2021 Technical Learning Outlook and Trends

I hope you all had a great start to 2021. Every new year brings along with it, new hopes and new possibilities. We’re very excited getting into 2021 as the year promises to permanently change a few things for good. At the beginning of 2020, I must say, we thought we were ahead of the “hands-on labs for technical education” curve and were expecting it to be mainstream by 2024 or so. Just then, Covid-19 accelerated the trend and put us in thick of things. Not that we’re complaining, but it sure has been a great ride and it continues. That’s the reason we’re so excited to step into 2021.  

Here’s a quick review of 2020 and outlook for 2021 when it comes to technical education.

Technical skills in career growth will remain more important than traditional roles. Preparing for the future has never seen a better response than this – It’s here and it’s now.

Technical skilling in 2020 vs 2021

Employees learned how to work from a distance, through videos, and learned how to grow differently — digitally and more self-directed. We saw an increase in learning on voluntary self-paced learning because the jobs now seemed no longer secure, making technical upscaling a necessity. Hands-on labs gave a real-life environment to upskill and gain hands-on experience. Nuvepro partnered with Udemy to create more streamlined and personalized hands-on-labs that fulfils the motive behind joining MOOC platforms for upskilling. This is being piloted with one of our large customers and we expect to go-live this year.

Companies have seen a need for investing in reskilling and upskilling their workforce to meet the demands in cloud technology in the market. The few technical skills that have been in demand in 2020 and are expected to see an upsurge in 2021 are:

• AWS
• Azure
• Python
• Full Stack Development
• Analytics
• DevOps
• AI/ML
• Big data

Promotions in organizations in 2020 vs 2021

Corporates have initiated an adaptation of Hands-on labs for assessments as a part of promotion cycles. A number of our customers are in the IT/ITES sector where the employees at these companies are deployed at various customer projects. Since the work being done is usually customer confidential, there needs to be a uniform method of determining the skill levels of employees and fully configured labs with problem statements.

The hands-on labs proved to be the best way to do it. These labs provide real-world environment and problem statements for the employees to solve. These assessments go a long way in adopting an uniform way of ranking for promotions. Of course, this is just one part of the promotions and other soft skills need to be considered as per the organizational guidelines. In 2021 we anticipate more companies to use hands-on labs as a means to assess the skill level of employees eligible for promotions.

Hiring in organizations in 2020 vs 2021

Given that the hiring process has gone completely online through interviews happening over platforms as zoom and Google meet, the usage of labs has gone a step ahead to make technical interviews easier. Hands-on labs for hiring purposes becomes a standard procedure for hiring across different departments when considering a technical hire.

One of our Marquee clients has started using Nuvepro hands-on-labs for their cloud expertise hiring. Hands-on-labs has seen an increase in hiring needs. Job descriptions are shared and each of the labs is designed specifically to the needs. The making of system backed by AI and machine learning for unobtrusive testing, and deliver material based on what learners are ready to grasp is seen in 2021. This means the course will pick up the speed based on the power of the learner to grasp the concepts.

In a nutshell, 2021 is going to be a year full of learning and opportunities from the comfort of the home. 2020 sets a clear message about the concept of going digital in every aspect isn’t a theoretical future state but it’s happening right now whether you want to step in or not. It will see increased growth in technological transformation and a revamped way of learning.