Low-Hanging Fruits of Intermediate Digital Skills Training Programs

By Oluwatosin Mayor-Olabiyitan and Oluwafemi Awopegba

Executive Summary

Digital skills are increasingly being recognized in society, transforming ways of working, studying, communicating, and accessing information, among others. Digital skills training is now essential if the working population is to take advantage of the many opportunities in our current reality.

As a result, many opportunities are available for people to acquire these skills. The Digi Youth Data Science Intermediate Digital Skills Training program is one of the many programs designed to help young people develop their digital competency. The program’s ability to provide a variety of outputs and outcomes is the rationale for this study.

Our study’s results show that most participants gained low-level outcomes, such as improving their skills and productivity. In contrast, a minority achieved high-level outcomes, such as getting a Data-science-related job.

This finding indicates the little successes many skill-up initiatives with goals of creating a tech talent pipeline enjoy. The policy recommendations of these findings include the need for digital training initiatives to:

• Create and modify curricula that are better tailored to young people’s professional goals and implement initiatives that will support the development of young people’s digital competence.
• Accept that the low-hanging fruits are the realistic targets for training initiatives and orchestrate ways in which they can serve as the building block for aiming for a more significant impact, perhaps through subsequent specialized programs.

Background

The digital era calls for the continuous acquisition of new skills and updating of existing skills to align with global trends. This is because new technologies are emerging exponentially, with the attendant need for constant change in the work environment.

Research has shown that digital skills and knowledge are the engines of the economic growth and social development of any nation (Monroy-Taborda et al., 2015). Therefore, the working population is expected to be digitally competent to adequately fit into the digital work environment in which they will find themselves.

One of the learning strategies that can help build youth’s digital competence is intermediate digital skill training, which is an advancement over basic digital skills. Basic digital skills are skills required to make use of digital devices and online applications.

For youths to be relevant and compete favorably with their counterparts in a highly competitive global marketplace where knowledge and skills are the major commodities for survival, they will be needing digital skills beyond the basics. (Bashir et al.,2018).

Within the technology ecosystem, Information Security Engineer, Full-Stack Engineer, Data Scientist, and Machine Learning Engineer are among the fastest-growing tech jobs (Whitney, 2022). Furthermore, the skills required to be equipped for such roles are intermediate to advanced level and take time to develop.

Several training initiatives in Nigeria have emerged to help create a talent pipeline for this growing demand. Given the economic development situation of the country, some of the outcomes or goals of these programs are generally to enhance the beneficiaries’ digital competence, productivity, employment, and incomes.

In some sense, there is a hierarchy to which the goals can be attained. While some outcomes like employment may be achievable in the longer term, others like enhanced productivity and competence may be achievable within a short time of the training, hence the term ‘low-hanging fruits.’

These low-hanging fruits or easily attainable outcomes are results that training programs can highlight in addition to their higher-impact results. Measures of these low-hanging fruits can serve as a metric for evaluating the effectiveness of the training program and the potential for the program to meet higher-level goals such as improved jobs and incomes for their beneficiaries.

Evidence of low-hanging fruits in the Digiyouth Data Science Skilling Program

This article sheds light on the reality of how far technology skill-up initiatives can yield the output and outcomes they set out to achieve from the outset.

Some of these outcomes include improved motivation among youths in learning an in-demand digital skill, enhanced hands-on learning and mastery of the techniques and theories of the skillset, increased technology talent pipeline for the local technology ecosystem, and accelerated career, employability, and earning prospects.

We zero in on the Digiyouth Data Science Skilling Program, using data from the application, baseline, midline, and end-line stages to highlight the areas of program success and challenges and then tease out implications for setting technology skill-up training expectations and targets within the local ecosystem.

Participation in the program attracted the interest of youths predominantly from Kogi State, Nigeria. Taking a closer look at the applicant’s background, the majority of them already have some basic digital literacy skills enough to embark on more advanced skill training.

Approximately 60% of the participants rated themselves as intermediate to advanced computer learners. While some were self-taught, about 75% claim to have taken digital skill training before the data science program. However, only 25% of the learners had some prior experience in the data science field.

Moreover, about 80% were either unemployed or working in a non-tech role. Therefore, in assessing the background of the participants, the applicants seemed to be ideal candidates for the upskilling program, whereby there is potential for improved mastery and tech-employment outcomes.

Approximately 152 people applied for the program at the application stage, but by the baseline, midline, and endline, participation numbers dropped to about 89, 51, and 39, respectively.

We have noted from other programs that achieving the outcome of motivating youths to learn an in-demand digital skill, despite the better employment and earning prospects that it promises, is still not enough to motivate and that self-motivation by the students is critical in completing the program.

Feedback from the program facilitators revealed that those admitted struggled to cope with the pace of the training. By implication, technology skill-up programs like the Digiyouth Data Science Program are still limited in motivating youths to learn in-demand digital skills or increasing the talent pipeline for the local technology ecosystem.

In terms of enhancing mastery of skillset techniques and theories, the program provided a broad range of data science skills and tools, such as the use of excel and python, as well as the development and explanation of statistical models and relationships.

According to the student feedback, most students felt comfortable using basic analytical tools such as excel. However, they needed help navigating more advanced operations, such as developing statistical models. By implication, the vast majority of participants may not be able to attain complete mastery of the outlined skill sets of intermediate to advanced programs.

A likely outcome of such programs is to pass on some foundational skills of the learning track to the beneficiaries upon which they can build in future trainings and personal self-development.

Lastly, with respect to employability and other general program immediate outcomes, typically, the assumption made for intermediate to advanced technology skill-up programs is that the majority of the beneficiaries would go on to secure a tech job, and the others would further their learning at the higher education, or move on to start a tech-enabled business.

The result from the end line shows a similar pattern. 12.9% of the beneficiaries at the end of the course claimed they had moved from a Non-Tech to a Tech job; the same rate claimed they had enrolled in higher education to study a Tech-related course, while none of them had started a Tech-enabled Business.

Thus, transitioning into a tech job or further education remains the most intended outcome of technology skill-up trainings. Moreover, the vast majority (93.6%) of the beneficiaries at the end of the course felt they understood Tech better; and 58.1% of them felt they had improved their use of digital technology at their current workplace — these outcomes served as the biggest low hanging fruits of this program.

Conclusion

Digital skills training is crucial to improving young people’s skill levels and equipping them to compete for jobs in their fields of expertise in the global job market. Evidence from this findings demonstrates that attempts to increase digital literacy can provide a variety of outcomes and results.

Thus, more attention needs to be given to measuring and tracking beneficiaries’ progress based on these outcomes to evaluate the program and its attendant impact effectively.

Results of the digital skill training program demonstrate that the majority of participants were able to gain a considerable level of mastery of the techniques and theories of the skillset while also improving their use of digital technology at their current workplaces.

On the other hand, fewer beneficiaries, as expected, went on to get Data-science-related jobs. This finding indicates the little success many skill-up initiatives with goals of creating a tech talent pipeline enjoy.

To grow the success rate of higher-order goals, training initiatives need to come to terms with the fact that the low-hanging fruits are the realistic targets, which can then serve as the building block for aiming for greater impact, perhaps through subsequent specialized programs.

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• Whitney L (2022). The ten hottest tech jobs for 2022. Tech Republic. Accessed 02 January 2023 at <https://www.techrepublic.com/article/hottest-tech-jobs/>