Episode Transcript
00:00 Peter McColl: This is Peter McColl, Senior Associate, The Consultation Institute and a Young Academy of Scotland member alumnus. Today, we continue our podcast series discussing the future of tertiary education. We have an exciting topic for you today - digital technologies and AI. Loral Quinn joins me, former Chief Executive of Code Clan.
This episode was recorded in May 2023, before the liquidation of CodeClan. We've decided to release this episode as we believe non-traditional educational providers like CodeClan hold an essential place within the tertiary education system. Their unique position provides high-quality, relevant training to meet digital skills gaps. In the years to come, we're going to see learners coming from increasingly divergent backgrounds – including a rise in returners displaced from the job market by decarbonisation or automation - where reskilling programmes will become increasingly commonplace, and the sector will need to adapt its offerings to fit with this challenge.
Before CodeClan, Loral was Chief Executive and Co-founder at fintech for good, Sustainably. She is passionate about tech for good, and during her career, she has won multiple industry awards, including Richard Branson's Startup of the Year.
I suppose the first thing that we were really interested in was the role that new technology and digital can play in education, particularly, particularly tertiary education, so post-compulsory education. And if you've seen any trends there, if you've seen any interesting things that you might want to talk to us about? Because certainly from my own observations, sometimes, particularly university can be quite a long way behind where you might expect them to be. So do you want to talk a little bit about what you've observed, and what the contribution the CodeClan is making to those sorts of areas?
01:47 Loral Quinn: Yeah, we've definitely seen more companies taking on modern apprentices, and graduate apprentices in digital technologies. And that is really to kind of front load the skills that they need working in partnership with CodeClan, where they put them through a boot camp, and then put them through a modern apprenticeship. So it works in a number of ways because it gives the students the skills that they need to go into those companies and we call it hit the ground running, you know, so they actually have some skills that they can actually start work on day one, and then continue to learn. And that's a really interesting approach that we're seeing happen more and more with boot camps, like CodeClan as an accelerator and TGAs and MAs. And I think that that that trend will definitely continue.
02:35 Peter McColl: So, I think there's a really interesting point there particularly around, you know, we talk a lot about employability in higher education. And many people like me would say, well, higher education isn't just about employability. In fact, it might not even be about employability. But we do want to give people skills that they can use. And I think one of the interesting things about digital skills is that they tend to change much more quickly than the skills that higher education is set up to provide you with, you know, critical thinking, the ability to evaluate evidence in a really deep way, the ways to turn research into practical action. Those are the sorts of things that higher education is meant to provide you with. Further education is meant to provide you with skills very much closer to what you do. And I just wonder is there is there a way that we can match those two things together, are those things that need to stay, just stay separate?
03:25 Loral Quinn: Yeah. I think that's the thing that the environment is continually evolving. So, the training needs to continually evolve and meet the needs of the employer, which is basically what we're doing, what we're training the students to learn, is to put them into jobs. So, I think it's about learning how to learn. It's about learning, not just the technical skills, it's about learning the teamwork, presentation skills, written and verbal communication, like having a growth mindset. And I guess the other part is really understanding the wellness aspect. So how do you take care of yourself? How do you, you know, not have the imposter syndrome? How do you go and kind of, with that willingness to learn and ask questions and solve problems, and, you know, those are things that are not necessarily taught in a typical learning environment but are things that really employers look for, and students need to have, because that's how they're going to get through and deal with all the challenges and solve some of the critical problems. So, I think that's kind of the thing that really needs to be matched into organizations. And there's a lot that we can learn in terms of cultivating that calm and healthy mind and attitude and avoiding burnout, but really focusing on solving problems and new ways of working.
04:41 Peter McColl: There's a lot of interesting stuff in there. There's a really interesting thing about learning to learn. Because I think that's the difference between compulsory education and what comes after it. And when we talked a little bit about you know, there are some really important skills that you can learn where you do need to learn how to learn, learning to drive being a great example. You don't need to learn how to operate other pieces of machinery as a result of learning how to drive, you just need a set of skills to keep you and other people safe on the road. And I wonder to what extent you're doing that sort of quite didactic learning about how to do something and to what extent you're teaching people new skills that they can take on and future so they're learning a coding language or whatever, will they be able to learn subsequent languages when that ceases to be used?
