Workforce Development Applied Research Fund (WDARF) Grant

This project aims to improve CET through the integration of generative AI and its synergy with effective pedagogical underpinnings (i.e., productive failure (PF) and scenario-based learning (SBL)). This project will demonstrate how a customizable GenAI agent (named ADVANCE – Adult Development and Virtual Autonomous Nurturing Collaborative Educator) is a befitting platform to allow learners to engage in autonomous, personalized learning experiences and learn through failures. The ADVANCE will be designed according to scenario-based learning and generate role-play case studies, provide feedback and guidance on the learners' judgments and action, and produce self-assessment questions, hence enabling adult learners to engage in complex problem solving and learn through failures along the way.

Against the backdrop of the SkillsFuture national movement to promote skills mastery and lifelong learning, the research seeks to identify and address gaps in existing educational provisions and capacities of teachers in the post-secondary education institutions (PSEIs) for employability-related continuing education and training (CET) across the Singaporean workforce. It also investigates CET educators’ viewpoints and their teaching practices by examining (i) their perspectives regarding the facilitators and barriers to CET teaching and learning, and (ii) how their professional development in the CET terrain can be realised. By investigating the CET experience from aspects of both students and CET educators in the teaching-learning partnership, the study can potentially illuminate the personal, professional and organisational dimensions of the CET experience.

Co-Skilling is a practical approach to adult learning by co-creating ideas and solutions with relevant career stakeholders. It offers systematic guidance to connecting learning to current or future career advancement, as well as demonstrating usable learning outcomes. This research project develops an online system that implements Co-Skilling principles in institutes of adult education. The impacts of Co-Skilling on employability and learning are also assessed.

This project brings together two fields of research that rarely work together – social psychology and a socio-cultural perspective, both within the field of adult learning. In a small way, this project provides a means to make visible the assumptions, theoretical stances, and units of analysis embodied in the logic of various epistemological, ontological approaches that are otherwise assumed and, thus, silent. The project will move beyond multi-disciplinary research towards a transdisciplinary approach in the field of the science of adult learning, in Singapore and around the world.

The overarching objective of this research is to develop a comprehensive understanding of PWDs’ workforce participation and engagement with continuing education and training (CET).