Naomi Boyer on Skills-Based Learning & Systems Change

Naomi Boyer, Senior Vice President of Digital Transformation at Education Design Lab, discusses the importance of skills-based learning and how to align education with workforce needs. Boyer also discusses the need for trust and transparency in the talent marketplace, and a common language and framework for discussing skills and competencies. The episode also covers the importance of collaboration between education and industry. Boyer provides examples of successful partnerships and offers advice for building new models. The episode concludes with a discussion of the importance of empowering individuals to take control of their learning journey.  Transcript Julian Alssid: Welcome to Work Forces. I'm Julian Alssid.  Kaitlin LeMoine: And I'm Kaitlin LeMoine, and we speak with the innovators who shape the future of work and learning.  Julian Alssid: Together, we unpack the complex elements of workforce and career preparation and offer practical solutions that can be scaled and sustained. Kaitlin LeMoine: Work Forces is supported by Lumina Foundation. Lumina is an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. Let's dive in. One of the biggest challenges we face in aligning education to workforce needs is a disconnect between education and industry, especially when it comes to building new learning models.  Julian Alssid: So true Kaitlin and this gap became apparent as we began to shift to a knowledge based economy 30ish years ago, and addressing the gap is a big part of what attracted both of us to education and workforce development in the first place. But now it's taken center stage. Workers and students are frustrated and falling behind, and employers are way more interested in addressing the disconnect than ever before.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Yes, there is now a much greater emphasis on skills from skills based hiring to skills based learning. And while identifying common skills across education providers and employers is a piece of the work, we also need to drive broader systems level change.  Julian Alssid: Yeah, and as we know from our own consulting work, this is no small task, and and our guest today is is working on bringing sense and clarity to systems level efforts. And you know, we're excited to welcome Naomi Boyer to the podcast today. Naomi Boyer: Thanks so much for having me excited to be here.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Thank you so much for joining us, Naomi To give a bit of background on Naomi's years in this work, she's a driving force in transforming education for the future of work. As senior vice president of digital transformation at the Education Design Lab, she leads initiatives on digital micro credentials, skills based learning, and competency frameworks, ensuring learners are equipped for success in a rapidly evolving economy. With over two decades of experience in higher education, Naomi has a proven track record of innovation in areas including distance learning, faculty development and global initiatives. She is a recognized expert in competency based education and a passionate advocate for self directed learning, and we're very excited to have her with us on the podcast today. So thank you for being here. Julian Alssid: So Kaitlin, gave a little of your background, but would love to hear your own words about your background and your role at the Education Design Lab. Naomi Boyer: Thanks so much, Julian, I so first I don't have supreme clarity. If I did, we'd all be rich and have everything figured out in our society and everything else. But part of, part of why I'm in this work is because I have a passion for transforming education and learning and really helping facilitate differences for people in people's lives, right? And so that's an ongoing journey, and I don't think it's ever anything we're going to solve, but we can certainly make it easier and help people find their path as they go along. And so I actually started my journey in special education, and I think I use those skills every bit along the way here, even as I continue my my own journey through life. And so I went from teaching special education to becoming a mom, and then went back and worked on my doctorate in a really funky area at the time, distance learning. And actually my doctorate, my specialty was in systemic change, or organizational change and systemic leadership. And then wrote my dissertation though on building online learning communities and international environments. So this is back in 2001 so at the advent of of online learning, and it was at this point in my life that that I really began realizing that I can't always decide on going from point A to point B, you got to kind of follow the journey and the rolling the rolling hills as you go along, and it'll take you to some really cool and fun places. And so through that journey, I ended up at in higher ed, as you said, for over 17 years, both at the at a university, research one university, and at a community college and vice president positions that allowed me to do strategic innovations and change and contribute to all the cool stuff. I was chief information officers for five, five of the last years of that scope, and then jumped over to education Design Lab, which you will hear me affectionately call to to speak about is the Lab versus education Design Lab. I joined them over about six years ago, and came in and working on digital, micro credentials and a bunch of other things. I can tell you a little bit about the Lab, the position I'm in now at the Lab, I'm having the opportunity of really diving into three areas that are passionate for me. You've heard me