Industry-focused continuing education
Ensuring that our workforce can rapidly develop the skills they need in the ever-changing digital industry landscape
The Digital Science Initiative’s Continuing Education (CE) program will introduce short course micro-credentials to enhance the capacity of our workforce to utilise cutting-edge digital science and technology. It is intended to be a natural part of the NSW and Australian ecosystem for lifelong training and skills development, which is particularly relevant due to the accelerating pace of change driven by digital technologies within modern society. The CE program will leverage the research expertise of the Digital Science Initiative to accelerate the pace of translation of new knowledge into tools and skills that can be utilised by digital scientists, engineers, and social entrepreneurs.
We envision a world in which learners are able to conveniently access the training they need for the next stage of their career. Learners will be able to take courses that suit their specific needs: standalone practical courses in focused areas to build hands-on experience that they need quickly, or stacking sets of micro-credentials to gain an award qualification (e.g., a Master degree) over time. Courses will be taught flexibly to maximise access by those who have work or caring responsibilities.
The short courses and micro-credentials will be developed with input from industry, to ensure that the skills developed will be relevant to the learners’ future jobs. The types of courses offered will include:
Executive leadership and project management training programs to enhance the utilisation of digital technologies strategies in the development and execution of projects.
Industry-focused rapid intensive courses to provide training that is desired by a particular workforce. Examples may include the use of machine learning for the analysis of medical image data, or the use of visual analytics for transport planning.
Technology ‘refresher’ courses for learners to quickly pick up digital technologies that did not exist, or were not broadly in use, at the time of their prior study.