Although this presentation is entitled ‘Data Driven Journalism’, it provides a great introduction for anyone wanting to use data – and more particularly data visualisations for research and development. Tont Hirst’s blog, OUseful blog, is a brilliant source of ideas for those interested in this fast growing area of work.
Following my last post on creating a database for the LMI for All project, I am now beginning to explore what you can find out from the database.
One of the main sources for labour market data in the UK is the quarterly Labour Force Survey. Data on employment is collected under two main categories, the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) about the industries in which people work, and the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) about their occupation. Using our database API we can query the two classification systems against each other to find out how many people in a particular occupation work in which industries. We did this query on Friday for Computer Programmers. This gave us a long spreadsheet which was not particularly easy to understand. I cleaned the data and uploaded it to the IBM ManyEyes site and used the bubble visualisation which gives the graphic above. OK it is not perfect. The industry titles are too long for the index box. And maybe it provide too much data (I will look at what we get using a 3 figure SIC classification, rather than the present 4 figure SIC).
However I think it show potential. And there is no reason why we could not provide longitudinal and comparative data with a bit of work.
Over the last year we have been working on a series of ideas for using open data in careers guidance. We call these applications under the generic name of Technology Enhanced Boundary Objects.
In the last six weeks we have been working with the Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick and Cambridge Econometrics on a project for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills on a database, code named ‘LMI for All’.
The Stakeholder Briefing explains:
LMI matters: accessible and intelligible labour market information (LMI) is vital for the effective functioning of the UK labour market. Young people entering the labour market for the first time, and people of all ages re-entering it or seeking to move between jobs, need up-to-date information on the opportunities available. But too often this information is located in a number of places and highly technical, reducing its value to non-experts.
The government has emphasised the importance of careers information to its plans for growth. The National Careers Service’s new web portal, which will launch in April 2012, will provide up–to-date information on occupations, progression routes, wages and employment trends. But over the longer term more can be done to provide nuanced information, more closely connected to the original data sources.
One way in which this could be achieved, which this project will explore, is through the creation of a comprehensive database that pools information from key LMI sources into one place. This database would be accessible to web developers who could develop targeted interfaces: connecting the right information to the right audiences…….
The database will be developed in line with the UK Government’s open data principles3 and will be accessible to web developers from the private or non-profit sectors to use to develop targeted interfaces that provide the information that their target audience requires, in the way that best meets their needs. This will ensure that the data can be used flexibly and creatively to meet real demand for LMI.
The prototype database draws on a number of different data sources including the quarterly Labour Force Survey, O*NET data and Job Centre vacancies. We have developed an API to provide access to the data and last Tuesday UKCES organised a hack-day where, in a one day workshop, developers from Rewired State took part in a competition to develop applications based on the database. The Rewired State blog provides screen shots and brief details of the different apps developed.
The results of the project will be fed through to the English government with recommendations as to how this work might be further developed.
I was at a meeting earlier this week discussing our ideas for a project using mobile devices for work based learning in the construction industry (see previous blog entry). We have emphasised the importance of interaction with physical objects in the workplace, which I think has generally been underestimated or even ignored in most elearning research and applications, at least outside the e-science domain.
We were asked whether the ideas we were putting forward were applicable to knowledge workers.
According to Wikipedia:
Knowledge workers in today’s workforceare individuals who are valued for their ability to act and communicate with knowledge within a specific subject area. They will often advance the overall understanding of that subject through focused analysis, design and/or development. They use research skills to define problems and to identify alternatives. Fueled by their expertise and insight, they work to solve those problems, in an effort to influence company decisions, priorities and strategies. What differentiates knowledge work from other forms of work is its primary task of “non-routine” problem solving that requires a combination of convergent, divergent, and creative thinking (Reinhardt et al., 2011).[1] Also, despite the amount of research and literature on knowledge work there is yet to be a succinct definition of the term (Pyöriä, 2005)
I am not sure that the concept of knowledge workers is very helpful. In reality many jobs today are requiring research skills and non routine problem solving as well as creative thinking. And that goes well beyond people who spend most of their days working in front of a computer or what used to be called ‘white collar’ jobs.
Indeed one of the big issues in the building and construction industry appears to be rapidly increasing needs for higher levels of skills and knowledge, driven largely by new (and especially green) technologies and work processes. Traditional course based further training does not scale well – and may not be particularly effective when not linked to workplace practice.
Proving this ‘hypothesis’ is not so easy and of course leads us back to the issue of what constitutes knowledge in a work based context. But in November last year I attended a fascinating (at least to me 
) seminar hosted by the LLAKES project at the Institute of Education in London where Any Dickerson discussed work undertaken for the UKCES on:
the development of a new and comprehensive set of detailed, multi-dimensional occupational skills profiles for the UK by combining the US-based Occupational Information Network (O*NET) system with the UK Standard Occupational Classification (SOC2010). This enables the multi-dimensional O*NET system to be used to generate comprehensive occupational skills profiles for the UK, providing a much more detailed depiction of skills utilisation, and changes in utilisation, than is currently available for the UK.
The project report “Developing occupational skills profiles for the UK : a feasibility study” provides detailed information about the methodology and findings. And I suspect, with a little more detailed analysis, it should be possible to draw some conclusions about changing skills and knowledge components in different occupations.
Why is this important? Obviously it has implications for economies and employment. But from the point of view of teaching and learning – and especially developing learning opportunities – we should be training for the future not the past or even the present. To do this we need a detailed understanding of what is happening in different occupations. And we need to get beyond policy rhetoric about the knowledge economy and knowledge workers.
The debate over computer science, digital literacies etc. in the UK is still continuing. And the success of the Raspberry Pi computer – selling out of its first 70000 production run in under a week shows the demand and interest in coding and computers in general.
One driver of the debate is that employers are unhappy with the competence and knowledge of potential employees. But this is not new. Employers have always moaned that job applicants do not have the right skills, aptitudes, attitudes – whatever. And it is always the fault of the schools or universities. Maybe it is time that employers started thinking about their own role and responsibilities for training a future workforce. And that includes the IT industry. Of course curricula need updating. Learning how computers work is probably more of a democratic necessity rather than for employment or the economy. There is a danger that we evolve as a society of consumers essentially controlled by the technology of a few major corporations. You know who they are!
But just tweeking the school curriculum or weeding out production fodder university courses will not solve the problem. The real issue is how we view learning – how we create learning environments outside the classroom and how we value learning that takes place outside the formal education sector.
I like the following thoughtful comments from Chris Applegate on his blogpost ‘Why it’s not just about teaching kids to code‘
Secondly, there’s a spectrum of challenges, but there’s also a spectrum of solutions. It’s not just schools and universities that need to bear the burden. As I said, coding is a practice. There’s only so much that can be taught; an incredible amount of my knowledge comes from experience. Practical projects and exercises in school or university are essential, but from my experience, none of that can beat having to do it for real. Whether it’s for a living, or in your spare time (coding your own site, or taking part in an Open Source project), the moment your code is being used in the real world and real people are bitching about it or praising it, you get a better appreciation of what the task involves.
So it’s not just universities and schools that need to improve their schooling if we want to produce better coders. Employers should take a more open-minded approach to training staff to code – those that are keen and capable – even if it’s not part of their core competence. Technology providers should make it easier to code on their computers and operating systems out-of-the-box. Geeks need to be more open-minded and accommodating to interested beginners, and to build more approachable tools like Codecademy. Culturally, we need to be treat coding less like some dark art or the preserve of a select few.