say, education, transformation, the personalization of learning, I think, is key and really a disrupter, which some of what I heard in one of your last podcasts with Michael Horn. He was talking about some of those driving forces of personal, personalization of learning, and then the individual and empowerment in the learning process and how an individual can gain control over their own processes of learning in life, and this is not something that we necessarily cultivate in our K12 or even many of our higher ed classrooms. We cultivate compliant learners. And so people understanding and learning how to take control of their own learning process becomes absolutely instrumental. And so when I joined the Lab, I was able to bring all of those three things together. And basically, I get to run amok. I'd love to run them up and and contribute. And that's why I say we don't have it all figured out. So using human centered design is the methodology of the Lab, and get to deal with the many pervasive issues have created a fractured and limited talent development continuum, and how do we think about the things in between? And so the Lab has basically three streams of work to do this, one of which is college transformation, where we work directly with community colleges and help them think about new and innovative non degree credentials that they can introduce to be responsive to the local workforce and learners. You know, we do some deep work and understanding who the new majority learner is, and we use the word new majority, majority to refer to all of those learners that higher ed was not was those who fall out of the scope of who Higher Ed was originally designed for, right? Like the 18 to 22 year old that was going to is going to go full time to university. So the new majority are those. They don't fit into that mold. And then the area that I cover, which is digital transformation, which sounds like it's all about technology, but it's about leveraging the technology for that human experience. So how do we really think about human change, access and opportunity, right? And really think about it for those who in order to improve social mobility, economic vitality, for those who need it the most, Kaitlin LeMoine: As you mentioned the last, the last focus of your work, the digital transformation piece, I appreciate your call out of like, it's not just about the technology, but can you tell us a little bit more about when you say, yes, our work is around digital transformation, what that means and what, what the problems are that you're looking to address through, through that element of your work. Naomi Boyer: There's no doubt that technology needs to be a component of thinking about scalable, accessible, innovative options for facilitating. I can go back to the beginning, where I said personalization, of learning and really rethinking the way we do things. In our current talent market, there's a disconnect between the way we have, we may be using the technology tools to apply for a job, but we're not necessarily capitalizing on those tools so that Naomi can say what I know and can do, so that my skills are captured in such a way that they become transparent. So, you know, at the Lab, we deal with a number of problems, I'll say, or issues, challenges that are in that talent continuum. And I like to say we deal with wicked issues, big, hairy issues, right? Like portability, transfer, ability, flexibility, and my work with digital transformation is really around the visibility. So how do we make each individual skills visible, not only just for everyone else, but for themselves. What are the skills that I have? How do I then document those skills? How do I see the skills I need along a career trajectory, and then how do I make those skills visible in the marketplace for others to find me, and for me to find those a match up with, with the skills that I have, right? And so whether that's through digital micro credentialing, whether that's through what we call learning and employment records, whether it's through the validation and trusting of establishing trust and what someone knows and can do, there's all of these issues around visibility, and that's how we're using the technology to allow an individual to flow through their process and fund it. But it's not about necessarily programming and technology, just about the technology.  Julian Alssid: Yes, indeed. I mean, that's, yeah, that's That's great. It's all the stuff we love. Kaitlin, I mean, come on. So I'd love to hear a little bit about projects that you're most excited about currently, where, you know, where you're employing, you know, this personalization in the digital strategies. You know you'd mentioned Texas and Arizona when we talked. Earlier, but about some projects you're most excited about. Naomi Boyer: And some of the projects that that I'm going to describe right now deal also with some of those big, hairy issues I mentioned, right like so. So one of the things that we're, I'm hearing a lot from employers, is is, is trust, not necessarily trust in the way you may hear some of our colleagues who are more technically focused, talk about which is the verification of credentials, but more about the trust whether this credential represents the true skills someone has, and that's the skill validation piece of things. And I've heard from employers that it's a crowded, crowded marketplace out there right now, as far as what the credentials mean and what it looks like and how they can consume them. I've heard from my colleagues at the SHRM Foundation that that it, you know, they spend somewhere between four to six seconds HR leader sends to spend somewhere between four to six seconds on resumes and as part of that hiring