skills in a professional environment during their first month.

If you are looking to strengthen or setup your experiential learning program, schedule a free consultation with a senior member of our team

PRACTERA PRODUCT UPDATES

Building the worlds leading platform for experiential learning

We released Practera GO – a ready-to-go employability app solutions for innovative educators that has everything needed to launch world-class employability programs without worrying about budgets, learning content or administrative overhead. For current customers who want to discover the new benefits in a personalised training session – as usual: please reach out to your Practera representative and we are happy to schedule a meeting.

PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCES

What we write, publish and present at events and conferences

The Co-operative Research Centre Association is developing a pilot Practera platform to support CRC’s in their education and knowledge transfer activities, including mentoring, challenge projects and applied research skills credentialling. If you’d like to learn more, Practera Director, R&D, Ruth Marshall will be delivering a prototype session at the Innovate Collaborate conference in Adelaide, May 28-30. [EduTech] Wes Sonnenreich, Practera Co-Founder and Co-CEO will be part of an EdTech expert panel at EduTech on June 7 (Free Event) [IET Summit] We will be sharing our insights about “Innovation in Employability” at the Study Queensland International Education & Training Summit Tuesday 26 June [CICE] Practera Canada Vice-President Megan Underwood will be speaking about the future of work at the Canada International Conference on Education (CICE-2019) in Toronto, June 24-27 [GIC] Practera co-Founder & Co-CEO Beau Leese will be presenting with the University of Melbourne on the Study Melbourne LIVE Projects program at the Global Internship Conference in Auckland July 2-5 [NSEE] Practera US Vice-President Nikki James will be speaking with UNSW and Northeastern University at the NSEE (National Society of Experiential Learning Conference) September 23-25

We are excited about how experiential learning will change the way we teach and how it will prepare the next generation of learners for the future of work.

If you’d like to learn more or discuss your experiential learning program please contact us

Best,
Beau Leese, Co-CEO

Practera, Australia’s leading experiential learning startup, today announced Practera GO, a new solution that provides everything needed to launch world-class employability programs without worrying about large budgets, new learning content or complex administrative overhead. 

A trend towards employability skills in Higher Ed

In recent years, higher education institutions have faced a new trend that requires adjustment to their strategy: More and more prospective students (and parents) carefully weigh up their future employment prospects when selecting degrees and universities.

This trend is fuelled by the fact that employers are demanding skills from graduates which are outside the subject area of study in Higher Education.

While still seen as necessary by employers, a graduate’s academic achievements are not sufficient for them to be recruited anymore. Instead, extracurricular activities such as work experience, volunteering, and involvement in clubs and societies are seen as having equal importance as the knowledge and experience acquired through academic study.

How does Practera GO help program managers?

Educators and program managers who need to offer extracurricular employability programs to their students can select from a curated list of high quality app experiences that come pre-loaded with all content and instructions to support learners and industry partners during their program. Free access to the Practera online admin and reporting tool allows program mangers to enrol participants, monitor progress and ensure employability skill development.

Every app includes all required content and a workflow that is validated by more than 10,000 students delivering successful projects for more than 2,000 industry partners. Based on the experiential learning pedagogy, Practera GO enables seamless feedback loops, which are crucial to develop employability skills.

Key Benefits

• New employability programs can be created and rolled out in days or weeks instead of months
• Students and industry partners get supported through mobile apps that structure their experience and automatically collect feedback
• Program managers get actionable, real-time insights into exactly who needs support and what they should do about it

“Education providers are missing out on massive student engagement and satisfaction opportunities if they aren’t tracking and managing the individual student experiences during the project.”, says Suzy Watson, Co-Founder and Head of Customer Success. “We designed all app experiences based on the experiential learning pedagogy and curated the most relevant content and workflows that works ‘out-of-the-box. This helps professional staff, for example in the careers teams, to successfully roll out high quality programs to their students for a fraction of the cost.”

Are you interested to learn more? Get started for free!

This month in experiential learning

Industry news, customer success stories and product updates.

Hi there,

Practera works with educators around the world at the frontier of experiential learning for the future of work. Here is a snapshot of leading thinking and practice.