05:30 Loral Quinn: Yeah, and you're so right. I mean, at CodeClan we coach our students how to learn the frameworks and the languages. But really, what you'll find in industry is because we've taught them to feel comfortable with learning to, you know, to be able to go in with an agile mindset, to know that things are constantly changing, that is so important. It's, you know, that's why they go on, and they're able to progress through organizations faster than graduates who have left university, because they have been taught to learn how to learn, they're just very comfortable with not knowing, you know. When it comes to using things like chat GPT, and all the other things, you know, kind of how do we, how do we leverage all these things, to test code, test bugs, to kind of do all sorts of things that we can do. And it's, it's about being able to access those ways to learn fast, and feeling comfortable with change and learning new things. That is one of the things that we are really good at teaching.
06:25 Peter McColl: That's really interesting. And there's a question there for me as well about diversity in this. And I remember, when I worked for NESTA, I came across an employer who said, in order to do data science, you need at an absolute minimum of a PhD in astrophysics. And I thought that was probably wrong at the time, I would imagine that, I don't have the figures to hand at the moment, but I imagine that there isn't much diversity amongst people with PhDs in astrophysics. And I just wondered if you've been able to show more diversity? And also, I think there's an interesting question here if that diversity unlocks different sets of skills that can be applied to the workplace?
07:05 Loral Quinn: Yeah, diversity is a really important framework to look at things because if we don't have diverse products and services in industry, you know, that if we don't have diverse teams, we're not creating those diverse products and services. So we can't, we're under-serving half the population, essentially, by having products and services that are not built by a diverse team. So really breaking down the barriers. And we've done a lot of research on this subject matter. We've just finished a project with young women called On the intersectional barriers for women in Tech. And really looking at how we build our programs to ensure that we are bringing in diverse talent and creating a part time on demand program, looking at how we can provide funded places, looking at how we can support those students into jobs in different ways, in more flexible working environments with employers who actually understand that there is a different approach required for attracting and retaining diverse talent, and breaking down those gender norms around STEM that that have created stigmas and pushed women away from Tech, is really important. And that's a really big focus for us at the moment. And really taking part in supporting women and other diverse groups and taking those next steps into getting into Tech and staying there.
08:30 Peter McColl: I had that sort of ... there was a wonderful moment, probably now 10 years ago, where there was a whole raft of startups to post you razors in the post, because what problem is it that, people who were doing startups at that time in their lives, it's that they didn't like go to the shop to buy new razor blades, and therefore they wanted them posted. It tells you a lot about who those people are that that's what they thought the main needs were at that time. And I think you see similar things. I mean, the classic examples, the bill splitting up, you know, the dozens and dozens of hours for you to split your bill at the end of a meal, again it speaks really to what people's needs are, not to the needs of society more generally. And I suppose for me one of the questions is if we have more diverse people in these roles, do we begin to get people thinking about the diverse applications of Tech that we might have, that aren't just about guys who don't like going and buying razor blades or people who eat out a lot and need to split the bill?
09:33 Loral Quinn: Absolutely. And there is definitely, you know, a lot of research has been done. The book which came out by... it was all about data, and how the world has been set up using one lens which was the data for men essentially and the rest of the you know, humanity was left behind, Karolina Criado Perez, yes, that's it. So a huge, you know, a huge study on where we are in terms of sexist society, and also from the recent Ana Stewart report. I mean, there is so much that needs to be done, but it's now becoming more visible the benefits, why companies should be hiring diverse talent, the steps they need to take in order to do that from, you know, changing the way that job adverts are written to remove the requirement for certain languages or certain ways that you know, we'll be looking to say you must have strong this or, or this or that, and, you know, we have to take all that out, because that's not how diverse audiences want to approach coming into a company, they want to feel like they are part of it. They don't want to come into organizations that are typically, you know, one particular segment dominated, with no options for flexibility. And I think it's really breaking down those stereotypes and making it really clear what the next steps are, how do companies actually get involved in that, and a big part of what we're doing now with Young women code is creating ways that we can work with our employer network and make that happen, instead of talking about it or creating another report. Let's actually make this happen now.
