Bridging the industry–education gap

“I never learnt that at school!” is a common phrase thrown around in a professional setting. It highlights the ineffective ‘traditional’ environment of studies and has spurred the belief that it is okay to coast through university for the paper then learn and develop critical skills later on the job. This is not okay, and many of us know it. 

Here at Ducere our grand mission is to bridge the gap between education and industry, directly addressing the skills and experience gap often highlighted in educational news articles (Steed, 2018).

Whilst some universities are investing in careers services for students in response to the gap, Ducere has chosen to focus on the learning content to be parsed as part of the degree requirements, upgrading the content development approach from pedagogical to andragogical (child to adult). Our content is designed specifically for adult learners, providing plenty of opportunities for reflective practice and engaging directly with new ideas. We’ve researched what makes learning stick – an intuitive, multimodal and state-of-the-art learning management system paired with interactive, meaningful and applicable content.

“Tell me and I will forget, show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand.”
― Confucius

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) 

You’re probably familiar with this term making the rounds as the buzz term of the day. Well, we incorporated this into our learning material before it was cool 😎, taking learners - whether they knew it or not – through the steps of:

• Discovery – exploration of the content built my industry expert academics;
• Dreaming – short pauses in the presentation of content to ask students to start thinking about how they can imagine the theory in practice;
• Designing – whilst learners don’t engage directly in this step, the assessments we have built are carefully designed to highlight core content in the discovery phase and anticipate the dreaming phase, ultimately preparing learners to immerse themselves in the destiny/development step of AI;
• Developing – the stage which requires learners to build their own destiny, using their career experience, soft skills, personality and dreams to produce a piece of work that is highly relevant to them and also current or future employers. Win-win.

The process repeats itself upon progression to the next topic, or perhaps when the same topic needs to be revisited for further reflection or practice.

To us, the improvements we can make to our learning materials are limitless as new research, case studies and technological advances emerge. However, you can count on us to prioritise and provide practical learning at all times.

References

Steed, S. (2018). Too many graduates are mismatched to their jobs. What's going wrong? [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2018/jan/25/too-many-graduates-are-mismatched-to-their-jobs-whats-going-wrong