process. So how can I make sense of all of these credentials and information that's coming in in this new skills based marketplace. And so that's one piece of it, the other one, and one of those problems, is that that the skills continuum from learning the skills documentation of those skills, transfer those skills, and then using those skills for each to communicate something, whether that's into a higher ed degree, into another higher ed learning experience, or into some sort of employment, those systems are broken because you have your education systems working and trying to get in play in this marketplace, you have your workforce support organizations that are are talking about skills and doing their skills, and you have your employers who are doing the same thing, and most folks are in their own silos, in their own organizational sectors, trying to figure this stuff out, but the systems are not being connected together. How do we think about connecting those systems? In fact, I have a colleague from Colorado who's involved in a project called the skills forward, work that's being doing, being done nationally. And she described the Colorado project, what's something they didn't know going into the project was and of course, she was using a metaphor, very Colorado issue of trees. And she says each organization as a group of trees. But what didn't exist were the roots in between to connect those systems, right? And so the projects I'm going to tell you, I'm going to talk to you about, are all about, how do we connect these systems, establish more trust and really allow these the conversations to happen around regions and industries, to leverage the economic change that we're trying to create. So the first one I'll talk a little bit about is in Texas right now. And in fact, they I just heard that there was new legislation that was being introduced to increase their crypto currency abilities. And you know, the Bitcoin developing Bitcoin resources. But right now, the area of Western Northern Texas, I'll say, from Dallas to Odessa is burgeoning forth with data processing centers, both traditional data processing centers and those that are more say on the crypto, Blockchain side of things. And there's a difference in those lines of industries. There's the same industry, but two tracks, because of the type of individuals that could be attracted, as far as talent that comes in the door to really work in those spaces. Right now, we're working on a project that is multifaceted. We started with the employers, did a number of salons, and heard and learned from the employers in this industry, what they needed, what their their deficits were, what was important. And then from there, we've been designing a project that will kick off in June and February with a convening, and we will have employers at the table. We will have education entities and alternative education entities, K 12, technical schools, universities, colleges at the table. We will have workforce and community based organizations at the table. And the idea is to create, is to get people, stakeholders, all in the room, having conversation and dialog, to create a flywheel around an industry and create a blueprint, trying to establish replicable blueprints that can create a connected talent ecosystem, which then attracts the industry, which is already coming to the region, because they already have like SpaceX coming to the region, and Google coming to the region, and Amazon coming to the region for these data centers. But if you want to have a successful industry movement like that, you've got to have the talent and so and because we, I know from my economic development partners that talent is one of the biggest things that you will they that is used in that space to attract i. A major industry to a region, and so we will be working over the next year and a half to create that dynamic ecosystem that can supply talent for the businesses that need it, that it will be an employer focused, business driven approach, and we will work with our education partners to help meet that pipeline, and hopefully, by the end of this entire project, we will also have those technological systems in place to make sure all of the entities are connected together and able to share the information and that skills visibility comes to the forefront. The Arizona work is all about doing for education, some of the ecosystem. Work you heard me describing in Texas, all of the higher ed entities, community colleges and universities in Arizona, are at the table having conversations about how they build their connected infrastructure so that they can minimize transition points for learners, high school into university, high school, into college, into the workforce, all these different back to college, back to university. And right now they're figuring out how they can consume credentials, much like we're trying to get employers to consume credentials in that space. They're the only that's the only project I know of that's really focused on the education side of things.