Developing Tomorrow's Competencies Today

Paul Lefrere

(The Open University，UK)

Abstract: This paper addresses the important problem of how to make sure that higher education anticipates future developments, and the skills associated with those developments, and so helps students to prepare for the highdemand, highfuture jobs that are to come in our society, rather than for the obsolescent jobs of today, that are disappearing. The paper is based upon a presentation to be given at the conference LINC 2007 in Amman, Jordan. LINC is the Learning International Networks Consortium, a global knowledgesharing network that was set up by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Such a network is needed to implement the proposals set out in this paper. The core claim of the paper is that the world's channels for the diffusion of competencerelated information and insights have matured to the point where educators in developing countries, working together and aided by networks such as LINC, can be far better informed about competencerelated trends, and better able to give informed answers to questions such as these:

What kinds of professional competencies (specific instances of knowwhat, knowhow, knowwho, knowwhy, carewhy and respectwhy) should students aspire to, if they want to be in demand for tomorrow's jobs?

How could those competencies be imparted and updated locally to global standards, cheaply and rapidly?

Both classes of question (What and How) can be addressed by developing an Open Competency Environment, OCE, as the hub of a multilingual global Knowledge Network focused on indemand competencies. The overall system would be 'peertopeer', linking students and educators with communities of professionals; training and mentoring networks; repositories of Open Educational Resources; and accreditation and recruitment networks. That combination would broaden student horizons and increase graduate employability. This could be of particular value to developing countries and to other countries that currently underperform on measures of professional capacity (e.g., number of R&D jobs per million citizens). Readers are invited to help to shape OCE's development and to make immediate use of its prospective building blocks. Those building blocks include a) LINC, b) the Open Competency Framework and general Open Standards (as in the OpenLearn project and the Open Knowledge Initiative); c) Open Tools, Processes and Content (e.g., Open Access \[research\], Open Content \[teaching\], Open Innovation); d) networks of excellence for professional learning and competencies, such as Europe's ProLearn and ProLC. 

Key words: Higher Education;competence.

【CLC nurnbers】G451.2

【Document code】A

【Article ID】1007-2179(2007)06-0072-11

Submit Date: 2007-10-11

The Authors: Dr Paul Lefrere is a senior lecturer of educational technology at the Open University, UK, where he is Policy Adviser for International Strategy, and professor of elearning at the University of Tampere, Finland. He is an entrepreneurial academic, with wideranging experience of strategic and neartomarket projects with multiple corporate and university partners, in computing, engineering and science. He has been Principal Investigator in many publiclyfunded projects concerned with capacity building, change management, knowledge management, innovation, technology transfer and monetization of Intellectual Property. Some of that experience is apparent in his book Transforming eKnowledge. From 20032005 he was Microsoft's Executive Director for elearning. He now advises on technology strategy and futures, with a client list that includes corporates such as Microsoft, HP, the World Bank and Washingtonbased Strategic Initiatives Inc. He is also on numerous Advisory Boards including the premier European network of excellence in technologyenhanced learning, Prolearn.

今天发展明天的能力

保罗·莱弗雷

（开放大学，英国）

【摘要】本文讨论的问题是：如何保证高等教育适合未来的发展,培养适应这些新发展所需要的技能，从而帮助学生为在即将到来的社会中有紧迫需求、前景看好的职业，而不是为今天行将淘汰的职业做好准备。本文是作者在2007年约旦安曼国际学习网络论坛演讲论文的修订稿。国际学习网络论坛是一个全球知识共享网络，由美国麻省理工学院创建。这一网络需要采纳本文提出的建议来予以推广。本文的要点是：全球在传播与能力相关的信息和思想方面的途径已经成熟，发展中国家的教育者可以聚首一起，借助于诸如LINC等网络，更充分地了解与发展能力有关的发展趋势，并更好地就下列问题给出解答，如：

哪种专业发展能力（比如知道什么，知道如何做，知道谁，知道为什么）是学生需要掌握的，如果他们今后随时要就业？

这些能力如何在当地进行传授和更新，使其