11:13 Peter McColl: I should say, I have nothing against people who want razor blades posted to them or whatever else, but... or the bills splitting out. But I do think that's really interesting. There's something else I wanted to talk about here, which is that you do, a sort of accelerated program of learning. And when we look at what Scottish Government wants, what almost every government wants, it wants more innovation, it wants more people working in Tech, getting all of the benefits of that, for our society, for our economy. And historically, if people wanted jobs in innovation, or those sorts of things, you needed to go on a very long journey. Generally, it involved a PhD in aeronautical engineering or whatever else. Do you think we can really bring this sort of accelerator approach into creating sort of society-wide innovation and applying the really positive benefits we can get from Tech in that way? Is that something that's on your radar?
12:16 Loral Quinn: Yeah, and we launched a youth academy last year for 16- to 24-year-olds that has been extremely popular. And we will be continuing to offer these academies ongoing because that four-week boot camp that we run to get those students into jobs is proving extremely popular by employers, and by the young people who are coming on to the programs. And it's, like I said, giving the internship, the opportunity to have the skills front loaded. In terms of the existing professional software developer and professional data analyst programs that we run, which are the 16-week boot camps, those are extremely popular, again, with companies that are hiring grads continually from us. When we do 20 cohorts a year and companies are repeatedly coming back because they know the quality of students, they know that they can put them into Scrum teams, and they can be successful from day one, with support. They know that they know how to learn, you know, they have all the skills that they need to get them to progress in their organization. And because they're coming from different backgrounds, they're not coming from the PhD or the traditional university, four years in debt is real. As a rule of thumb, they are kind of coming with a different approach and different transferable skills from manufacturing, or from hospitality, or from a completely different sector that are then enabling them to progress through the organization quicker. And I think that will be a transformational aspect. You know, the thing that we have here in Scotland is that we have education for everyone. So, we should be able to use that as the trump transformer to transform the entire ecosystem and get ... break down the barriers so we can really crack the skills gap and get more diverse audiences into the Tech ecosystem. One of the things that we're doing at CodeClan now is looking at lifelong learning, so how can we take someone through our youth academy, put them into a job and continuously upskill them in partnership with the employers, to make sure that they have not just the launch pad, but the ongoing support to continue to grow and evolve? So, I think those types of ways of working will be critical going forward.
14:34 Peter McColl: Yeah. And are there other lessons from this for secondary education as well, for primary education? Should we be introducing some of these approaches to compulsory education? Are these things that we could use in Tech, outside of Tech as well, maybe?
14:48 Loral Quinn: I think there is a lot to be said for providing secondments from industry into high schools, for example, and even younger, so that young people have pathways and understand what the opportunities are. For example, I was speaking to my niece the other day about you know, what my daughter does, she's a product manager and, and my niece was asking, 'What does a product manager do?' And I was saying, it's about creating all the features for Instagram. So how do you know that button goes there? You know, the functionality that you might use to send things to your friend now, it's kind of about putting all of these things ... and young people just don't know all the opportunities that are available to them. So it's how do we break down those barriers by going in early and making it really clear that these are all the amazing, interesting jobs that you could do. And these are all the pathways that you can get involved in, and how do we bring in Tech into art and other subjects that, you know, just makes it more accessible, you know, not everyone wants to be a software engineer. But think of all the other rules that go around creating what goes into a product, is so much more, from the design of it, from the customer experience, all the knowledge and insight you put into it, there's so much that goes into it rather than just, you know, typing the app. So it's not just about coding, it's about all the other things that go around that and how we can educate the young people so that they know where they can go, how they can learn, and how does that go? How does that form part of the curriculum? There are initiatives in some schools, but we could, you know, there are opportunities to put the likes of Youth academy, our summer schools, and other things. And I know that a lot of industry is now going into schools for things like Future Fridays, but it's, it's how do we all work together to tackle the problem and actually do things rather than again, talking about them and creating another report.
