Challenge

Corporations, institutions and governments know they must re-think and re-engineer their designs for learning, training, and talent management to better prepare their staff to fully participate in an increasingly dynamic economic environment.

Educational institutions in particular, faced an unanticipated “virtual teaching and learning audit” in 2020-2021, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and many struggled to address the challenge or seize the opportunity. A lack of focus on digital transformation, digital fluency of staff, and the complexity of virtually managing learner-facing care and support, produced the perfect storm. 

Reports from OECD, the World Economic Forum, and UNESCO provide insights about changes that will need to be implemented across all sectors in order to transition to the new realities of a dynamic and changing world. Priorities include the creation of a digital work ecosystem, the growing need to focus on up-skilling and re-skilling through continuous lifelong learning, short duration training, recognized portable credentials, and the need to forge sustainable and varied partnerships to catalyze and nurture networks of people and ideas.

DP+Associates provides guidance to corporations, institutions, and governments to address these challenges in ways that are manageable and that provide an updated navigation system to support cycles of rethinking and continuous action.

Opportunity

DP+Associates provides strategic consulting services to institutions, public agencies, governments, and technology sector start-up companies working in the education, training, and talent management domains. They know what they want to achieve, but often need specialized insights to navigate toward their goals.

DP+Associates’ services include:

  • Concept papers, policy briefs, and proposals
  • Design-based approaches to process transformation
  • Lean data collection and analysis to support actionable strategies for learning, training, and recognition
  • Prototyping, implementation, and evaluation of alternative practice models
  • Qualitative and mixed methods research design, execution, and analysis
  • Rapid, reliable, and replicable development processes for education programs
  • Social impact analysis to monitor ground-level effects of learning and training tactics

DP+Associates would be happy to discuss your challenges and work with you to design and implement an actionable plan.

Strategic Foresight

Many organizations and institutions have their eyes on the horizon, looking to design for what comes after what comes next.

One of those organizations is the Resilience by Design Lab, at Royal Roads University. The RbD Lab is engaged in climate adaptation design and development work. The Lab has developed a Climate Adaptation Competency Framework for individuals and organizations seeking to actualize new capabilities in the climate action space.  This is a future-focused climate action initiative that DP+Associates is helping to support and grow.

Another example of strategic foresight comes from human resource software development, such as the work of Ibbaka.com, in the form of digitally-enabled,  open competency frameworks. Steven Forth (2020) Ibbaka’s CEO noted that, “Open Competency Models are an important innovation for everyone concerned with building new capabilities, improving human performance and realizing the potential of individuals, teams, organizations and professions.” DP+Associates is pleased to be supporting Ibbaka’s future-focused thinking in the open competency domain.

Forth, S. (2020). Designing the Open Competency Model Architecture. Retrieved from, https://www.ibbaka.com/ibbaka-talent-blog/designing-the-open-competency-model-architecture  

Experience

Dr. David Porter is a long-time advocate for the benefits of adapting new technology to deliver education and training opportunities and has been involved in online, open and distance learning since the 1990s.

David served most recently as Senior Adviser – Higher Education at the Commonwealth of Learning. From 2016-2020, David was the CEO of eCampusOntario, leading initiatives across Ontario’s 45 universities and colleges to innovate in the online learning space and exploring new ideas such as micro-credentials to provide nimble pathways to workforce development. David was formerly Executive Director of BCcampus, where he and his team engineered Canada’s first government-funded open textbook program, a leading-edge development in Canadian higher education, in 2012. He has also worked as an Associate Vice-President Educational Support and Innovation at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and as Dean of Innovative Learning at Humber College. 

David has also served as a project leader and consultant for international open and distance learning initiatives, including projects in Mongolia, Vietnam, and India.

In 2018, he was awarded the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education’s (CNIE) Leadership Award. In October 2019, he received an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in British Columbia, for his work in innovating teaching and learning practices using educational technologies.

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