Buildings need to be carefully operated and maintained for optimum health, comfort, energy performance, and utility costs. The increasing use of Machine Learning combined with Big Data in the building services sector has shown the potential to bring energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Therefore, upskilling and reskilling the current workforce is required to realize new possibilities. In addition, sharing and preserving knowledge are also required for the sustainable growth of professionals and companies. This formed the basis for the Dutch Research Council funded TransAct project. To increase access to education on the job, online learning is experiencing phenomenal growth. A study was conducted with two focus groups - professionals of a building service company and university researchers - to understand the existing challenges and the ways to improve knowledge sharing and upskilling through learning on the job. This study introduced an Enterprise Social Network platform that connects members and may facilitate knowledge sharing. As a community forum, Yammer from office 365 was used. For hosting project files, a SharePoint page was created. For online courses, the company’s online learning site was utilized. The log data from the online tools were analysed, semi-structured interviews and webinars were conducted and feedback was collected with google forms. Incentive models like social recognition and innovative project results were used to motivate the professionals for online activities. This paper distinguishes the impacts of initiatives on the behaviour of university researchers vs company employees.
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This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the AI-related skills and roles needed to bridge the AI skills gap in Europe. Using a mixed-method research approach, this study investigated the most in-demand AI expertise areas and roles by surveying 409 organizations in Europe, analyzing 2,563 AI-related job advertisements, and conducting 24 focus group sessions with 145 industry and policy experts. The findings underscore the importance of both general technical skills in AI related to big data, machine learning and deep learning, cyber and data security, large language models as well as AI soft skills such as problemsolving and effective communication. This study sets the foundation for future research directions, emphasizing the importance of upskilling initiatives and the evolving nature of AI skills demand, contributing to an EU-wide strategy for future AI skills development.
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Jaarlijks onderzoekscongres van onderzoekgroep waaronder het promotieonderzoek van Lonneke Frie bij de Radboud Universiteit.
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"The booklet presents curated real-world good practice examples that help translate our strategy into concrete actions, and in turn, into the design of education and training programmes that will contribute to skill, upskill, or reskill individuals into high demand professional software roles."
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The shortage for ICT personal in the EU is large and expected to increase. The aim of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of the roles and competences needed, so that education curricula can be better aligned to evolving market demand by answering the research question: Which competence gaps do we need to bridge in order to meet the future need for sufficiently qualified personnel in the EU Software sector? In this research, a mixed method approach was executed in twelve European countries, to map the current and future needs for competences in the EU. The analyses shows changes in demand regarding technical skills, e.g. low-code and a stronger focus on soft skills like communication and critical thinking. Besides this, the research showed educational institutes would do well to develop their curricula in a practical way by integration of real live cases and work together with organizations.
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Future work processes are going to change in several aspects. The working population (at least in Western European countries) is decreasing, while average age of employees increases. Their productivity is key to continuity in sectors like healthcare and manufacturing. Health and safety monitoring, combined with prevention measures must contribute to longer, more healthy and more productive working careers. The ‘tech-optimist’ approach to increase productivity is by means of automation and robotization, supported by IT, AI and heavy capital investments. Unfortunately, that kind of automation has not yet fulfilled its full promise as productivity enhancer as the pace of automation is significantly slower than anticipated and what productivity is gained -for instance in smart industry and healthcare- is considered to be ‘zero-sum’ as flexibility is equally lost (Armstrong et al., 2023). Simply ‘automating’ tasks too often leads to ‘brittle technology’ that is useless in unforeseen operational conditions or a changing reality. As such, it is unlikely to unlock high added-value. In healthcare industry we see “hardly any focus on research into innovations that save time to treat more patients.” (Gupta Strategists, 2021). Timesaving, more than classic productivity, should be the leading argument in rethinking the possibilities of human-technology collaboration, as it allows us to reallocate our human resources towards ‘care’, ’craft’ and ’creativity’.
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This paper is a discussion paper to support an Erasmus+ project with the name Common European Numeracy Framework (CENF) (for adults) which will start at the end of the year 2018. In the first months of 2019 the team with participants from The Netherlands, Austria, Spain and Ireland will be in the process of collecting European examples of numeracy practices and current numeracy frameworks. At the conference we will show the results of this collection to date and the initial outline of a tentative CENF. We intend to spark comments, suggestions and insights from the participants of TWG07 - Adults Mathematics Education - to enrich the collection and as feedback on the initial outline of the CENF. Another aim is to create a network of national or regional stakeholders which will support the development of a shared framework for numeracy goals and numeracy education for adults in the 21st century.
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Hoe kunnen leeromgevingen in het beroepsonderwijs een rol vervullen bij het oplossen van complexe maatschappelijke problemen? Ilya Zitter, bijzonder lector Leeromgevingen in het Beroepsonderwijs bij Hogeschool Utrecht (HU), onderzoekt hoe je leeromgevingen zo kunt ontwerpen dat een innovatief, lerend systeem ontstaat, zonder sterke scheiding tussen onderwijs en praktijk. Op 25 maart gaf Zitter haar openbare les.
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This dissertation concerns the adaptive ability by which workers meet new expertise needs throughout their careers. We aimed to increase our understanding of this adaptive ability through a series of four studies building upon the concept of flexpertise (Van der Heijden, 1998, 2000). These studies were designed to advance theorizing, specifically in scholarly research on expertise and expert performance (Ericsson et al., 2006) and sustainable careers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015), and to increase our understanding of how flexpertise may be fostered among workers across expertise domains and working contexts.In this introduction chapter, we outline the key theoretical concepts regarding the flexpertise phenomenon that we will use throughout this dissertation, a description of the knowledge gap in the scholarly literature, and our research focus. This is followed by a summary of this PhD project that outlines the overall research objective, the research questions and research methods that we deployed, as well as an overview of the four flexpertise studies conducted (see Table 1.1). The subsequent chapters include the four (submitted) scientific publications on this matter. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical, methodological and practical value of our research, and on the limitations of our research approach. We finish with recommendations for future research, ethical considerations on the usage of the flexpertise concept in labor market debates, and a personal reflection on this PhD program.Before explaining the key concept of flexpertise and related core concepts, we first outline what we mean by new expertise needs. These needs shaped the background of the four studies conducted.
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De publicatie ‘De kracht van verbinding: Loopbaanthematieken in het licht van veranderende beroepsbeelden” is modulair opgebouwd. Iedere module behandelt een stukje van de thematiek, waarbij steeds vanuit een ander perspectief wordt gekeken: vanuit kiezende jongeren, vanuit de veranderingen die plaatsvinden in de maatschappij en die ons werk beïnvloeden, vanuit de Nederlandse arbeidsmarkt, vanuit onderwijsorganisaties en vanuit arbeidsorganisaties.
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