Canada. Can Experiential Learning Go Virtual? Lessons Learned From Canadian Nursing Education During the Pandemic (Paper)
In this research, we examine the results of interviews with nurse educators, nursing experts, and recent nurse graduates to determine how the pandemic-driven move to virtual study affected the delivery of experiential learning.
Did nursing students learn the necessary skills required for safe and effective practice? How did the move to online learning affect student engagement and academic dishonesty? Were there benefits specific to virtual learning that can be incorporated into future teaching efforts?
Source: The Conference Board of Canada

Canada/Québec. College Continuing: Education Invisible and Unrecognized? (Paper)
Based on a systematic literature review, we demonstrate that college continuing education in Quebec is poorly represented in colleges’ specialized publications and generally absent from the field of educational research, despite its importance in the field of professional and technical training. To conclude, we present hypotheses that may explain this lack of visibility and suggest potential research avenues on a subject that merits greater consideration.
Source: Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education

Ecuador. Technical institutes in Ecuador: A commitment to quality and employment opportunities
In Ecuador, 26 percent of women and 11 percent of men between the ages of 15 and 24 are neither working nor in school  (the so-called “NiNis”). A World Bank report has shown that academic and labor market outcomes of short-cycle programs help generate employment and develop skilled human capital to meet the demand for these skills in a short amount of time and at a lower cost per student.
In this context, technical degree programs, which typically last two or three years and are oriented to the labor market, could be extremely helpful in generating employment by offering a path to fairly quick, well-paying job opportunities. 
Source: World Bank

The importance of informal learning at work
Although early human capital theory recognized the relevance of workers’ experience, its focus was on education and formal training. More recent studies show that much of the performance of newly hired workers is driven by learning by doing or learning from peers or supervisors in the workplace. Descriptive data show that workers learn a lot from the various tasks they perform on the job. Informal learning at work seems to be relevant for all age groups, although it is more meaningful for younger workers’ performance. Informal learning is far more important for workers’ human capital development than formal training courses.
Source: IZA World of Labor 

Understanding the Approach to Lifelong Learning
For schools with a long history of providing Continuing Education, the CE departments can serve as hubs for experimentation and innovation in different learning modalities and formats, approaches to teaching and meeting students where they are.
Source: The evolllution

The future of education lies in the development of skills, not Victorian rote learning, says Tutors International
Tutors International issued a comment that highlights the transformative impact of personalised learning, emphasising its role in empowering students to go beyond traditional styles of classroom learning to push educational boundaries and become confident, lifelong learners.
Source: Tutors International

The duality of global online labour platforms as restrictive-expansive sites of workplace learning and skill development (Paper)
The paper analyses global online labour platforms (OLPs) through the lens of the Expansive-Restrictive Learning Environments framework. The framework articulates a set of structural factors that enable or constrain workplace learning and development. The paper draws on multistakeholder, mixed-method empirical data to illustrate how OLPs are emerging as learning environments, where new and reconfigured skills, learning practices, and new forms of learning support emerge in response to the radically distributed and fragmented nature of this work. The paper illustrates how structure and individual agency interact in OLPs to create and configure learning opportunities for workers and informs practitioners about the current learning and development features and practices in OLPs.
Source: International Journal of Training and Development

You Need New Skills to Make a Career Pivot. Here’s How to Find the Time to Build Them
With any significant change in your career comes the need for new skills. But that’s even more true when you want a radical career change. In these situations, it’s going to take more than listening to a few webinars to build the knowledge you need get to where you want to go. You must set aside a significant amount of time for self-directed learning, formal training, or even a second job to gain the skills for the big leap.
Source: Harvard Business Review

Canada. State of Skills: Quality of Work
Key insight #1: When individuals receive training and opportunities to develop their skills, they tend to find greater satisfaction and meaning in their work. Likewise, companies do a better job at attracting and keeping talented employers when they offer opportunities for training and skills development.
Key insight #2: To improve the quality of work for front-line employees across industries and sectors, more efforts are needed to build the soft skills of supervisors and managers.
Key insight #3: Remote work has contributed to improvements in quality of work, but the benefit is disproportionately with higher-income knowledge workers.
Key insight #4: Sustainable gains in work quality can only be achieved by addressing workplace discrimination.
En français. Canada. État des compétences : Qualité de l’emploi
Source: Future Skills Centre

Sri Lanka. Enhancing Skills in Sri Lanka for Inclusion, Recovery, and Resilience
An ongoing process of strengthening skills and improving education will be crucial to Sri Lanka’s economic recovery. Sri Lanka is transitioning from a rural-based to a modern, urbanized economy, and better jobs are being created, especially in services. To remain globally competitive, the Sri Lankan workforce must gain the technical competencies and higher-order cognitive skills that meet the needs of local and foreign labor markets. As a result, Sri Lanka will need to transform its current skills development system and processes to align them to emerging jobs; improve their market relevance; and develop an effective, inclusive, and accessible education and training system for skilling, reskilling, and upskilling the stock and flow of the workforce. 
Source: World Bank

Europe. Building a European qualifications map: development of national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) across Europe
This policy brief contributes to better understanding of national qualifications frameworks (NQFs) in Europe by providing insights into their main characteristics, scope and coverage, along with a discussion on their impact and the extent to which they are used.
Source: CEDEFOP – European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training

Sector-Based Training Programs: An Approach to Achieving Equitable Labor-Market Outcomes and Upward Mobility
Adequate skills training is needed to compete for desirable jobs. Without that training, many individuals, particularly those from marginalized commu­nities, can get stuck in a “low pay, no pay” cycle – that is, they frequently move between low-paid work and unemployment. Research has shown that sector-based training programs – which train people for high-quality jobs that align with the labor force needs of employers in tar­geted industry sectors – can raise individuals’ employment rates and earnings. But sector-based training pro­grams are small and expanding them to a level that meets the economic need of workers has been challenging.
Source: MDRC

PISA Vocational Education and Training (VET): Assessment and Analytical Framework
The PISA-VET assessment covers professional knowledge and skills in five occupational areas (automotive technician, business and administration, electrician, nursing/healthcare assistant and hotel receptionist), plus an evaluation of learners’ employability skills, including literacy, problem solving, task performance (conscientiousness) and collaboration with others. The publication also presents the frameworks for the various questionnaires distributed to students, principals of VET institutions, teachers and trainers, including a questionnaire for trainers in work-based learning environments and a system level data questionnaire for participating countries. The questionnaires are also included as an annex to the publication.
Source: OECD – Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

Putting Skills First: Opportunities for Building Efficient and Equitable Labour Markets
The need and the opportunity to put skills first have aligned. For bold leaders, the result is business transformation. Solutions such as a skills-based hiring have the potential to position organizations at the forefront of innovation, allowing business strategy to adapt to the complexities of the future job market – a proactive attack on labour shortages and skills gaps which hold back productivity and equity.
Source: WEF – World Economic Forum

Institutional practices of implementing lifelong learning in higher education: research report
This research report presents six case studies of universities in different regions of the world and offers insights into the practical implementation of lifelong learning in the higher education context. It examines regulations and strategic frameworks that support universities’ commitment to lifelong learning, describes how they are responding to new learning demands, and provides examples of specific programmes and initiatives that promote lifelong learning. The report also discusses the challenges these institutions face and how they are addressing them.
En français. Pratiques institutionnelles de mise en oeuvre de l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie dans l'enseignement supérieur : rapport de recherche
Source: UNESCO