WHAT WE ARE READING

Interesting news in the world of experiential learning

Northeastern University found that employers’ top priority recommendation for colleges and universities was to “include real-world projects and engagements with employers and the world of work” in their programmes

Austrade’s Innovation in Employability report was released at the Asia-Pacific International Education Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last week. The report showcases strategies and initiatives to enhance the employability skills of international students across all Australian states.

Canadian Universities take collaborative approach to future skills development;

Australia reviews the future of micro-credentials in its Australian Quality Framework

PRACTERA CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Enabling inspiring experiential learning programs

The Australian Government (DFAT) has launched a national skills micro-credential pilot – the Australia Awards Global Skills Passport, on Practera through the Australia Awards Indonesia (AAI) program. 400 AAI Scholars will create an e-portfolio of enrichment experiences alongside their study against one of 6 Global Skill categories. (Product demo video)

Redfern Legal Centre supported by Study NSW, the City of Sydney and the Fair Work Ombudsman are launching this week a ground-breaking new multilingual legal advice app on Practera to international students studying in NSW. The app will provide international students with instant access to customised legal information around common issues, delivered in an interactive, video-based ‘face-to-face’ question and answer format in English and six other languages.

If you are looking to strengthen or setup your experiential learning program, schedule a free consultation with a senior member of our team

PRACTERA PRODUCT UPDATES

Building the worlds leading platform for experiential learning

Practera has taken a quantum leap – our latest release was a massive one. Highlights included;

Transitioning students and mentors to an upgraded mobile-first experience (New Practera App Video)

Launching our AI-powered Experiential Learning Support Assistant (ELSA), which offers personalised intervention options for educators based on common issues (Introducing ELSA Video)

Integrated badges, digital certificates and micro-credentialling into all aspects of the platform

Filesharing integrated to chat functionality

For current customers who want to discover the benefits of the new features in a personalised training session – as usual: please reach out to your Practera representative and we are happy to schedule a meeting.

PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCES

What we write, publish and present at events and conferences

The Co-operative Research Centre Association is developing a pilot Practera platform to support CRC’s in their education and knowledge transfer activities, including mentoring, challenge projects and applied research skills credentialling. If you’d like to learn more, Practera Director, R&D, Ruth Marshall will be delivering a prototype session at the Innovate Collaborate conference in Adelaide, May 28-30.

Last week Practera Co-CEO Beau Leese helped launch Austrade’s Innovation in Employability report at the Asia-Pacific International Education Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The report showcases strategies and initiatives to enhance the employability skills of international students across all Australian states.

Practera Canada Vice-President Megan Underwood will be speaking at the Canada International Conference on Education (CICE-2019) in Toronto, June 24-27

Practera co-Founder & Co-CEO Beau Leese will be presenting with the University of Melbourne on the Study Melbourne LIVE Projects program at the Global Internship Conference in Auckland July 2-5

Practera US Vice-President Nikki James will be speaking with UNSW and Northeastern University at the NSEE (National Society of Experiential Learning Conference) September 23-25

We are excited about how experiential learning will change the way we teach and how it will prepare the next generation of learners for the future of work.

If you’d like to learn more or discuss your experiential learning program please contact us.

Best,
Beau Leese, Co-CEO

Redfern Legal Centre is partnering with Sydney edtech provider Practera to deliver My Legal Mate, a legal assistant in international students’ pockets

Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore welcomed international students to the city by announcing a groundbreaking mobile app technology which offers legal advice to international students. The My Legal mate in 6 community languages.

Practera app to help with most common legal issues

Created by the Redfern Legal Centre with funding from the City of Sydney, Study NSW and the Fair Work Ombudsman, the app has been built using the technology of Sydney based experiential learning startup Practera.

The app uses interactive video to provide students with instant access to legal information, delivered in English and six community languages. The app covers four issues most commonly encountered by international students – employment, housing, disputes with education providers and sexual assault. 

Enhancing international student experience

MyLegal Mate was devised by solicitor Sean Stimson, the head of Redfern Legal Centre’s International Student Service NSW, who in February was awarded the NSW Human Rights Medal for his work with the state’s 260,000 international students.

“Over 40% of international students will encounter a legal issue during their study in NSW, which may negatively impact their experience. Redfern Legal Centre provides a free statewide legal advice service for international students funded by Study NSW but this app will offer further immediate support at much larger scale” Mr Stimson said.

