 Welcome. I'm Billy Smith. I am the incoming Chief Executive for Association for Learning Technology, and it's a real pleasure to be with you today. In this session, we're going to hear about our Level 5 trial blazer group, which have been working on the Level 5 digital learning design apprenticeship. Without further ado, I want to introduce our panel speakers, who we have over in the right hand side here. So we have John, who's from the Digital Learning Institute, we have Caleb, we have Daniel, and we have Simon, who's from LDN apprenticeships, who if you've had a chance to meet them outside in the foyer there. So without further ado, I'm going to pass over to John. Hello. Great. Everyone here? Great. Hi Yvonne, and thanks to Billy, and to Maron, and to all for just for giving the trailblazing group the opportunity to talk today about the new standard in digital learning design. Partially I've been involved in upskilling educators and learning professionals on instructional design and digital learning design for about 20 years, and obviously the profession has gone through a huge amount of change over the last three years, but we've also gone through a huge amount of progress as well. There's been a significant growth in job opportunities, there's new specialized skills developing in areas like immersive learning and accessibility. So I think it's really important now for people that want to develop their careers as a digital learning professional that we provide them with access to practical work experience where they can hone their skills, that we provide them to access with high quality upskilling opportunities, but also access to mentors who work in this space like people like yourselves that can actually guide them through their career journey as well. So I think it's really timely today that we're launching this new digital learning design standard. So in terms of the plan today, Caleb's going to jump in initially and just give you a bit of a sense of the journey that the trailblazing group went on in terms of development and standard, and then Simon and Daniel are going to jump in then and just do a bit of a deeper dive into the audience, the structure and so on, and then Caleb will come back in at the end for a bit of next steps. And I think the plan is we'll have plenty time at the end for Q&A as well if there's any safety questions. All right, thanks. Thanks. So my role at the university, I work at the University of Birmingham and I'm the apprenticeship scheme manager there. So my role is I think I've got one of the best jobs at the university. I get to work with lots of apprentices from new entrants where it's a first ever job to people that are doing it as career development and progression. And as part of that role, I work with managers where they look at where they want to use apprenticeships and different occupations where we might use them. And if I go back to January, I think it was, January, February in the year 2020, one of my colleagues, academic Adam Matthews, came to me to say, is there an apprenticeship standard in digital learning design? So we had a look through the list of apprenticeship standards and there wasn't. So we talked about how we might get one up and running and had some initial conversations with some people from institute for apprenticeships, from different areas, different other universities and thought, yeah, this is something we want to do. Then obviously the pandemic happened and we realised actually the standard would have been really useful three years sooner ready, but we were where we were. Around about the autumn of that year the group really expanded and Adam co-chaired the group from then on with Donna, who unfortunately can't be with us today, but was a huge driving force behind the standard and Donna works for Foster and Forge. And we had lots of SME organisations joined, lots of large employers not in the university sector joined, so it became a really big all-round representing standard and that's one of the important things for apprenticeship standards is they're not just specifically sector relevant, they can be carried across in different sectors, so lots of different types of digital learning designer roles. And the idea I suppose to create that was to create a standard that would be an entry point into the career of digital design or a development point, so the group opted for level five standard. So we went through the journey of developing the standard with the Institute for Apprentices and Technical Education, so for those of you that don't know you have to go through quite a grueling kind of stage to get through it, so you have to come up with an occupational idea and a proposal and you almost have to write the standard to get approval to develop an apprenticeship standard. Now those of you who are not so familiar with apprenticeships might think of apprenticeships as sort of only purely for entry level in very certain roles such as construction, things like that, but actually apprenticeships now cover a wide range of roles and from levels two, which is a very entry level, right the way up to master's level, so you can do a master's level qualification through an apprenticeship and this is a really great opportunity therefore to develop these occupational specialisms and these occupational pathways. So the group got together, it was a very large group and you can see the list of names up there and I'll talk about those in a minute, but a huge group representing lots of different types of organisation and the big challenge of course is getting everyone to agree on what needs to go in the standard and then getting the Department for Education to sign off that that is what should be in the standard