16:38 Peter McColl: You say, and we're doing this, of course, off the back of a report (laughs).
16:44 Loral Quinn: As long as it has a lot of actions, and they're all getting done?
16:49 Peter McColl: Well, here we are. So hopefully, some people will find out about what you're doing and what we're doing from listening to this. I mean, as it was, the other thing about all of that is... that I think we've had a sort of siloed approach historically, particularly with Tech, where it's been in STEM, it's been a thing for scientists, a lot of the opportunities you have are creative as well. And there are a lot of opportunities for people who do music, who do storytelling, all of those sorts of things in the digital economy. And I think that's something that hasn't really permeated people's imagination yet.
17:26 Loral Quinn: Yeah, and I think that's absolutely true. And it does come down to inspiring that younger generation. These are all the opportunities and the jobs that existed when I was at school, you know, are not the jobs that exist today. It is about reimagining the future but bringing those young people on a journey, talking about sustainability, you know, what are all the things that we can do, you know, in terms of the challenges that we currently have? How do we take all that raw talent and put it into doing a lot of great things. And, you know, there is so much opportunity for those young people and for industry at large, by just combining and inspiring and kind of working together and collaborating and making sure that we can take that talent, raw talent, and turn it into something and give them all the opportunities that will transform their own lives, but transform the economy here as well.
18:22 Peter McColl: I mean, you mentioned sustainability there, do you want to talk a little bit about your passions in that area, because I know that's where you came from, originally.
18:31 Loral Quinn: Yeah, we're launching a sustainability engineering program at CodeClan, which will be a three-day program that all the students that go through our immersive boot camps will be able to access and then they'll be able to take those skills into their roles, which will help companies get on that trajectory to net zero. And, you know, I'm really passionate about that. And, you know, that is something that all companies should be doing, and enabling that understanding of the ways that we do need to call to reduce, you know, less duplication of data, less energy, and all the other things that we're providing through our fundamentals and techniques course, we'll just make all that more accessible and enable companies to start, like actually measuring the impact of their code and putting themselves on a trajectory to, you know, make it, improve it. So, yeah, really massive focus for us is working on it with industry as well. So it's not just taking students who are new into the Tech industry, to get them into Tech roles. It's actually working with companies who want to upskill their current teams, and either improve their Tech skills or move them into Tech roles as well. So kind of there's a lot of, again, it's just that whole pathway for lifelong learning that applies to individuals at large, not just individuals as individuals, but individuals who are also working in companies and companies who want to benefit from an enhanced workforce with the right skills and training that they need to succeed as companies.
20:08 Peter McColl: Incredibly interesting. I wonder, are there things you could offer to citizens rather than employees? Because I think there's a really, you know, one of the things that I think a lot of us learned through COVID, and you may undoubtedly be familiar with the Tech Army, the Scottish Tech Army approaching people who wanted to make a social difference. And I just wondered about equipping some people to be able to do that. And if that's something that we might be able to move into, because I think one of the ways to get more people aware of what could happen is to have them do those things. You know, there's a learning through doing point there, wondering if there's anything in that area here?
20:49 Loral Quinn: Yeah, I mean, the big thing for us is that if we can tap into the job roles of some people who we know would really benefit from the next step, I think that gives a really clear way for those individuals to upskill themselves. And then they have options, to stay in the company or go to another role, but I think it's just really making it clear, it comes to the visibility of pathways, and understanding what are your options, you know, if you're using Excel every day, should you be using R or Python, you know? These are all things that you can save time, save effort, focus on really interesting things, if you have automated data reporting, or, you know, automated data visualizations, and reproducible research and all sorts of interesting stuff that you can't do that if you have an Excel spreadsheet that you are constantly having to tap, you know, the next data points in, and so many people would benefit from that. So it's, you know, there is a huge piece of education on our part to educate people as to, you could do this, cut that time down, be more productive, have an amazing opportunity to add more value to your company, solve more problems, be more creative. And it's educating individuals to go back to their companies and say, I really want to do this, will you support me with this programme, or, you know, also educating them to say, I actually want to do this, and if my company's not going to support me, I'm going to do it.
