Competency Assessment Mapping Platform for Industry Responsive Education
The CAMPFIRE project helps mid-career workers gain skills needed for the digital economy.
Project Overview
The Problem
Canadian employers across the country face a talent crunch due to the lack of skilled digital workers.
At the start of 2019, there were 435,000 jobs that sat vacant for at least four months – a real threat to Canada’s prosperity.
At the same time, workers from a variety of industries are unemployed or underemployed due to the pandemic, changes in the economy, workforce needs and technological advancements. The threatened sectors include forestry, manufacturing, mining and energy.
How We Are Solving It
CAMPFIRE, the Competency Assessment Mapping Platform for Industry Responsive Education pilot program, aims to provide the kind of skilled talent employers need, and rewarding employment for workers who need new skill sets.
Led by the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) with the support of the Immigrant Employment Council of British Columbia and LifeLabs, the project provides 600 early and mid-career workers with the digital skills and competencies they need to transition to new work over the next 24 months.
CAMPFIRE’s cross-industry collaboration addresses three challenges workers face in making transitions: limited knowledge about opportunities, a lack of access to value-added, integrated employment services, and little understanding of required competencies and experience.
The heart of the project is a new on-demand, integrated online platform accessible from anywhere in the country. It will help workers acquire the skills they need to make the shift into high-demand careers in the digital economy by seamlessly connecting them to career planning tools, competency assessment, skills training, network building and job opportunities.
The platform will personalize services to individual users’ needs and will be driven by their actual skills and competencies rather than simply basing the process on credentials. The project will initially focus on three sectors: forestry, healthcare and mining. The platform is expected to help impacted workers reduce their time to find new employment by 25 per cent. It is also designed to be scalable and extended to other sectors, supporting workforce transformation across the Canadian economy.
The Result
This project aimed to pilot the delivery of a new online system that provided career planning, competency assessment, skills training and job opportunities. Facing challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic and other economic factors, the open source CAMPFIRE system reached 470 participants, of which 80 completed the Digital Assessment and Career Path. BCIT’s learnings from this project are being shared to support a longer-term solution for personalized assessments and career mapping.
Project Lead
Project Partners
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“Technology is transforming our industry and helping to improve safety, sustainability and efficiency across the mining sector. This new program will help Indigenous Peoples and women to be part of the technological evolution in mining and take advantage of new opportunities being created."
Senior Vice President, Sustainability and External Affairs, Teck Read the EP&T Article (January 23, 2020)