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Yeah, I find it so interesting what you just said a moment ago. I mean, everything you just said was very interesting. But one thing that sticks out to me in what, and what you just raised Naomi, is this concept of employers need to see talent in the space in order to be attracted to the region, and yet, learners need to know that there are jobs available for them to go into, right? And so it's like, it's kind of, like this chicken or egg phenomenon of, like, where do you start, right? And I feel like that's that's such a big challenge in this work is figuring out how to, as you're saying, build that flywheel, but you have to ground it in some kind of a starting point, right? Like, so curious. I mean, if you have any thoughts or insights there around, like, how do you start, right? What do you need to show first in order to, like, get this work going well. Naomi Boyer: And there's actually a third element there that's even adding another wheel going in, that hamster there, which is, which is all, is all about the emergent fields, right? So there's a number of emergent industries. Historically, we've always worked from targeted occupation lists. Where's the gap, where's the need, what do we need to fill? Right? And when you're talking about emergent industries, whether that's AI like this, data processing, sustainable energy, right? We can go into automation, robotics, we can talk about all that, but they're emerging industries, and as a result, you don't necessarily have the workforce data to support that those jobs are needed, which is coming first? And how do you think about this in this particular case? How did it start? And I would say that this has probably got to be it's a huge element and insight for myself and learning this past year champion, there's a local champion who is driving the effort and basically saying, and he's, he's talking to people. He's attracting, attracting businesses. And he is a very successful businessman. He He's the, he owns Cholla Energy and Cholla Petroleum, and he's been called out in the in the literature, is the crypto cowboy, but, but he is that voice in the region that has really started the movement to get the traction, to get like, where do you start? It was with him. He's the power and the voice behind it, and then, as a result, that's created other levers to make things happen, and then there is local market data that can support that. There was already a number of data processing organizations that were beginning to work there. Julian Alssid: As you're speaking now. I mean, it's making me think, Kaitlin, of some of our work as well. I mean, a project we've been doing in my home state where I'm sitting right now, Rhode Island, with this helping to build a plan for workforce development in the life sciences industry. It's, yes, it's that chicken or egg issue with respect to economic development, but it's also like, you also don't want to train people for jobs that don't exist yet. So it's also trying to figure out, like, Well, what do we do currently, that we do well, that we can build on, that can then become the basis for the attraction and training people for future jobs. It's a real it's a very delicate dance. Naomi Boyer: You're exactly right, Julian, because it is. Because even as we're talking about data processing now, data processing isn't new, right? We've had since cloud computing emerged on the market, you've started seeing more decentralized data processing centers that were that, have you know, came into the market as part of that work. And there was an article I read that said, for every data processing center, you need 800 electricians. So we're not just talking it. And cybersecurity and data networking folks that know how to do it. We're also talking plumbing and HVAC and electricians and all of these. So to your point, Julian, there's already there are talent pieces there of that puzzle that are already in existence that you can leverage and thinking about that and leverage the existing market, even while you build those burgeoning industries that are that are coming forward. And because it takes time, it takes time to get all of those things going. So Julian, your point's well taken. Kaitlin LeMoine: Naomi, you talked about the salons that you held in Texas to drive this work forward across a range of stakeholder groups. And really, it sounds, you know, with the goal of breaking down these silos that we all talk about right are maybe front and center more than ever before, because we're trying to do more and more of this. You know, very needed cross functional and cross stakeholder work. What are the biggest challenges you face as you work across these different groups to build new models and new systems and and where do you see the emerging opportunities. Naomi Boyer: What's fascinating to me is my education colleagues. Just about every college and university has an advisory board, right? And they bring their they bring employers in, they ask them to sit on an advisory board. And I this is, I'm going to make a broad generalization here that is not accurate for everyone, but say a lot of them are, sit and listen to what we've been doing, and please nod your head at what we've what you know. And yeah, give us a few comments here and there about what we need to do, but it's not meaningful deep work. And when they ask the employers to come, and they don't always come and sustain over time, our my education colleagues get frustrated with the fact that, hey, we invite them and they don't come right? And so my point has always been, why are we expecting them to come to us? Why aren't we going into them? Why aren't we meeting them where they're at right? Like, why aren't we going to where employers are having your HR conferences, you're where they're having skills conversations, where they're doing all of these things. Because I've been in a number of meetings where I've heard people say, Yeah, but the employers, they're just not there. They're just not ready. They're not doing these things. Well, my conversation suggests, oh yeah, they're doing they're doing this. They're having the skills dance, but they're having the same skills dance that the educators are having within the organization. They're trying to get their own closets in order. They're trying to make their own skills taxonomies set situated, and