22:11 Peter McColl: Just in case somebody's listening who doesn't know what R or Python are, do you want to do to give us a brief description?
22:18 Loral Quinn: Yeah, I'll do my best as a non-technical person, but R and Python are languages that you can use in your data job to create ways to make your data work for you better, essentially, to kind of make it really simple. So if you had a task that you had to do every week, for example, you could use a program that can actually run that task for you. So it's, you know, and you can use a program that will make that into a nice visualization, for example, that you can share or add to a report. And it's kind of removing all the manual intervention in a lot of these instances, that can enable you to assess the data more quickly, so that you can use it, it's about having access to information that can help make decisions rather than just scrambling around finding the information. So it's all just about improving your processes. And then again, if we improve productivity, we're reducing costs. But we're also adding value in other ways. So it's, it's all about using the tools that we have at large, that a lot of people are not using to help them in their jobs, and really driving that message across. It's about helping you do better and get better outcomes.
23:36 Peter McColl: At a previous job I did a report on jobs of the future. What we concluded was that you wouldn't destroy jobs, all you would do is dramatically change jobs. Now, we thought that that meant more creative jobs, jobs that had more human characteristics. I slightly worry that sometimes those jobs will be things like cleansing data, because the machine can't do it. Or I mean, that sort of dystopian thing about how the one thing that robots can't really do is fine motor control. So you put a human into a mechanized shell, and you get them to lift things and put them in boxes. Sounds like an absolute nightmare. But I think there's a really interesting set of questions about what those jobs look like, and how we can make sure that those jobs are the really creative jobs, the jobs that allow us to care, that allow us to make decisions together, rather than doing a lot of simplistic tasks over and over again, which I think a lot of us would want not to have to do, but choose to do them. But what to have to do them and I suppose my question is, how can we ensure that it's those creative very human jobs that that we're creating for people rather than the dystopian robot hound?
24:57 Loral Quinn: Yeah, I totally agree and data wrangling or cleaning all the data, like you say, is a kind of important thing because we're oftentimes working with data which is not clean and does need cleaned up. But, I can't remember the resource I was reading lately, but the whole point of AI is it will not be run by AI, you know, it still needs humans to run the AI. So, you know, that is the whole point and, and part of the human nature of humans, is that we will always need that intervention, because we're not going to replace humans, we always want to, you know, be creative and innovating and using AI and machine learning in ways that will help. So it's constantly having that in mind, and removing all the biases from AI and machine learning as a human job, you know, it's kind of, we need to figure out how we can make it work before we actually are... using it correctly. So I think it's a really human piece of work that needs to be done to kind of … and it will always need humans to run it, that will benefit from it. But unfortunately, we're not going to get around the problem of having dirty data. So we do need to, you know, we do need to, we are going to always have, there's always going to be something there that we can, are going to need, it's going to need humans to look at. But if we can get the programs and tools and things to kind of do all the repeatable tasks that we do that are mundane, and that enable us to add the innovation layers on top and the thinking, then we're going to be in a better position.
26:38 Peter McColl: You mentioned Excel. And there's that really interesting thing about how Excel increased the number of people working in financial services, not decrease it, because you could do more analysis, you could understand more of what was going on. So rather than replacing jobs, it created new jobs, which probably were of higher value. And I was just, I was going to ask next around, a lot of people will have heard talk about these sort of large language, multiple artificial intelligence, things like Chat GPT, or GPT 4, and I just wanted to give you the opportunity to talk a little bit about what impact you think those are going to have. I mean, you've already pointed to the fact that we need, you need to ask them the right questions. And you also need to understand, the right word is hallucination. You'd stop them hallucinating or inventing facts, which they seem to do. I just wondered if you want to talk a little bit more about the role you see for those sorts of tools?
