Jobs are constantly going through transformation, asking for new skill sets. Either jobs are migrating across countries due to globalisation, or they are changing their nature as technology progression is redefining human roles. On demand, skilling the workforce has been a growing issue. Skill development faces chicken-and-egg situation. Companies are looking for experienced job seekers; on the other hand in the absence of performing those jobs before, how can someone gather experience. It's also being questioned that classroom-based training fails to develop the needed skill. It's being well accepted that on-the-job training can only develop readily deployable skilled workforce.
Over the last century, Germany has institutionalised apprenticeship culture successfully to address this reality. But often such proven method fails to cope with the necessity of supplying large pool of trained workforce for an industry, which does not have adequate internship positions. Both globalisation and the rapid transformation of the nature of jobs caused by automation and robotics have accentuated this skill-gap issue. How to reduce the skill development complexity and lead-time has been a burning challenge across the world.
In developing countries, increasing number of fresh graduates are looking for jobs. On the other hand, globalisation is opening the opportunity of employing those youths in productive activities. But companies are looking for skilled manpower, ready to deploy in production. For example, according to a recent BIDS (Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies) study, Bangladesh needs additional 4 million trained workforce by 2021. As reported by the Times of India, according to a study, 70 per cent of venture capitalists in India indicated that startups can't find employees with the right skills. In advanced countries, the nature of skill gap is slightly different. Due to globalisation and automation, skilled work force is being laid off, as jobs disappear. Advancement of technology also opens new job opportunity for them, but asking for new set of skills. Particularly, robotics in manufacturing has created an employment paradox, killing jobs and making existing skills obsolete, while creating demand of new skills for advanced manufacturing. ?How can someone acquire skills to perform those jobs which did not even exist before is a serious challenge to overcome. According to a study conducted by Pew (a US Think Tank), 54 per cent of all working Americans think it will be essential to develop new skills throughout their working lives. Moreover, due to decreasing shelf life of skills, employers are also showing reluctance to on-the-job skill development. How to rapidly turn fresh graduates into skilled work force, and also reskill existing workforce has been a daunting challenge. ?Can technology like Augmented Reality help? ?
Augmented reality technology is basically a concept of overlaying information in the form of text, graphics, image and voice over real-life scenario, enhancing our ability to perceive the situation, and act in a smarter way. Smartphone based game Pokémon Go has made augmented reality (AR) concept known to the masses. This technology progression is opening opportunities of innovations in diverse areas. Certainly, the potential benefit and also the innovation scope around this technology will depend on the nature of productive activities and the given skill transition trend. Country-specific potentials of wealth and job creation should be taken into consideration to provide necessary policy support to exploit the benefit of AR technology. In a recent article, Brookings Institution has explored diverse opportunities of innovation around AR technology to ease the skill development complexity, particularly being faced by the US manufacturing sector.
At present, gaming applications are now dominating the AR technology advancement and innovations. Like many other high value technologies, AR has its root in defence and space programmes in the USA. This technology provides a mixed reality experience, increasing the learning productivity. Real-life innovations started in 1990s; the first functional AR systems that provided immersive mixed reality experiences for users were invented in the early 1990s, starting with the Virtual Fixtures system developed at the US Air Force's Armstrong Labs in 1992. The high cost of AR gears was a major constraint for civilian applications. Commercial interest, particularly shown by the video game industry, has rapidly reduced the cost. Simple AR gear to be fitted with smartphones costs now less than USD25. Such low cost and ready availability have opened the opportunity of innovating affordable skill development solutions around this technology. Instead of listening lectures, watching videos, or reading online text through AR innovations, it's feasible to overlay instruction over real-life images to improve the productivity as well as accuracy of skill development.
It has been observed that in conventional instructor-led training, commonly used on the factory floor, the ramp-up time can be quite lengthy, and there is often high variation as regards the outcome of the process. But projector-based AR solutions drastically reduce ramp-up time for new hires by overlaying a "digital canvas" onto a physical workspace. Significant improvement in reduction of errors and ramp-time has been reported. In certain situations, users have documented a 90 per cent reduction in errors and a 40-50 per cent reduction in cycle time when operators use AR guidance systems in place of traditional work instructions.
In many developing countries, like Bangladesh, shipbuilding has been a growing industry. But the availability of skilled workforce for welding together numerous metal pieces of varying shapes, as per the three-dimensional drawing, has been a big challenge. It has been reported that augmented reality technology (AR) has been particularly suitable to ease the complexity of skill development for shipbuilding industry. With the AR technologies, solutions could be innovated that include step-by-step instructions using visual overlays of the right information on equipment, machine and panel operations. Such AR innovations visually enhance a worker's access to information required to perform a job including steps, cautions, knowledge from expert workers, schematics and any other digitised data. It has the potential to provide seamless and timely transfer of knowledge to workers on the job.
Decreasing cost of AR hardware and growing power of affordable smartphones are opening the opportunity of skill development and transfer solutions around AR technology. Information technology and software firms often suffer from the lack of local demand to innovate applications. Skill development solutions around VR technology could be an opportunity for them. Instead of just investing to scale up the conventional skill development capacity, it's time to take the advantage from augmented reality-based skill development solutions. It's time to provide R&D support to academic institutions and software firms to innovate AR solutions to ease the difficulty of skill development, as well as skill transfer-to leverage multi-dimensional benefits.
M Rokonuzzaman Ph.D is academic, researcher and activist on technology, innovation and policy.
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