Thomas Carey is co-Principal Catalyst for WINCan and Executive-in-Residence for the British Columbia Association of Institutes and Universities and the Monash University Faculty of Arts .
Salvador Ferreras is the former Provost and VP Academic at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (2013-2019).
We know that as the future of work and workplace continues to evolve at a fast pace, our graduates will need to adapt to working with new knowledge, new knowledge practices and formats, and new work roles and structures. While we can’t anticipate the form and timing of these changes, we can consider some that are already apparent and how our academic institution might adapt to better prepare learners for change and innovation.
For example, many of our graduates will need to engage effectively with the changes in work practices resulting from the impact of Industry 4.0/Internet of Things developments. And this is just the initial wave of change for a set of phenomena that has been labelled appropriately as “Industry X.0” [1 – if you want to pursue some of these ideas further, we’ve listed Resources at the end of this post].
As a European leader in advanced manufacturing expresses it:
“Industry 4.0 isn’t just about smarter machines; it’s also about a workforce with new technical smarts and with a broader understanding of the big picture of workplace innovation.”
Our technician and technology graduates will need more than updated technical skills; they will need to apply new ways of thinking to meet the higher cognitive demands of their new work roles. An example of the new capability required in an Industry 4.0 context – and transferable to other work domains and to other roles as community members and global citizens – is Systems Thinking:
“talent-based innovation is the number one driver of manufacturing competitiveness… new learning approaches are needed…that boost innovation in manufacturing by improving…systems thinking capability” [2]
The goal of Systems Thinking is to see a System as,“connected components forming a whole, showing properties of the whole, rather than just the components. A system has systemic properties and characteristics used to understand the problem/situation under investigation”.
The European Universities of the Future project also refers to Systems Thinking as a key part of academic institutions response to new Industry 4.0 work roles:
“Systems Thinking refers to the ability to understand things in a larger context, their impact, and possible applications and implications. In the context of professional work, people will be facing complex dilemmas every day. They need to understand the consequences of their decisions, not only as they affect the company, but also their impact on a larger scale – on society, on the environment, etc.”.
In response to these new capability requirements, we are seeing the development of operational Systems Thinking descriptions, the inclusion of Systems Thinking in Canadian program outcomes for technicians and technologists [3], specifications for different levels of Systems Thinking capability [4] and teaching methods [5], as well as analyses of the broader policy implications for higher education 6].
Here’s a practical example of the implications for polytechnic education. Systems Thinking as applied to design and diagnosis of mechatronics systems is an element of the mechatronics curriculum available to member institutions of the Siemens Canada Engineering and Technology Academy. However, this capability is specifically applied and developed in Level 3 of the curriculum (Certified Mechatronic Systems Professional).
Graduates from many current polytechnic programs will only complete the initial levels (Assistant and Associate) and therefore not develop within their programs the higher cognitive “Habits of Mind” to tackle the deeper demands at the Professional level. And without encouragement and support to transfer the Systems Thinking beyond the mechatronics work domain, even graduates at a Professional level may struggle to apply the capability in other workplace contexts and in their other roles beyond work.
If we want to prepare our graduates for the higher cognitive demands of Systems Thinking as a transferable capability, we’ll have to rethink some of our pedagogical methods: we can’t just add this to the list of learning outcomes to be achieved through our existing approaches. For example, could we adapt for this purpose new methods such as Design to Understand, which has shown promise for “improved capacity of students to respond to imposed cognitive demands inherent within technology design challenges” ? [7]
We’ll also want to join forces in collaborative experimentation to extend our current Practice-Based Education in order to meet emerging workplace needs such as Systems Thinking capability. “We” in this case includes collaborations of academic institutions as well as new kinds of cooperation with our workplace partners, who have a similar need in upskilling their current workforce for the Industry 4.0 context.
More Resources
1. Schaeffer, E. (2017). Industry X. 0: Realizing digital value in industrial sectors. Kogan Page Publishers.
2. Abele, Eberhard, et al. (2015). "Learning factories for research, education, and training." In 5th Conference on Learning Factories 2015 Procedia CiRp 32 (2015): 1-6.
3. E.g., Knibb, H., & Paci, C. (2016). The greening of Canada’s college curriculum: a pan-Canadian survey. TVET@ Asia, 6, 1-21.
4. E.g., Buckle, P. (2018). Maturity Models for Systems Thinking. Systems, 6(2), 23.
5. Godfrey, P., Crick, R. D., & Huang, S. (2014). Systems thinking, systems design and learning power in engineering education. International Journal of Engineering Education. Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 112–127, 2014. McDermott, T. (2018). Developing Systems Thinking Skills using Healthcare as a Case Study. In 2018 13th Annual Conference on System of Systems Engineering (SoSE) (pp. 240-244). IEEE.
6. Eddington, N., & Eddington, I. (2011). Reconceptualising vocational education and training systems in broader policy domains: monitoring and evaluation. Research in Comparative and International Education, 6(3), 255-272. Unwin, L. (2017).
7. Wells, J. (2017, October). Design to understand: Promoting higher order thinking through T/E design-based learning. In Proceedings of the Technology Education New Zealand and International Conference on Technology Education-Asia Pacific (pp. 325-339). Wells, J. G. (2016). Efficacy of the Technological/Engineering Design Approach: Imposed Cognitive Demands within Design-Based Biotechnology Instruction. Journal of Technology Education, 27(2), 4-20.