27:28 Loral Quinn: Yeah, I mean, I guess the sort of the Chat GPT of the world is useful in the ways that, it's useful in terms of what is in there, you know, but you're right, if it has the wrong information, it's only ever going to operate from the wrong information. So I think there are lots of use cases for us in education to use Chat GPT, we're doing a talk on it today, actually, at the campus. And, you know, for pair programming with yourself, you know, there's kind of lots of interesting things we can do there. And I think, as we look at neural code, as well, at large, I mean, large organisations are using it to run their internal organisations and operations, to streamline things, we're going to just see this more and more. And I think, you know, it's using things at the right point. So knowing that they're not going to solve all your problems, but what problems can they solve? And how can we use them in the right ways. So I think it's going to be critical to not be taking everything at face value and thinking this, you know, there's a lens that sits on top, which is a logic lens, rather than, you know, expecting that the likes of Chat GPT and others is going to solve all the world's problems. It's not, it's just another tool that we can use to help in certain circumstances.
28:50 Peter McColl: The really interesting questions for me... So I've been… I've followed the development of this through, mostly game playing AI, that really interesting thing that, in both chess and the game called Go, AI produced moves that no human player had ever played before. And I sometimes wonder if we're using humans to check what those moves are. Both Chess and Go are very rules based so you can say, yes, those are acceptable within the rules. But we just wouldn't have thought of doing that. If you have something that's not rules based, that's based on convention or social norms, then what do we do with the AI, when it does something that we wouldn't accept, or we hadn't thought of doing? I think they're really interesting questions there. And I just, I wonder if you're thinking about the ways in which we can train people to help to be sympathetic to understanding the world that we're going to be living in with, with these sorts of things?
29:39 Loral Quinn: Yeah, and I think that's part of the session today to kind of raise awareness of the tools that are out there now. I mean, what a few years ago, it was Watson that was kind of being, you know, humans, and now it's like, is it Chat GPT and then what's it going to be next? Because these things, you know, well Watson, I don't believe exists anymore, or maybe it does, but it's not kind of one of the things that, you know, people are referring a lot to. So, you know, things change, you know, technology changes, the humans change. The need for ethics is evolving and changing. So, it's educating the students on campus but also educating the businesses that we work with as well and the communities at large as to how can they benefit? Or what are the things they need to look out for when entering into using the new tools and technology?
30:39 Peter McColl: Really interesting, my understanding is that Watson never really existed. So this is all very philosophical, it was actually just a brand name for a set of tools that IBM had. So Watson was just a brand name that they put around those tools, and I've no doubt that those tools still exist. But there's an interesting point about the branding and marketing there. Are there any other things you think about the future of Tech in tertiary education and education more generally? What's the one thing you would recommend people listening to this do? What's the one thing you'd recommend they ask government to do? What's the one thing you recommend that they asked their employer to do when listening to this and going away? We've been really focused on what actions people should take, I think that would be a really practical takeaway.
31:31 Loral Quinn: I think the first thing is educating young people on the different opportunities that there are, trying to educate yourself, first of all, to know what are the things that we could be doing to inspire young people, then figuring out how can I, as an individual, help inspire young people. Then thinking about yourself, what can you do to upskill yourself to make your role more effective, you as an individual more, I don't know what the word is, but just feel that you are more able to add value and be more innovative because you have taken some of the manual operational boring stuff out of your life. But I think if you can really think about your own pathway, and how you bring up others behind you is my message. So there is so much knowledge that can be passed on. How are we helping young people identify what they could do? How are we getting involved in supporting that? How are we helping our bosses or our teams or you know, people, our families, understand the opportunities so that we can actually get to a position where we have a society that is educated that there aren't sort of poverty gaps or education gaps, that we're kind of moving people to better outcomes that industry is supporting, that we're collaborating? You know, how do we foster growth? And how do we foster that lifelong learning? And I think the only way we're going to be able to do it is by completely changing what we do individually each day to think about ‘how am I helping solve this problem’?
33:04 Peter McColl: Thank you so much. I think that's been a really fascinating conversation. So I think everybody should go and do those things and come back and listen to the next in the series of our podcasts.
33:18 Loral Quinn: Thanks for having me.
