Cities of Learning (CofL) is a new place-based approach to enhancing lifelong learning through digitally connecting individuals to learning, employment and civic opportunities within a defined locality. Originating in the US, the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) and Digitalme (supported by FETL, City & Guilds and Ufi) have brought the concept to the UK and have been working with three cities to develop blueprints, skills spines and a digital platform prototype to demonstrate how the CofL model can enrich the lives and prospects of city inhabitants, through connecting learning pathways to city-wide opportunities.

The reasons for employing the CofL model, and the outcomes of phase one of the UK project, are described in the Cities of Learning in the UK Prospectus and Cities of Learning blueprints.

This post focuses on the thinking behind the technology underpinning the UK Cities of Learning approach, and aims to provide an insight into how it can enable discovery, means and motivation for individuals to connect with opportunities across a city. The author’s role in this work was defining the content strategy to inform the design of the digital platform.

Approach

From April to October 2017, the RSA and Digitalme worked with the cities of Brighton, Plymouth and Greater Manchester to develop the first phase of the UK Cities of Learning project.

Through a series of learner focus groups and co-design workshops with local stakeholders, the project team engaged with representatives from a range of sectors and backgrounds across each city, including local and locally-based employers, formal education institutions, informal learning organisations, cultural, arts and heritage organisations, the third sector, and public services.

Using a collaborative design approach, the workshops enabled city stakeholders to: generate an overview of what a City of Learning would mean for them; establish local priorities; agree developing and under-represented sectors; define skill needs and key age groups to target (initially 14-25 year olds); and map existing learning provision and opportunity across each city.

Requirements for leadership, networks and a platform prototype were explored, developed and tested, and used as a basis for a blueprint for implementing change.

Background to Cities of Learning

The Cities of Learning movement originated in the US. The first CofL grew out of the Chicago Summer of Learning in 2013, where more than 100 organisations that offered informal learning opportunities, joined together to make their programs more visible. The method used to raise the profile and visibility of these learning opportunities was Open Badges.

Open Badges

The Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI) is a web-based standard that enables individuals and organisations to evidence and share their learning and achievements across the web. The standard was developed by Mozilla in 2011 and is now stewarded by the IMS Global Learning Consortium. Open Badges are digital credentials, (that may be referred to as badges, digital badges, credentials or micro-credentials), that contain metadata. The metadata will tell a badge consumer things like: the criteria for the badge; who awarded the badge; and the evidence for the badge, such as a video demonstrating competency, links to a website, reflective post, paper etc. Badge issuers can embed learning activities in a badge for an earner to complete and badge earners can share the badges they have been awarded to social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

The OBI was developed to address gaps in how learning is recognised. Learning happens everywhere but it is not always recognised in verifiable and shareable ways. As the OBI is an open standard, Open Badges can be created and issued by anyone, including informal learning providers or by entities that don’t consider learning provision to be their core business, e.g. youth groups, voluntary organisations, individuals and employers. Open Badges have also been used to capture less tangible skills or character attributes, sometimes referred to as soft or employability skills, such as empathy, curiosity, being an effective team worker and so on.

The US digital platform and approach

The Open Badges for the Chicago Summer of Learning were developed by the team at Mozilla that developed the OBI. The experience highlighted the need for a technical solution that would not only enable participating organisations to create badges but that could connect badges to opportunities and help people to discover those opportunities in an easy and accessible way.

In the US, this has been taken forward by Collective Shift with the LRNG platform, which brings together curated, remixable ‘learning playlists’ of learning experiences that are recognised with badges, which in turn can unlock opportunities. Collective Shift and LRNG currently support eleven CofLs by engaging with city networks to develop and co-design the learning playlists and Open Badges. They are supporting over 34,000 learners and hundreds of organisations in these cities.

Strategy for the UK digital platform

In the UK, the CofL project is building on this digital model for connecting learning to opportunities across a city but considering how this could be scaled even further.

Badge-based pathways

The UK digital platform blueprint is based on the concept of badge-based learning pathways. Badges from a range of badge issuers across a city can be collated and linked to opportunities, enabling individuals to discover, take badges and follow pathways to opportunities across the city. The platform should enable a wide variety of individuals and organisations to create and award Open Badges to evidence all types of learning across the city, including hard, soft, employability, lifelong learning and civic engagement skills.

Supporting engagement from harder to reach groups

A key requirement for a City of Learning, is that all inhabitants of the city should benefit, including harder to reach groups. To support this, the content strategy for the platform has been influenced by learning from the Discover Open Badges project. This project, led by Mozilla in 2013/14, was the first to explore the concept of badge-based pathways, developing an approach and platform prototype for enabling employers to create badge-based pathways to employment, and helping disadvantaged youth to consider a broad range of career opportunities.

Research informing the project emphasised the challenges young people can face when making decisions and engaging in activities relating to their future, including the social and economic factors that can affect this. The research showed that many young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, can struggle to articulate their strengths and they often lack awareness of, and confidence in their ability to attain a range of potentially fulfilling and rewarding career or learning opportunities. As a result of this, they often fail to engage with opportunities that could ultimately enhance and enrich their lives. (You can find out more about the Discover Open Badges project here).

Challenges in accessing helpful life opportunities are also highlighted in the RSA’s New Digital Learning Age report, which found that some young people, (the “held back”), lack the social and practical resources to access enrichment opportunities. Similarly participants in the UK CofL learner focus groups commented that they often felt poorly connected to opportunities either because they were unaware of where to find them, or due to practical barriers (such as transport).

