Digital training, the experts: watertight compartments are for boomers

Faced with what the professional training system needs in the time of the (constant) digital revolution, one has to get caught up in a Stendhal syndrome. It is no coincidence that the title that Talent Garden has chosen for the two-day event organized in Rome on the subject contains the word challenge (challenge, in English).

Institutions, universities, companies and startups have pooled experiences and visions to outline interventions that are as practical as possible to address the main problems of Europe and Italy in particular: misalignment between skills sought by the market and existing skills, lack of gender equity, lack of basic digital literacy, need to rethink pathways.

The good news (yes, there is good news) is that no need to make a clean slate: the adage that has accompanied innovation for a long time, on the model of Out with the old and in with the new, finally seems like an outdated paradigm. As well as an approach that sees the disciplines as each in its own right. Many of the words already exist and change their meaning according to new needs. It was the same Davide Dattoli, co-founder of Talent Gardento refer to the “Renaissance of humanistic skills”, as well as to “people at the heart of business strategies” and to the fact that “the traditional training market is not enough for the numbers that lifelong learning and youth unemployment will require” .

The same leadership of the future will have to respond to a constant learning model. Watertight compartments, yes, are an outdated affair. About that, the intervention of the philosopher Maurizio Ferraris was illuminating, who spoke of the new human capital, of which man himself seems not to be fully aware: “We are used to thinking that the Web is information, when instead it is recording”, explained Ferraris, director of the Istituto Scienza Nuova. If instead we were able to understand how much value man has in this balance of data exchange, and if it were possible to interpret and govern them, a new welfare could be rethought: “Not the classic one, which insists on the taxes that already existed, but creating a capital that did not exist before”. For this reason, data skills must be extended as much as possible.

Of course, it is also necessary to “constantly monitor skills”, precisely to identify in advance where a difference in height is about to occur. To prevent too many from falling behind. Europe has this very clear, so much so that the EduTech Challenges event was born last spring right within the Conference on the Future of Europe promoted by the European Parliament, Commission and Council. In the words of Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Education, the reassurance that “the response to the needs of skills and training must be inclusive for each of our regions”. The European Institute of Innovation & Technology, he said, has set itself the goal, among others, of train one million students between 2023 and 2025 in the field of deep tech, and the European Innovation Agenda is full of ambitious goals.

Regulations

Digital skills, the EU is slow: the objectives of the Digital Compass are at risk

by Simone Cosimi

November 21, 2022

On the stage of EduTech Challenges voices not only to European politics and the agenda, but also to the Italian one, which ignited spirits in the afternoon: Alessandro Cattaneo (group leader at the Camera di Forza Italia) insisted on the need for disciplinary paths that intersect (because “we need greater customization of degree courses”), while the vice president of the Chamber, Anna Ascani (PD)insisted on teacher training, recalling that “in the next competitions we will expect greater attention to this, and it has not been easy, because technology is still seen as something for geeks and not as something that has to do with work and his skills”.

He pressed his colleagues too Giuseppe Conte (M5S): “If we talk about digitization in general, it was important to have a ministry for digital innovation, but it has disappeared. It was important, because in the pandemic many people were unable to participate in the distance learning offer. We found a country far behind on digitization: the Ministry of Health did not have a statistician or an engineer. And now I invite colleagues to complete a platform that we would have created, that is, one that unites Anpal with employment centers and private agencies”.

Stendhal, we said. Just think of the words of Michelangelorecalled by Donatella Taurasi (Haas School of Business UC Berkley California), who at 87 he said he “still learns”.