.png)
Learning Journey 2023 @ Lifelong Learning Institute
A facilitator interacting with the students in small groups.
We had the opportunity to work with Lifelong Learning Institution (LLI) this year in running learning journeys for secondary schools. It has been 3 months since we first started running it in March.
More than 1,500 students from 10 schools visited the LLEC and went through facilitated workshops & games specially designed by us! Not only did the learning journey aim to expose students to jobs in the three emerging economies, it also served as a self-discovery journey for the students to reflect upon when making decisions in their career pathways.
We brought students through three different activities in these Learning Journeys:
Visit the Lifelong Learning Exploration Centre (LLEC)
Explore Digital, Care and Green Careers (DCG)
Imagining Future Jobs Exercise
Visit the Lifelong Learning Exploration Centre (LLEC)
The focus throughout the LLEC experience is centered around the use of RIASEC as a tool to identify what possible career pathways students can consider. RIASEC is an acronym for the six career profile types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising & Conventional) that is necessary in every organisation.
Student in the LLEC.
Students were guided to the first section of the machines in LLEC to identify their RIASEC profiling through a series of questions. Afterwards, they can look through a list of possible jobs and what courses they can take to get there.
After going through the entire LLEC experience by themselves the trainer will gather them for a debrief. Despite using the RIASEC tool as a guide for self-discovery, we don’t want the students to feel confined by the RIASEC profile they identify with in limiting the career paths they could take. Using some job roles as examples to enlighten them that jobs are not confined to one specific RIASEC, but a mix of different RIASEC. At the end of the LLEC, we hope to encourage them to still continue exploring in furthering their self-discovery journey.
One of the convenient features of the LLEC is that the RIASEC profile follows students through the entire experience, helping them link their profile with possible jobs, and educational pathways. Students even get a summary of the content and recommendations they browsed emailed to them at the end of the day!
Digital, Care and Green Career Exploration (DCG)
The Digital, Care, and Green economies of Singapore are forecasted to grow significantly in the coming years. This segment of the learning journey helps students gain exposure to the broad ideas of each of these economies, encouraging students to explore potential opportunities in them with hands-on experiences.
In the Digital economy, students try out doing UI/UX design, one of the fastest growing roles within the digital economy. In this design focused activity, students work in groups of 3–4 to develop a layout of an app. They get to choose how many and what pages are necessary, as well as the functions of the app. Facilitators stand ready to give ideas and guide them in their mini-project.
Students doing the digital economy activity.
In the Care economy, students role-play as a healthcare professional in a decision-making card game. Students face various type of patients in different situations and decide the next steps they should take. They learn the ideas of prioritisation, empathy, and critical thinking as each decision they make leads to different consequences.
Lastly in the Green economy, students play a card game that exposes them to the benefits of various Green sector innovations, inventions, policies, and job roles. They compete to create the most green and sustainable city, taking away a much enhanced vocabulary and understanding of the new and rapidly growing Green economy.
After each activity, students are also asked to reflect on the experience and identify the critical core skills they felt were being practised as they go through the activities. This is to bring awareness to themselves so that students can discove what critical core skills they need to work on based on the industry they have interest in.
Imagining Future Jobs
Students doing the imagining future jobs.
In the past few years, thousands of new job titles have been created with the rapidly changing world. Influencers, social media marketers and data analysts never existed in the past decades. Today, even roles like eSports athletes and Social Entrepreneurs are becoming more prevalent despite being very new in Singapore.
In this segment of the learning journey, we get students to tap their imaginations to envision future jobs. They are encouraged to be as wild as possible while we ground them with real world problems as the starting point for their inspiration. We then backtrack from that future jobs to the present and ask the students what skills they need to slowly pick up to be able to thrive in some of these future jobs.
Even though this learning journey might not be long and detailed enough for students to fully grasp how to find their exact path in life, we hope that the awareness gained will given them clarity on which small steps they can start taking action.
Let's empower students to feel confident in making the decision themselves as they take on the next step in their self-discovery journey!
Read this article on Medium