and that they're happy with that. But it was actually a really good process and we had, everyone was really engaged in it, we submitted our proposal, after a bit of back and forth got approved and we were very lucky to have Marianne from the Institute Apprentices kindly joined us today who really drove it forward for us and made sure that we were able to get it approved through all the standards. So the apprenticeship is made up of knowledge, skills and behaviours and then has an assessment to confirm occupational competency. So just a bit about a few thank yous to some people who contributed a lot to it and a lot of them are here with us today. Obviously the two that aren't are just Adam who really set up the standard and to Donna who really was a good force behind moving the standard forward. Also to Simon who will be taking over very shortly from LDN apprenticeships who gave us the insight both of an employer but a training provider as well which was really really helpful because we needed obviously to work out how much the course would cost to run and all those sorts of things and then to some of our subject experts so to Dan, to John and Liz Hudson who again can't be with us today but she did a huge amount of work behind the scenes on getting it there and yeah then we got approval I think it was the beginning of this year we've got the funding cap approved and the standard is now ready to use and I'll talk about that in a bit but I will now pass over to Simon. Thanks Caleb, hi everybody. My name's Simon Bazzoli, I'm the founder and chief executive of LDN apprenticeships, we're an off-state art standing and a recently B Corp certified apprenticeship training provider and we specialise in delivering kind of industry niche apprenticeship standards so we deliver everything from level three business administration to this new standard which we launch in September. We also have corporate responsibility and sustainability as one of our standards so we really do cover a broad spectrum. I've just been asked to talk a little bit about this standard in particular the digital learning designer standard and maybe talk a little bit about sort of what it entails and what it actually looks like for apprentices when they participate in it. So Caleb's mentioned the sort of occupational standard and the occupational standard is made up of some very broad duties and those duties are essentially a job description, they are the things that we thought in a generic way exemplified the role of a digital learning designer across lots of different sectors in lots of different types of organisations and those duties are then kind of broken down into Caleb referred to them as well into knowledge skills and behaviours and those are the competencies that each apprentice needs to demonstrate in order to be deemed competent as an apprentice and to achieve their qualification. So over a period of time the apprentices sort of need to demonstrate that competence against the knowledge skills and behaviours and the standard recommends that that's about 24 months, it may be a bit longer, it may be a bit shorter but that's typically defined and the thing that sort of determines how long that is is really how closely aligned the apprentice's job is to the occupational standard and the reason for that is that we want the apprentices to be demonstrating these skills and behaviours and this knowledge in a role in the real world right, we don't want them to be simulating any part of the apprenticeship so as long as the role is really closely aligned to the KSBs within the standard that sort of determines the duration and that applied learning that the apprentices do throughout their apprenticeship is a really you know that is the hallmark of a good apprenticeship and it's something that we work really really hard to make sure that all of our apprentices have the opportunity to do. So I think the next thing to sort of talk about is how do they learn it what does it look like for an apprentice so I think a big misconception is that your apprentice is going to be at college or at training one day a week you're going to have to let them out of work and that's really not the case anymore so helpfully the the department for education calls it or unhelpfully is what I actually mean but they call it off the job training but this is training that your apprentice time that your apprentice to spends sort of directly doing tasks that are related to the KSBs and that's integrated completely into the apprentice's job so they don't really spend any time out of work they are constantly learning and applying new skills in their role and then we kind of overlay a couple of types of delivery and support over that activity for the apprenticeship so we've got a comprehensive e-learning programme that sort of runs for the duration of the apprenticeship that's been custom built in fact by Liz who was very very involved in the in the creation of the standard. We thought we'd probably bit and off a bit more than we could chew when we started creating an e-learning programme for a bunch of digital learning designers because it can't be it can't be second rate we'd get judged quite quickly so they have this online learning programme which is then backed up by monthly live sessions the live sessions are led by a skills coach and the skills coach sort of facilitates peer-to-peer learning it's a really great environment for apprentices to see how things work in other organisations and to understand kind of a bit of the context that they work within and also the way other organisations might might implement or approach a particular type of problem. We run regular master classes for all of our apprentices that's where we would get an