Interest-based and destination-based pathways

To try to address these challenges, the CofL learner focus groups were presented with two different types of pathway, and asked which one the platform should build on to drive engagement. One was a destination-driven pathway, where a clear opportunity, such as a work placement for a specific job, was offered, with a set of badges to unlock that goal. The other was an interest-driven pathway, which would enable the user to start with an area of interest and to be presented with badges relating to that interest, that in turn would connect with a variety of learning, employment or civic opportunities.

The interest-driven pathway was particularly influenced by the research from the Discover Open Badges project that suggested starting with an area of personal interest, could help engagement from young people who struggle to see how opportunities are relevant to, or could benefit, them.

Feedback from all of the focus groups was a desire for both types of pathway. The focus group in Plymouth provided an interesting split when feeding back on this aspect of the design – participants from the local STEM college wanted to use the destination-driven pathways, as they had clear ideas of the types of (job) opportunities they wanted to pursue, whereas participants from the local Arts college requested the interest-driven pathways as they commented that they weren’t clear yet on what kind of (career) paths they wanted to embark upon but would find it useful to see how their skills could connect them to a range of opportunities.

Discovery, means and motivation

The responses from the focus groups confirmed that a technical solution must enable individuals to discover opportunities, provide the means to move towards them but also help them to build the confidence to engage with them.

This has informed the content strategy for the design of the digital platform in the following ways:

• Discovery. Not everyone knows where they want to go with their career, learning or civic participation but seeing connections from their interests to opportunities can help individuals to discover opportunities they may not have previously considered. In the platform, this can be enabled through badges connected to an individual’s interests leading to an opportunity

• Means. Achievable stepping-stones towards a goal can provide the means to move towards that destination. In the platform, this can be provided by digital badges presented in a pathway to an opportunity

• Motivation. Realising they have some of the skills required to attain a certain opportunity, including opportunities they may not have considered possible previously, can provide powerful motivation for individuals to move towards that goal. This can be particularly important for disadvantaged young people, who may lack awareness of their skills and the confidence to grasp opportunities they actually have the skills to attain. In the platform, this can be leveraged via individuals seeing badges they have gained or believe they could gain, included in pathways towards opportunities. The wider CofL context would be important to ensure there were opportunities for all, including harder to reach groups, to gain recognition for their skills. Organisations could be identified in each city to aid this process

Learning as the city learns

Initial demonstrators have been developed by Digitalme to show how aspects of the above could work, with the aim to further test these and develop a digital platform in phase two of the project.

The aim is that a fully functioning platform will use deep learning algorithms to organically develop pathways and learn as the city learns. Akin to how recommendations work on Amazon and other online retailers, as the platform is populated with content, users could be provided with recommendations for extending their learning and unlocking opportunities, based on machine learning about learner interactions with the platform.

Skills spines

In the digital platform, the pathways would be populated with badges for local learning activities mapped to a skills spine. The development of skills spines has been another core piece of work for the UK CofLs. A framework has been developed for each city, and contains four layers:

1. A universal ‘core’ that builds on the OECD’s 2030 learning framework, (which includes the skills to engage in lifelong learning and enriching civic participation, as well as those soft or employability skills that employers say they need)
2. A CofL layer that characterises the key skills and competencies the project-wide research suggests UK CofL cities should develop
3. A city-based layer that is locally defined
4. A strategic layer that articulates the strategic context

Future developments

The CofL work aims to move onto a second phase that will enable piloting of the blueprints, skills spines and digital platform concept that have been developed in phase one.

Further to that, it is likely considerations for future development will have to include: funding and business models; iterations of the technology; and how to enable cities to assess and recognise learning fairly and consistently in a distributed context, across formal and informal learning spheres.

Would you like to get involved?

The anticipated next steps for the project is to run pilots in the second half of 2018. The project is looking for:

Cities: To explore the UK CofL theory of change and express interest in engaging with the initiative.

National partners: To help move from prototype and blueprints to pilots.

Wider stakeholders: To join the knowledge and learning network as the CofL concept develops. The project partners would like to hear from a range of voices, including business, employers and unions, educators, learners, learning platforms and providers, voluntary and cultural organisations, and public services.

To get in touch and share your reflections, you can find contact details in the Engage with us section of the Cities of Learning Prospectus.

Links

Cities of Learning blueprints: https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/creative-learning-and-development-folder/cities-of-learning/city-blueprints

Cities of Learning in the UK Prospectus: https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/cities-of-learning-prospectus

Collective Shift: http://collectiveshift.org/

Digital platform demonstrators: https://www.thersa.org/action-and-research/rsa-projects/creative-learning-and-development-folder/cities-of-learning/city-blueprints#actormaps

Digitalme: https://www.digitalme.co.uk/

Discover Open Badges project blog post: https://learning.mozilla.org/blog/discover-a-career-youll-love-and-map-the-skills-you-need-with-mozilladiscover

IMS Global Learning Consortium: https://www.imsglobal.org/

LRNG: https://www.lrng.org/,

Mozilla: https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/

New Digital Learning Age (RSA): https://www.thersa.org/discover/publications-and-articles/reports/the-new-digital-learning-age

OECD’s 2030 learning framework: https://www.oecd.org/education/Global-competency-for-an-inclusive-world.pdf

Open Badge Infrastructure: https://openbadges.org/

RSA: https://www.thersa.org/