what's been most important for them is not skills based hiring, but skills for optimization of their own organizations. Because the ROI has really been around the optimization in their own organizations, just like on the educator side, our higher ed institutions are awarding credentials because that's where their ROI is. They're not accept, necessarily accepting credentials on the way in the door through digital, you know, digital credentials and their digital micro credentials, or other forms of digital skills in the door either they're not hiring based off of skills, but it's really easy to say, Oh, they're just not interested in playing, right? And so helping break that down and really think about what that looks like, we actually, at the lab, we designed a new activity last year that we call the skill simulation. And if anyone's participated in a poverty simulation before, it's very much like that. Everyone has a persona that they're asked to assume as part of the exercise, everything from an employer a learner, an education entity or community based organization, and the goal is to have our opportunity seekers end up in jobs, and through the journey, they quickly realize with these different personas, where all those challenges exist in our current systems, and how fractured it is as they go through that process. So sometimes it's just a matter of helping people walk a mile in the shoes of the other entities to really understand what we're dealing with here, and as we keep talking about skills and skills based practices, it's so much bigger than skills, because we're really talking about competencies, even though skills has become the more mainstream vernacular. Julian Alssid: Yeah, it's no, it's so true. It's fun. I'm kind of smiling and nodding. For those of you listening to audio who can't see us, it's just so fun to have this conversation with someone who's kind of in the in the playing in the same sandbox, because it's just so interesting to hear your take on it and and I think you just offered some really good advice. Part of what we do here with Work Forces is, you know, so the whole idea is, we're helping these education and workforce leaders navigate this very complicated intersection of work and learning. Can you, can you offer so they can become forces just like you? Some more, some more, very specific, practical steps that folks can take in developing innovative and responsive, you know, programs to meet current and future needs. Naomi Boyer: So one of the things I mentioned. Early on is that we use human centered design at the lab and for coming up with new models to make all this work. So please don't think in anything. I'm saying that it is a here's how you fix it. This is how it should work, kind of thing. Because really it depends on the stakeholder, meaning education. The advantage to the education entity, the advantage tothe employer. Like when we're saying, what are the tangible steps? I think it looks different for each of those entities and even for the opportunity seeker, because the thing I love about this environment is that person who's seeking opportunities can be empowered now in so many ways that they otherwise couldn't have been previously people have once they're given full advantage of the skills that they own. You, you might be thinking yourself, oh, I always knew my skills. I always could do these things. Well, you may have known your skills, but how do you communicate those in a way that can be consumed by others, right, in a different way. And so we're at an intersection, I think, where, where we're at an inflection point, where I can see true systemic change happening. So a few things, a few things that I would say, one, if you're on the education side, really get in and listen. I mentioned employer salons, those are really informal setting sessions we have with employers in an informal environment to have a conversation about what their need is. We listen. We do not say we've got your answer. We listen and we take down notes, and from there, we then can come back and say, Okay, so now let's design together. Let's think about things together. So understanding would be the first step through all of that. The second piece is, as we ideate to what the, what the possible model is, is to, is to do it together. So if I'm an employer who's really looking for for some support, like, I really need someone to take to help me fill this particular training pathway, let's say, make the call to the local community college, make the call to the university, somehow, get that that partner and sit down and really talk with them about what the need is, and understand, if you're an employer, where I start to see, and this is, you know, just tangible steps where I start to start to see the barriers break down are in those industries that have become at a crisis, and employers are working together within An industry. So for instance, rather than it being just my company trying to fill my job roles, I'll use healthcare as an example. I have other projects in healthcare. It's become such a crisis that the healthcare entities previously in competition with each other, they know they're just stealing the talent from one to another, giving bonuses. You know, I'll give you a $10,000 signing bonus, and you jump from one hospital and come over to me, they're not fixing their talent pipeline, because all they're doing is trading it back and forth. And once they come to the table together and talk across their industry, they're then able to think about more innovative solutions together that then potentially can open up that pipeline in a way that then is going to bring all of them more success, rather than that competitive nature. So I'm not