industry expert to come in and speak John volunteered to do one for us today I've just managed to get you to agree to doing one so yeah we're kind of always looking for people to speak to our apprentices and give them that industry insight and then because all of this is delivered remotely one of the things that's really important to us is that we also give apprentices the opportunity to meet in person so we also run in person development days where the apprentices come together and actually start to build a bit of a community in a network around one another so all this learning is pulled together by a skills coach our skills coaches at LDN are always industry experienced professionals who are coming to impart their knowledge to apprentices and sort of help that next generation of professionals to build their skills and it culminates with an end point assessment and the end point assessment is completely independent of us we have no control over it it looks like the end point assessment organisation for this standard will be the British Computer Society the BCS and they will facilitate a kind of external independent assessment of every single apprentice and that involves a work-based project so that's a real-life project that the apprentice does that demonstrates all of the skills required by the standard the project is then kind of assessed through a presentation with questioning and they also have a professional's discussion based on the portfolio of evidence that they build throughout the apprenticeship and what's really exciting about this end point assessment and because all two are so involved in the development of the standard we've managed to map and agree that by achieving the apprenticeship standard and completing the end point assessment apprentices will be able to get AC malts as as post nominal letters on completion of the apprenticeship so that's a really exciting development the other thing to say is that Ulta very kindly offered to give all apprentices while they're on programme free associate membership of of the association of learning technology so that just also gives them another really nice bit of access to this this community um yeah so that's that bit that's this a bit about the standard i should say you'll you'll notice that there are a couple of quotes peppered throughout the presentation that we're going through those are from people who are starting our first cohort of the apprenticeship in September 20 September yeah end of this month my goodness it's quite soon um yeah so yeah exciting to see it's sort of coming to life and becoming real um i'm talking an awful lot so please do chime in Daniel if i if i'm saying too much so just about who the standards aimed at Caleb's referred to this a little bit already um so there's kind of two routes into an apprenticeship and the majority of people who are participating in this programme are people who are already working in learning design learning technologist roles and they're people who want to formalise their skills gain a professional accreditation and really deepen their learning and immerse themselves in the field so uh many large employers are coming to us now and saying we would like to you know upskill our existing employees using the apprenticeship standard and slightly less common for the standard possibly because it's at level five uh we also have employers coming to us to say we would like you to help us recruit an individual to join our learning design or learning technology team and then they can upskill uh once they've come into the role um anything you want to yeah um working out to that so as it says on the screen yeah these what the standard is particularly aimed at or appropriate for anyone that identifies as early career um or as Simon's just been saying you know people that's already in those sort of roles or identifies seasoned um possibly about three years plus experience on there um or anyone that might be looking to transfer any existing skills that might have um so I just take an example of my current university intern um who's got a background in film production you know those existing sort of skills might translate well into such sort of role but they might not be aware of this particular yeah career pathway should we say so it's um yeah promoting that aspect of those sorts of individuals as well um and yeah anyone that's seeking well in employment currently as Simon says or looking to seeking employment in such sort of you know career or role um I just alluded to there's yeah um the intersection of both roles of learning design and learning technologies but it is suitable for both of those particular roles yes yes we are you know differences between them but it is appropriate for both of those so I think the next bit uh we'll talk about is just sort of the availability of the is that is that you know you so yeah the standard is is now as it says fully approved unready to use um which feels great when I think about the journey we've been on um just getting agreement and it'll be continually reviewed and something like this occupation clearly needs to be continually reviewed as time goes on and that's one of the great things about apprenticeships they stay kind of up to date um throughout um so I think the first thing that you would need to do if you're looking at using the standard either for someone in your team or you want to recruit someone onto it or even it's for yourself is to work out um a training provider um and on a later slide we've got um kind of a link to that and the slides will be sent out so you can access that um so training providers such as um Simons where you can have that conversation look at how um it will work for you and your organisation