“While it is not intended to replace face to face legal consultation, this professional services app is an innovative way to ensure international students can get instant access to tailored legal information and be empowered to take greater control if problems occur. By downloading the app on enrolment, international students will be armed with information about their rights before they start their course, with the ultimate aim of preventing issues arising while they are in Australia.

Speaking at the annual welcome event for Sydney’s international students, Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the app would further support overseas students.

“International students enhance our city by contributing to Sydney’s diversity and strengthening our global connections,” The Lord Mayor said.

“This wonderful new app puts an invaluable legal resource in the pockets of international students. This will help ensure they’re given every opportunity to have a safe, enjoyable and rewarding time living and studying in Sydney and across NSW.”

“Being able to attract and nurture the best students from around the world is an investment in our city’s future. That’s why we’ve supported this innovative information resource, and look forward to it helping students from all backgrounds.”

The accelerating pace of technology-driven change is transforming the future of work faster than ever before.

Some 30 per cent of the jobs that today’s students are studying for are under threat from automation by 2030. The World Economic Forum claims that the gap between what people learn and the skills they need is widening, as traditional learning no longer equips students with the knowledge they need to thrive. Global employers like Google, Apple, PWC, IBM and Bank of America no longer require a college degree. Education thinkers like Jack Ma are calling for a revolution in what we teach and how we teach.

The growing value of experience

Experiential learning is a critical tool for higher education providers to meet this challenge. Experiential or work-integrated learning builds employability skills through professional placements, projects, accelerators, internships, mentoring and skills credentialing. These initiatives build trans-disciplinary skills including collaboration, creativity, leadership and resilience. They engage learners with real-world activities and challenges. Innovation in experiential learning is one of the keys to successful education in the 21st century. Employability and the development of globally relevant skills are very important to more than five million international students and to the institutions who serve them. Australian higher education providers have embraced strategic commitments to deliver this kind of education to every student. However there are challenges: these valuable experiences are often complex, and costly to manage, monitor and quality assure.

These challenges can be overcome with good instructional design, efficient management, and smart technology. In working with many universities, governments and employers in Australia and around the world, we at Practera have observed some common factors in successful experiential learning programs:

• support for learners – to apply knowledge to new settings and complex problems
• meaningful engagement – with experienced practitioners aligned with program learning outcomes
• shared, valuable objectives and a common framework – for student, mentor and educator collaboration
• facilitation of the critically reflective learning process – which is required for competency and character development
• credentialing frameworks – which link learning and experience to global skills.

Australian state governments are supporting large-scale project networks, which enable thousands of international students every year from Australian higher education institutes to undertake real projects with Australian governments, businesses and community organisations. These projects lead to real outcomes, further work experience and jobs for international students. They may also result in government-endorsed digital certificates, which can be displayed on social media.

Designed on an even larger scale, the New South Wales Government – through Study NSW – recently initiated the Global Trade Accelerator platform built on Practera. This platform connects Australian exporters with international students to complete virtual market research projects on offshore markets. The accelerator platform is supported by Austrade, the Export Council of Australia and the Global Trade Professionals Alliance. Within two months of launching, the platform enabled 31 exporters to receive reports from 250 students from four universities, and achieved a satisfaction rating of 80 per cent from students and 75 per cent from employers.

Programs in Asia

In Asia, RMIT Vietnam has initiated Personal Edge, a global employability skills e-portfolio and microcredentialing program. All 6,000 students in Vietnam are engaged in Personal Edge employability skills sessions. They are encouraged to seek out experiences and record evidence of their experiential learning aligned to six skill categories, including ‘digital citizen’, ‘confident communicator,’ and ‘cross-cultural team leader’. Students’ reflections are reviewed by RMIT careers advisors and micro-credentialed with open badges on a social media-friendly skills transcripts.

Experiential learning creates opportunities for students. It gives them new employability options and helps them to keep learning new skills throughout their careers. Practera’s experiential learning and micro-credentialing platform enables students to access and document their activities and experiences. Through this, we help educators make experiential learning more engaging and accessible for millions of students around the world.

Authors: Suzy Watson, Beau Leese

This is an extract from “Innovation in Employability” report published by Austrade on 25.03.2019. The full report can be found here.