giving you step one, step two, step three, because I think the stakeholder group is is different, and those steps look different for for those individuals. You know, as far as what that looks like, the opportunity seeker is now completely empowered to take your resume and a job description and put it through open AI, and as they do that, they're going to come out with a job with a resume that looks right along the lines of what that employer was asking for. Now I'm giving away a big secret, because now those employers are going to get resumes that all look alike, another big, hairy problem now where we're going to have to figure out how to really start thinking about matching up those skills for optimal benefit for everybody involved, Kaitlin LeMoine: As you mentioned earlier, Naomi, that really does right in some way. All circle back to competencies, both in under a way to communicate on the learner side and a way to validate on the employers to go, to go way beyond what you know. ChatGPT will do to ensure that you know, you're really able to confirm what people know and can do. We've got to get down to trust. Julian Alssid: So yeah. It also circles back to the personalization notion, like, ultimately, you know, and this is coming up in a bunch of conversations around AI is like, you know, like, how do we even you know if students are going to be, for example, if students are using AI, how do we know what the student knows? Ultimately comes down to, similarly, on the job, what can that person do? How are they going to represent and even though the resume look may look like everyone else is, how are they going to distinguish themselves and describe what they do and show clarity of. The context in which they're carrying their skills to the next weigh station.  Naomi Boyer: Absolutely, and start part of that skills visibility. This is a personal belief, and it was something that I actually came to when I came to the lab, that that was part of their their conversation, which is explicitness and intentionality. So so part of the learning process, and this is back on the education side, things to do is, is really think about how we're making the skills and competencies that we're embedding into our learning process intentional for the learner, they need to understand exactly what they're learning when they're learning it, and explicitness so that they can then walk into a job interview. Let's say somebody is we've said, we've we've empowered somebody with critical thinking, right? Like, how many of our general, general education classes talk about, you know, doing embedding critical thinking? Well, okay, so I put on my resume, I can do critical thinking, and then I walk in or ChatGPT tells me to put on my resume critical thinking. And then I, I walk into, you know, I get, I get through the gate, and I come into this interview, and I get asked, okay, so give me an example of when you just display critical thinking and what, what was included in that, if I can't explicitly say, what were the competencies and how did I demonstrate those? It's pretty clear that I don't maybe I don't have those skills, but I could have those skills, I just don't know how to talk about it. So that explicitness, the transparency, the intentionality, becomes really important on those steps right to success of being able to do that. And I would say that that's a big part of this whole skills movement Kaitlin LeMoine: Absolutely, and that's a skill in and of itself, right? I mean, just to communicate, oh yeah, those skills and building that skill for a learner as well. Really appreciate the steps you've provided. And we totally recognize that these are not like, you can't necessarily, necessarily say, first you do this and then you do that, but at, you know, taking that, the concept of understanding and then ideating, we think those are some really grounded recommendations as we as we seek to drive the future of this, of this type of work. Naomi, as we wind down our conversation today, and it's really been such a privilege to connect with you. How can our listeners learn more and continue to follow your work? Well, Naomi Boyer: Well, really excited to to connect with anybody who's interested after this podcast, but my email address is n, b, o, y, e, r at all one word, eddesignlab.org. Our website is eddesignlab.org and we have an innovator network that you can sign up for and get get ongoing newsletters that come out as part of the work to stay abreast of what the Lab is doing. Julian Alssid: Thank you so much Naomi for taking the time to speak with us. And I know we didn't give the none of us have yet given the conclusive perfect answer to it all. But as you say, it's, it's all a process, and it's all about adaptation and customization and learning along the way. So hopefully that's what everyone is hearing. Naomi Boyer: Yes, all fun to run amok, and we didn't even, we didn't even get all the way through the design process right, which we would have moved into prototyping and and launching all the things that as you go through that process of CO designing with with your partners. Julian Alssid: Yes, well, we'll have to have you back for a chapter two.  Kaitlin LeMoine: Part two, yeah, part two. Thank you so much for your time.  Naomi Boyer: Thank you.  Kaitlin LeMoine: That's all we have for you today. Thank you for listening to workforces. We hope that you take away nuggets that you can use in your own work. Thank you to our sponsor, Lumina Foundation. We are also grateful to our wonderful producer, Dustin Ramsdell. You can listen to future episodes at workforces, dot info or on Apple, Amazon and Spotify. Please Subscribe, Like and share the podcast with your colleagues and friends.