how it will work best um and what dates they have for the the course to sort of commence you'll see is um Simon's alluded to we've got a number of examples we don't have any case studies of anyone that's done it yet because the course is brand new but we've got lots of examples of people that are about to do it I think are right on that um so um by all means have a look at those so um the two links you can see above the top link will give you the details of the standard itself um which will go through all of those knowledge skills and behaviours we've talked about um and the duties it's important if you're putting anyone on the standard to consider the duties to make sure that they can achieve all of those duties um because in order to be occupationally competent through the assessment they will need to at some point doesn't need to be every day that they're doing those duties but they will need at some point to be able to do do those duties then go through the link of finding a training provider when you've worked out work with them on on how it might work um and um there's lots of support and links on there and if you have any comments on the standard what I would say is you know feel free to put them through to the trailblazer group you know I think it's every three years that we or so that we have to review the standard so we'll always be looking at how we can improve it it's the very first time that we've obviously launched it we've had a huge amount of support from different areas and um thank all those those colleagues again but also thanking alt for all their support throughout the the journey that we've been in and particularly marin for that as well so um would you say anything to add on that Simon? No I don't think so you think you've covered most of it? Caleb's very polite about um about the experience of launching the apprenticeship who says a little bit of back and forth uh him and maria and Caleb was the rock of the trailblazer group and was really the person who helped us to drive it through so he was brilliant and of course big thanks to Marianne because we wouldn't have got there I don't mean without her to be an excellent account manager with the the institute so um I think now it's time for any questions if we've got any yeah okay so uh you know the drill ladies and gentlemen um please could you um using Vvox um enter in your meeting id which is 113812368 and that is your id for your Vvox and if you could post any questions that you might have for our wonderful panel here a couple of things that I would just like to say on top of everything that we've just heard from Simon and uh co um is that this is very much overdue we I think everybody in this room recognises the need to have professional recognition for members um but also for people in these roles um we are thrilled and I know marin certainly is to have been part of this group um and it really enhances our Seymour um portfolios and opportunities for learners and I think it's a real defining moment for the learning technology sector in terms of having this level five apprenticeship as we know um apprenticeships are sometimes drowned upon um but actually I think the that this programme would be um something that everybody in this room would would really benefit from so we have some questions coming in um I'm going to come and grab a microphone okay so um we've got loads of questions coming in um the first one which here we go is is this the only is this only available in england or is this available more widely good question um yeah unfortunately it's only available so skills policy is devolved so the different nations have a different they all pay everyone pays what's called the apprenticeship levy which funds apprenticeships but only england gives it back to employers in this way with the apprenticeship standards so unfortunately it's only available at the moment in england but I would hope that um the devolved nations might look at it and come up with yeah and and marines just said that the institute have shared it with the devolved nations so hopefully they'll come up with something similar okay and just just a note decide note to say uh despite our name being LDN apprenticeships uh we do offer the standard to apprentices anywhere in england so just in case you were wondering okay second question um is the focus of the apprenticeship learning design exclusively sorry learning design exclusively or learning technology so where this um standard's been written is to um yeah to be quite broad it includes both uh more from our perspective um like both learn design you know knowledge skills and behaviours as well as learn technology which might be familiar with yeah if you are in a learning technology role there will be learning design skills in there and you know expertise etc um and likewise with um being a learning design role there will be learning technology elements in there so with it it's being written is to um yeah to include that um accessibility for everybody yeah I think just add to that as well when Caleb had the slide there of the full trailblazing group like you can see they're just quite a diverse there's a good representation from the ed tech sector as well like Omniplex were there and you know so it was I think it was really important though at the out and this is an important generally speaking that it needs to be underpinned by good strong learning design principles and science you know and I think the way the profession is going now with Generative AI you know standards are going to become more and more important as Billy alluded to so it does it goes through the full process I think it's fair to say Dan it doesn't look like it it goes through the whole learning design process and then look at how you can use technology to to enable it and that's one of the great things about this new standard is that it's going to kind of give you endain skills uh regardless if you're a learning technologist in in higher education but equally if you're looking to get maybe into more employer-led learning design as well I think one of the other things to say about this kind of this question of focus um is it's one of the things that's really amazing about how apprenticeships work now uh each person's experience of a particular apprenticeship standard is totally different depending on the areas of focus within their own role so you might be working in a role which is very learning technology focused and therefore when you produce your portfolio or your work that portfolio may be a lot more detailed and a lot more focused around the learning technology elements it doesn't take away from the fact that you also need to have other bits of knowledge that wrap around that particular specialism and that's what makes the apprenticeships really flexible and kind of appropriate for lots of different roles they're very carefully designed and helpful in that you know you can you can be doing different types of roles and have different specialisms and areas within that one apprenticeship standard and sorry just to add on to that so yeah the emphasis on the word focus so that also depends on the kind of role that the apprentice would be in as well so um yeah if they are in a learning technologist role there's an emphasis on that you know sort of duties but there will be learning design elements in there as well um so yeah obviously the standard yeah needs to be achieved and it's got all that required knowledge skills and behaviours but yeah again it depends on the role that they are actually undertaking in the organisation great thank you so next question is how can employers like universities learn more about how to get involved Caleb I can take this and then Simon you have some points as well so um the first thing to do is to look at how you would want to use it for which staff is it for new entrants is it for existing staff or both um and this touches on a question I see for down as well around um you know most universities do pay into the apprenticeship levy and have large apprenticeship levies um so so you can use that obviously if if that levy runs out because you've already utilised it elsewhere there is other options for you through things like co-investment um where you can can also at a very favourable kind of rate get get the apprenticeship course um I think it's about working out who kind of looks after that within your institution um so I also look after that at Birmingham but um it will often sit within your learning and development or HR department so it's having a conversation with those people um and looking at what can be done and then I think it's getting in touch when you know what can can be done in what you want to do is getting in touch with one of the the training providers I don't know if you've got an example of anyone that's kind of done that would be useful yeah so I think we've had good conversation with University of London today I think University of Sunderland University of Sunderland in London even apparently that's a thing um but so we're talking to several universities about it I think our first cohort has been relatively quick in the launch uh and I think some universities are a little bit uh quite a lot of processes to go through and things that need to get signed off so it does take a little bit of time um but we're we're really happy to support and be involved in that process to provide any guidance that you need in terms of aligning it to particular job roles or understanding where in your organisation it might fit um my colleague Rob and I are here today so we've got a little stand upstairs more than happy to have a chat with you about it and then we're kind of around to provide support and guidance and help you to navigate the the tricky bits of the levy and funding and all of that kind of stuff so I think the other thing that's really important to say is that all of this is kind of paid for through a sunk cost for your organisations if you're a levy paying organisation which almost every university will be um and if you're a smaller organisation as Caleb's mentioned there's really really generous funding so 95% of the costs are covered by the government for any of these training programmes that means that the apprenticeship costs 800 pounds or something for you know an almost two year programme of training and even then there's opportunities to get that 800 pounds funded by a levy transfer so you know that it's a really cost effective way for you to formalise this skills training opportunity within your organisation fabulous okay so we are unfortunately we've got we've probably got time for a quick answer if you could answer this one quickly so would this be accessible for those who already have degrees but in a different subject or area and I think this is a great question because it will appeal to many of our audience yes is the answer yeah it has to be a different basically you have to demonstrate substantial new knowledge and learning and skills will be gained from the apprenticeship by doing it um but if it's in a different subject area I won't name different subject areas but um then yeah obviously if you've got a degree in digital learning design then that's a no but if you can be in any other area right up to masters even phd I think is fine yeah absolutely okay thank you very much would love to get through all your questions there's so many great questions um but I think we're going to call that a wrap